Psychiatric Drugs

Last week, after the US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) made a recommendation for increased mental health and depression screening “stories in the New York Times,...

Citing the work of Lisa Cosgrove and Robert Whitaker in Psychiatry Under the Influence, Giovanni A. Fava, MD, provides an analysis of some subtle...

Following a lawsuit brought by Andrew Thibault of Parents Against Pharmaceutical Abuse (PAPA), the FDA has produced adverse event and severe adverse event reports...

“A Georgia psychiatrist was arrested during a DEA raid after he was accused of running a pill mill resulting in the deaths of more...

Last week a study in BMJ linked antidepressants to the risk of suicide and aggressive behaviors. The Science Media Centre has compiled responses to...

When the idea that selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) might make people feel suicidal first started to be discussed, I admit I was sceptical. It didn’t seem to me the drugs had much effect at all, and I couldn’t understand how a chemical substance could produce a specific thought. Because these effects did not show up in randomised controlled trials, they were dismissed and few efforts were made to study them properly. Then some large meta-analyses started to find an association between the use of modern antidepressants and suicidal thoughts and actions, especially in children.

Pioneering research by mood disorder experts at Newcastle University has questioned the effectiveness of metyrapone, a drug suggested to treat depression. "Our research has...

Lawrence Diller continues his series on the uses and abuses of Adderall. "You take some Adderall, go through withdrawal, build up tolerance, take some...

This study brings awareness to inappropriate continuation of neuroleptic medications beginning in the ICU, or other specialized hospital units that typically downgrade patients and...

Work-in-Progress trailer for "As Prescribed," a feature documentary exposing the human devastation caused by benzo-diazepines.

Philadelphia Inquirer health writer Marie McCullough reports on severe psychiatric disturbances in people taking Pfizer’s smoking-cessation drug Chantix. Article →

NPR’s Fresh Air interview science writer Jo Marchant about her new book “Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body.” Marchant explores...

A woman in Texas attempted suicide while in the active group of a clinical trial for smoking-cassation drugs Chantix and Zyban, both known to...

The largest-ever meta-analysis of antidepressant trials appeared yesterday in the British Medical Journal. Researchers from the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed 70 trials (involving 18,526 subjects), to find that - counter to the initially-reported findings - antidepressants doubled the risk of suicide and aggression in subjects under 18. This risk had been misrepresented in the original study reports, the authors say, and suggest that the risks to adults may be similarly under-reported.

Mad In America contributor and prescription drug addiction reformer Barry Haslam has “taken his fight to the world stage by helping create an international...

“Pfizer has quietly recalled three lots of its blockbuster drug Lyrica because of a manufacturing problem that could have left some capsules deformed or...

A simple, one-time visit to an unfamiliar counselor resulted in my diagnosis of ADHD. That same visit started my avalanche of drug abuse. I was 19 years old when I was falsely diagnosed with ADHD, and it forever changed my life.

Writing for Huffpost, medical doctor Lawrence Diller looks at the effects of the ever increasing diagnoses for ADHD and the addiction and abuse issues...

A study published in this month’s issue of Stroke found that antidepressants may increase the risk of microbleeds in the brain. Both SSRI and SNRI antidepressants can disrupt natural clotting mechanisms and lead to increased adverse bleeding incidents and prolonged bleeding times.

In his NY Times article “A Drug to Cure Fear,” Richard Friedman noted: “It has been an article of faith in neuroscience and psychiatry that, once formed, emotional memories are permanent.” This has not been a principle of these disciplines, including clinical psychology, for many years. Consolidation-reconsolidation-extinction models have been around for some time now, applied in particular to persons suffering from traumatic memories; e.g., Holocaust survivors, war and genocide survivors, etc.

Reuters reports that a new drug for major depression failed to improve symptoms in two late-stage clinical trials sending the manufacture’s stock into a...

Plaintiffs allege that Bristol-Myers Squibb and Otsuka Pharmaceutical failed to warn doctors and patients about the risk for compulsive behaviors when taking the atypical...

Writing for the Harvard Health Blog, Dr. Nandinia Mani reconsiders the use of antidepressants in teens in light of the reanalysis of Study 329. ...

According to new research by Joanna Moncrieff and Sebastião Viola, mental health problems have become the leading cause of disability claims in the UK. While the overall number of claims for other conditions has decreased by 35%, claims related to “mental disorders” have increased 103% since 1995.

“A quick look at drugs or drug uses that later turned out to be risky shows a disturbing trail of ‘bought’ science in major medical...