Mood Stabilizers

From Psychiatric Times: A recent study of individuals diagnosed with bipolar II disorder found that patients who have taken antidepressants in the past are less likely to respond...

With deep regret, Mad in America announces another loss in our contributor community. Julie C. Greene, writer and antipsychiatry advocate, lost her battle with kidney disease on November 29 at her home in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. Julie had been an MIA blogger since 2014, including several pieces on the dangers of lithium.

Important assessment tool found to underestimate the risk for fracture in patients on psychiatric medication.

Children who were exposed to anti-seizure drug valproate in utero were 48% more likely to develop ADHD, according to a new study.

From Thoughtful Living: The biomedical model of psychiatry, along with the DSM, is deeply flawed and can often be misleading. To improve, mental health services...

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.

Re-examination of meta-analytic claims finds the prevalence of pediatric bipolar disorder is close to zero.

A touching article in the Las Vegas Sun follows one child from abandonment through foster placements, polypharmacy, suicidality, delinquency and homelessness to stability off...

by Chaya Grossberg July 25, 2012 He also told me the shrinks were changing around his drugs and adding more.  They added an antidepressant or two to the Lithium and increased doses and eventually he seemed to have very little life left in him.  Our phone calls became trying for he was so down, practically dead sounding a lot of the time, and I felt unable to do anything or say anything to make a difference.  To even try felt futile and I wondered if talking to me at all was becoming the burden of yet another person he couldn't connect with. In the early years, he liked to think of us as being in the same boat, both mentally ill, since I'd also had a meltdown and I also am extremely sensitive and go through extreme states.  But as the years went by, especially towards the end, I seemed to be in the ever growing “other” camp in his eyes, which meant I was yet another person who didn't get what it was like to be him. And at that point I can confirm I did not, and perhaps did not want to.

Bipolar drug therapy is a balancing act of benefits vs. harms. Odds of attributable benefit cluster in a 15-25% band, so 75%-85% don’t see substantial benefit. Stated differently, if five people take a bipolar drug, only one is likely to see substantial improvement due to it, but all five will have side effects.

A new study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, investigates the effects of anticholinergic medications, such as antidepressants and antipsychotics, on cognition in older adults diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Between 2,150 and 4,100 children suffered from severe malformations connected to valproate prescription.

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Pfizer's appeal of a $142 million award to the Kaiser Foundation for illegal marketing of Neurontin.  The...

Research from Germany finds that people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective diagnoses given multiple medications - an antipsychotic plus a benzodiazepine or more than one...

A new analysis published in the The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry investigates the public health effects of direct-to-consumer advertisements for psychiatric drugs. The researchers...

New research demonstrates that children diagnosed with ADHD at younger ages are more likely than those diagnosed later to receive multiple medications within five years of their diagnosis.

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...

New research published in the July issue of The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that the use of mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, antidepressants, and hypnotics during pregnancy is associated with increased health risks to the infant.

Researchers publishing in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry argue that broadening the diagnostic criteria for bipolar disorder would result in a greater increase in...

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...

From The Concordian: On October 30th, Dr. Joel Paris, a professor of psychiatry at McGill University, gave a lecture about the dangers and consequences of...

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

From Reuters: Two youth legal advocacy groups have filed a lawsuit against Missouri for over-exposing foster children to psychotropic drugs. The lawsuit seeks a court...

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