Benzodiazepines

"Fish that have been exposed to a common anti-anxiety drug are more active and have better chances of survival than unexposed fish," reports Nature....

Veterans diagnosed with PTSD and taking SSRIs, novel antidepressants, or atypical antipsychotics are more likely to develop dementia.

From BBC: The abuse of the anti-anxiety drug Xanax is becoming widespread among children and adolescents as young as 11 years old. "To gain an idea of the...

MIA Blogger Richard Lewis lands an op-ed in New England's South Coast Today: "Not a week goes by without some news headline reporting about...

One size fits all does not work. It is not possible to use the same tapering schedule for all patients who wish to stop with a certain drug. Therefore we had to come up with a flexible solution that was both practical and allowed doctors and patients to make the choice they deemed appropriate.

In this five-part series for the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, Nicole L. critiques a recent article by Dr. Greg Smith that was highly laudatory of benzodiazepines. Click...

The Washington Post investigates the epidemic of suicide and the overuse of psychiatric drugs that is sweeping through towns in Colorado.

Study details Medicaid-insured birth cohort’s exposure to psychiatric medications and mental health services.

ProPublica is well known for creating interesting data bases that allow anyone hooked up to a computer to see by name whether a physician is accepting Big Pharma payments — from dinners to speaking engagements to consulting services. What may be lesser known is that occasionally ProPublica will publish other data that when carefully mined can reveal even more about the use of psychiatric drugs especially when there is a public funding source available.

In a scathing editorial in this month’s Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Dr. Giovanni Fava takes aim at prominent medical experts who have downplayed the role...

The Daily Beast dives into the debate over SeaWorld's use of benzoiazepines to stop their killer whales from "acting aggressively toward each other in...

Psychologist and Professor Amber Gum has published the story of her personal journey of rethinking psychotropic medication in a special issue on "The Politics of Mental Health" in The Journal of Medicine and the Person. Influenced by Mad in America and the work of Robert Whitaker, Gum became aware of evidence that “suggests that psychotropic medications are less effective and more harmful than most believe” and now hopes to encourage other mental health professionals and researchers to engage in open-minded, critical self-assessment of standard practices.

Over one third of people with bipolar diagnoses admitted to a Rhode Island hospital were on four or more psychiatric medications, says research published...

The Times of London reports today that more than a million people in the U.K. are addicted to benzodiazepines prescribed to them by their...

Benzodiazepine medications that are commonly used for calming or sedating people can sometimes apparently cause violent or aggressive responses in some people, according to...

Last year the British Medical Association (BMA) released a report on dependence and withdrawal from prescription drugs including benzodiazepines, z-drugs, opioids, and antidepressants. Now,...

A recent article in the American Journal of Public Health calls for policy level interventions to reduce the use of benzodiazepines, drugs commonly prescribed...

Rising prescriptions for psychiatric medications are partly a result of longer-term treatment and increasing population, according to an article by Joanna Moncrieff and Stephen...

ITV features and article and video today about the widespread problem of addiction and withdrawal from benzodiazepine drugs used to treat anxiety, including Ativan, Librium, Diazepam and Temazepam. Mother of three Sandra Minshull shares her story and discusses how Ativan “robbed her of her life.”

This is how it started: Pregnancy. Now, you may guess that a hormonal tsunami could turn my body into wreckage and you’d be right. I’m not the first woman to get pummeled by the swift waters of pregnancy and I won’t be the last. What you might not guess is that despite knowing this, a doctor specializing in these particular imbalances would proffer benzodiazepines as a cure for hormone induced insomnia. You might also be surprised that my first script would be written for an amount usually reserved for those having grand mal seizures.

Researchers from Tufts and Harvard find in a review of 233 medical charts of psychiatrically hospitalized youth at three points in time (1991, 1998...

Researchers in Taiwan found a 3.33x greater risk of benign brain tumors in patients who had been prescribed benzodiazepines for at least 2 months....

A new poll, published in the Washington Post, explores the public’s connection to prescription pain killer abuse. “A surprising 56 percent of the public say...

Australian researchers look at the literature on the effect of psychotropics on falls in the elderly; largest effect of any randomized trial was achieved...

Pictures are worth a thousand words. So I’ve chosen pictures to distill the mountain of mental health research I’ve examined over the last eight years. Three infographics summarize research on psychiatric drugs, and one asserts why I think Integrative Mental Health is the best path available for mental health recovery.