Antidepressants

If I had remained med compliant I wouldn’t understand the simple joys of caring about my hygiene and my surroundings. I’ve wanted to write about this for a long time but I’ve not done it and I think it’s because I still have shame around how slovenly I became. I hid it from others fairly well most of the time, but I couldn’t hide it from myself. The fact is the drugs stripped me of some very basic elements of human care. When one doesn’t care about their immediate environment and their bodies, they really just don’t care about themselves. It’s a very painful place to be and yet when it’s caused by drugs it’s all muted and weird and not really who we are at all and so really all that is left is horrible shame.

"My studies in this area lead me to a very uncomfortable conclusion: Our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market, as doctors are unable to handle them. It is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good." - Peter Gøtzsche, MD; Co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration

The U.K. newspaper The Guardian asked readers of five newspapers in the U.K., Germany, France, Spain and Italy to talk about their experiences of...

The New York Times reports on new research from multiple sources that finds focused attention on insomnia is proving to be a "cheap, relatively...

A Philadelphia jury yesterday ordered Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen to pay $11 million to the parents of a five-year-old boy for failure to warn...

In recent months the English pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has assiduously portrayed itself as an advocate of transparency, and in support of access to clinical trial data. Well, in support of "Responsible Access." "Responsible" here essentially means that a researcher commits to the primacy of RCTs and statistical significance over an analysis of adverse events. It would not, for example, be responsible to claim that an SSRI causes suicide, a statin muscle damage or cognitive failure, or hypoglycemics cause hypoglycemia unless a trial has shown this to happen to a Statistically Significant extent – and they never do.

When I lived in Massachusetts I taught yoga and led writing groups for alternative mental health communities. While the organizations I worked for were alternative, many of the students and participants were heavily drugged with psychiatric pharmaceuticals. There was one skinny teenager I'd never have forgotten who listed the drugs he was on for me once in the yoga room after class: a long list of stimulants, neuroleptics, moods stabilizers; far too many drugs and classes of drugs to remember. I was at the housewarming party of an old friend, and who should walk in but that boy who used to come to my yoga classes and writing groups religiously. And he was no longer a boy; he was now a young man. “I'm thinking yoga teacher,” he said. I nodded. Did he remember where? “I'm not stupid,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I'm not on drugs anymore. I'm not stupid anymore.”

Bob Fiddamen dissects the issue of suicidality, bizarre behavior and antidepressants in light of BMJ Open's publication of "Suicide-related events in young people following...

The Attorney General of Louisiana has filed suit against Pfizer, Inc. for concealing "serious issues" regarding Zoloft's efficacy. Citing a "deliberate, systematic practice" of...

The Guardian and its partners in Europe - Le Monde, El Pais, La Stampa, Gazeta Wyborcza and Suddeutsche Zeitung - are conducting a global...

Canada's The Star traces the "chemical imbalance" story's fall from bedrock scientific principle to marketing device, at the same time that a $70 billion...

Antidepressants are still the most consumed class of medication in the U.S., with 270 million prescriptions per year. But sales revenue has gone down,...

Researchers from McMaster University's Department of Medicine, presenting at this year's American Society for Bone and Mineral Research's annual meeting, found that the magnitude...

The recent incident in the grounds of Washington Capitol, involving a young educated woman, brought shock to many people. It was another opportunity to blame a victim of mental illness and demand further restraint and medical attention for such individuals. Yes, we are lacking dignified, caring, discerning and attentive treatment for those whose spirits are broken. But we certainly don’t suffer from a lack of medical treatment for such individuals. It is time for policy-holders, and our scientific community to ask the 'heretical' question; “Could the drugs be the culprit behind the violence?”

The Mail sent three women to their doctors, reporting fictional symptoms of short-term, mild depression.  Two walked out with prescriptions for medication, despite expressions...

Miriam Carey, who was shot and killed yesterday by D.C. police after she attempted to drive through a White House barricade with her 1-year-old...

Noting a "striking incongruity between the wide use of and the weak evidence base for the efficacy and safety of antidepressant drugs in bipolar,"...

A meta-analysis by researchers from the U.K. finds an association between antidepressant use and a modestly increased risk of diabetes. “Our research shows that...

Researchers find, through a review of records from the Taiwanese National Health Insurance Database from 1998 to 2009, that short-term (7-28 day) use of...

Representative Jeff Miller, Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, is looking into the role psychiatric medication may have played in the shootings...

A review of all the relevant research comparing benzodiazepines (BDZ) to antidepressants (AD) for the treatment of anxiety was published Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics this Friday....

From youtube: Published on Sep 17, 2013 SSRIs: More Harm Than Good Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor ( SSRI ) Researchers found that antidepressants hinder serotonin regulation and can cause...

Concentrations of pharmaceuticals in Lake Michigan are undiluted two miles from treated sewage outfalls, according to research published in Chemosphere. Research has linked pharmaceuticals...

The idea of spending more time as a bureaucrat in the US Embassy in Iceland did not appeal to me. I longed for the freedom that academics have. While pursuing that dream I stumbled into the world of international media, “chemical imbalance”, book publishing and a greedy professor of psychiatry which was a prelude to my second annus horribilis.

Addiction Today reports "Attention on illicit drugs has deflected focus from the gigantic scale of harms by legal, prescribed drugs. We give you the...