Jonah Lehrer was also Wrong About Antipsychotics
We spend a lot of time writing about knowledge dissemination in mental health, and over time, have increasingly recognized the important role of science...
Consumer Reports Recommends Against Antipsychotics for Depression
Consumer Reports recommends against antipsychotic "augmentation therapy" for depression. The consumer watchdog magazine finds that the unproven efficacy, harmful side effects, availability of alternatives,...
British Journal of Psychiatry Editorial Urges Rethinking the Use of Antipsychotics
The August issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry offers an editorial stating that, as "mental health services appear to have overestimated the strength...
Information on PRN Medication Practices is Lacking
The authors of an article in Journal of Psychosocial Nursing reviewed the literature on psychotropic PRN medications in order to respond to a request to...
Antipsychotics Not Helpful for Anorexia
A review of all research on the use of antipsychotics for the treatment of anorexia nervosa found no demonstrable efficacy in terms of body...
Conquering Benign Paternalism
On Wednesday, July 18, the Heritage Foundation sponsored a forum entitled “How to Bring Sanity to our Mental Health System.” It featured Dr. E....
“Unfortunate experiments” in New Zealand and Minnesota
Carl Elliott writes on the discrepancy between New Zealand's response to a research scandal - which lead to a national debate and dramatic reforms - and the silence following clinical trial scandals in the U.S.
Antipsychotics During Pregnancy Raise Diabetes Risk
Swedish researchers find, in a study of all women giving birth in Sweden from July 1, 2005 through December 31, 2009 that those taking...
Department of Defense Reveals Forced Drugging of Detainees
A report from the Deputy Inspector General of the Department of Defense, obtained by Truthout under a Freedom of Information Act request, confirms that...
Almost No Nursing Homes Meet Federal Standards for Antipsychotic Use
The Office of the Inspector General finds that 99.5% of nursing facilities in the United States are non-compliant regarding federal regulations concerning antipsychotic use....
Lowered Oxytocin in Schizophrenia
Researchers from Japan found, in a study of 27 persons with a schizophrenia diagnosis, 17 with major depressive disorder, and 27 controls, that negative...
Little Evidence on Effectiveness or Risks of Antipsychotics in Young People
Evidence-Based Mental Health reviews studies (from 1987 to 2011) of antipsychotics in people under 24 years old, finding weak evidence on comparative effectiveness of antipsychotics or...
Transcultural Limitations of Medical Model Treatment in Ghana
An anthropological study of mental health service use in Ghana, published online June 21 in Transcultural Psychiatry, finds that counter to expectations almost all those...
Atypicals Associated with Diabetes in Adults Without Schizophrenia or Bipolar Diagnoses
Writing in Evidence Based Mental Health, researchers from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital found that use of medication for diabetes was significantly...
Updates on Johnson & Johnson
Arkansas judge Tim Fox, who ruled earlier this year that Janssen Pharmaceuticals and its parent company Johnson & Johnson had concealed risks associated with...
Antipsychotics Aren’t Helpful to Children
Researchers from London, writing in European Psychiatry, reviewed "all RCTs involving children and young people with a diagnosis of childhood onset schizophrenia comparing any...
Nevada Legislation Aims to Curb Psychotropics in Foster Children
A touching article in the Las Vegas Sun follows one child from abandonment through foster placements, polypharmacy, suicidality, delinquency and homelessness to stability off...
Long-Acting Risperidone (Consta) Increases Costs, Lowers Outcomes
Writing in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, researchers from the Health Economics Resource Center studied the effects of long-acting injectable risperidone (Consta) on 369 patients...
Temperature-Related Deaths in People with Mental Illness
Writing in the British Journal of Psychiatry, English researchers found that "patients with mental illness showed an overall increase in risk of death of...
Are Billion Dollar Settlements the New Normal?
The Philadelphia Inquirer writes on the reported $2.2 billion Johnson & Johnson Risperdal settlement, the $2.3 billion Pfizer Geodon penalty, the $3 billion GlaxoSmithKline Avandia...
Department of Defense Apologizes for Antipsychotic-Related Deaths
The Army Times reports on the Department of Defense's crackdown on off-label antipsychotics in the context of research showing a strong link between antipsychotics,...
J&J to Pay $2.2 Billion to Settle Government’s Risperdal Probe
Johnson & Johnson has agreed to pay $2.2 billion to settle probes by the U.S. government of its marketing of Risperdal and other medications,...
Oxytocin – “The Love Hormone” – Improves Cognition in Schizophrenia
Oxytocin, which has "shown promise as a novel antipsychotic in multiple clinical trials," improved cognition in a small sample (n=15) of people with schizophrenia...
Why the Delay Between Psychotropics’ Immediate and “Therapeutic” Effects?
Writing in Neuron that antipsychotics' "functional consequences and the subcellular sites of their accumulation in nervous tissue have remained elusive," researchers from Germany and...
