Excessive Mood & Behavior Arousal in Juveniles Treated with Antidepressants

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In a study of 6,767 reports of antidepressant trials in juveniles treated for depressive and anxiety disorders, the risk of psychopathological behavioral or mood...

Ask Michael Moore About Psychiatric Drugs and Gun Violence

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In Michael Moore's movie, "Bowling for Columbine," the question is repeatedly asked; "why are there so many gun murders in the United States compared to other countries?" But no answer is given. However, in Gary Null's recent film, "The Drugging of our Children," Mr. Moore says that it is quite possible Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold shot all of those students at Columbine for no other reason than they were given psychiatric drugs. He called for an investigation into the role of such drugs in the murders at Columbine, but does not appear to be following up. Now, there is an opportunity to ask him about it!!!

Antipsychotics for Depression: Added Risk for Little Benefit

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A review of research on antipsychotic medications as an adjunctive treatment for depression published this week in PLoS Medicine finds that the widespread practice...

AntiDepAware

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AntiDepAware promotes awareness of the dangers of antidepressants, in particular to the problem of antidepressants "being prescribed to those who are not depressed, to...

Genetic Testing for Suicide Risk

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A Colorado based company, Sundance Diagnostics, contacted me a few months ago to tell me about work they are doing to develop a genetic test to predict suicide risk when patients are prescribed antidepressant drugs. Their plan is to sequence the entire human genome of about 360 patients and controls to see if antidepressant drug risk can definitively be predicted.

Internet Data Mining Reveals Unreported Side Effect

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Scientists at Microsoft, Stanford and Columbia University, using automated software to mine data from 82 million internet searches for information related to, found a...

“Child Who Just Lost Balloon Begins Lifelong Battle With Depression” (The Onion)

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The humor newspaper The Onion satirizes the conversion of transient human emotions into lifelong illnesses, reporting that "Shortly after losing grip of a helium-filled...

Preventing Depression: SSRIs for At-Risk Populations?

An issue that we think deserves more media attention than it is currently receiving is the idea of Preventive Intervention in Psychiatry. The goal of Preventive Intervention is to reduce the rate of psychiatric diagnoses in an at-risk group of people by pretreating all the group members with a medication. For instance, could the rate of PTSD in the military be reduced by pretreating everybody in the military with an SSRI?

CASPER

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In August 2010, my friend and fellow ‘suicide mum’ Deb Williams and I established CASPER – Community Action on Suicide Prevention Education & Research. CASPER’s goals are to provide peer support to families bereaved by suicide, to educate politicians and opinion leaders on suicide and its prevention and to support families and communities to reclaim suicide prevention from medical professionals and governments.

Military Study May Show Medication/Suicide Link

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A large-scale study of depression-related brain activity may also reveal whether a connection exists between the high rates of both psychotropic medication and suicide...

Robot Bullies Rats into Depression to Test Antidepressant Medication

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Japanese engineers have devised a robotic rat that bullies laboratory rats into a state of depression, creating a model of human depression they deem...

Fox News Interviews Psychiatrist Peter Breggin on Drugs & Violence

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Tom Sullivan of Fox News asks psychiatrist Peter Breggin, author of Medication Madness, whether drugs rather than guns are at the heart of mass...

Prozac and SSRIs: Twenty-fifth Anniversary

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Twenty-five years before Prozac, 1 in 10,000 of us per year was admitted for severe depressive disorder - melancholia. Today at any one point in time 1 in 10 of us are supposedly depressed and between 1 in 2 and 1 in 5 of us will be depressed over a lifetime. Around 1 in 10 pregnant women are on an antidepressant.

Psychiatric Survivors Speak Up: Harm From Psychiatric Diagnosis, and a Start on Solutions

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Clinical and research psychologist Paula Caplan presents a keynote address entitled "Psychiatric Survivors Speak Up: Harm From Psychiatric Diagnosis, and a Start on Solutions" at the 2012 National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA) Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio.

A Brief History of Prozac

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Prozac, having failed as an antihypertensive then anti-obesity drug, was marketed as an antidepressant after it lifted the spirits of five mildly depressed volunteers...

Psychotropics Significantly Increase Falls in the Elderly

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Psychotropic medications, including short-acting benzodiazepines, strongly increase the frequency of falls in the elderly, according to research from the Netherlands published in Maturitas: The...

That Naughty Little Pill

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When patients come to me with complaints of low libido, low or flat mood, weight gain, hair loss, and cloudy thinking, one of my first questions is “Are you on the Pill?”. When they come complaining about premenstrual irritability, insomnia, tearfulness, bloating, and breast tenderness, requesting that I sanction beginning a course of oral contraceptives and perhaps an antidepressant, the one-size-fits-all-cure-all of psychiatrists and gynecologists nationwide, my first comment is “There’s a better way.”

“Special K” as Antidepressant: Short-term Gain; Long-term ?

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Ketamine (known in social circles as "Special K") has been touted as a rapid-acting and "profound" treatment for depression. The Journal of Psychosocial Nursing...

The SSRIs and Ten Years of Misleading Advertising: Who is Responsible?

In the BMJ this week there is a debate about the antidepressants. On the “Yes, The antidepressants are overprescribed” side is Des Spence. This is hardly a new debate and Des Spence makes a good case for the overuse of the antidepressants, but what caught our eye was the response by Adrian Preda, and his discussion about the findings of Irving Kirsch.

Pharma Says Its Antidepressant Fails to Beat Placebo

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Vanda Pharmaceuticals, Inc., announced this week that its new antidepressant Tasimelteon failed to beat placebo in trials, and that it has hence ended its...

Antidepressants Linked to Heart Arrhythmias

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Researchers from the Mass General and Brigham & Women's Hospitals and the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine find, using data from electronic health records...

Pfizer Sued Over Zoloft’s Failure to Beat Placebo

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A lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Jose, California seeks federal approval for two class-action lawsuits representing all U.S. users of the antidepressant Zoloft, accusing...

Forbes Unpublishes Commentary on Medication/Violence Link

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A google link to a Forbes magazine article titled "Psychiatric Drugs, Not A Lack Of Gun Control, Are The Common Denominator In Murderous Violence"...

Call for an Investigation Into Psych Meds and Violence

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The killing of 20 children and six adults in Newtown has triggered a search for some way of preventing these kinds of tragedies.  The...

“Substantial” Relapse After ECT, With or Without Medication

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The Journal of ECT, looking at the question of whether antidepressant medications at the start of ECT reduced post-ECT relapse in a sample of...