Abbott to Pay $700 Million for Off-Label Marketing of Depakote

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Pleading guilty to marketing Depakote for behavioral problems in dementia patients, a purpose for which the drug was not approved, a federal judge has...

Antipsychotics Rise in Youth, But Hospitalization Rates Stay the Same

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

Information on PRN Medication Practices is Lacking

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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...

Michael Samuel Bloom

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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.

Nevada Legislation Aims to Curb Psychotropics in Foster Children

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

Psychiatric Drugs: an Increasing Portion of Prescription Costs

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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...

Over 1/2 of Autistic Children take Psychotropics

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"... Absence of clear practice guidelines for psychotropic medication use in children with ASD" leads to a range of drugs for depression, anxiety, psychosis...

Lowering the Threshold for Bipolar: “More Harm Than Good”

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

Utah Supreme Court Allows Lawsuit for Psychotropic-Induced Murder

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Ruling that health care providers, while important, "are not entitled to an elevated status in tort law that would categorically immunize them from liability...

Abbott to Pay $1.6 Billion for “Elder Abuse”, Off-Label Marketing

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Abbott Laboratories has pled guilty to civil and criminal charges of illegally marketing Depakote for the control of agitation and aggression in elderly patients...

Sexual Side Effects of Medications in Young People

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The effects of antidepressants and mood stabilizers on young people's psychosexual development receive little attention or research, says Kaitlin Bell Barnett (author of "Dosed:...

Multiple Medications Associated With Poorer Outcomes

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

Shooter in Family Murder/Suicide on High Level of Antipsychotics

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Denis Bay had high levels of prescription drugs used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar illness in his blood on February 3, when he shot...

Assessing Increased Mortality Risks of Antipsychotics and Mood Stabilizers in Dementia

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An article in January's American Journal of Psychiatry weighs the relative risk of mortality associated with various antipsychotics and mood stabilizers used in the treatment of...

Medications May Add to Mortality Rate in Schizophrenia

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Dutch researchers write in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology that, in a prospective study of 7415 persons with diagnoses of schizophrenia, use of a first-generation...

Discontinuing Psychotropics Reduces Falls in Elderly

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

A Rorschach Test for Psych Drugs

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On October 23, the New York Times ran a very nice feature story about a Los Angeles woman, Keris Myrick, who, even though she...

”Broken Brains” and “Beautiful Minds”

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When I first interviewed Brandon Banks, in the spring of 2008, while researching Anatomy of an Epidemic, he had recently entered Elizabethtown Community College...