Psychiatric Drugs

Taking antidepressant or benzodiazepine medications increases the risks that a person will commit a homicide, according to a study from Finland published in a World Psychiatry letter.

-Salon assistant editor Joanna Rothkopf describes her year of failed efforts to get off the antidepressant Zoloft.

The man who deliberately crashed a Germanwings commercial airliner with 150 passengers aboard was actively in psychiatric treatment at the time, reported the New...

Over half of people with learning disabilities living in residential centers in Ireland are being prescribed antipsychotics.

-Some nursing homes are changing their approaches since the US federal government began more closely regulating the use of antipsychotic medications in elderly patients with dementia.

A meta-analysis of studies found that the risk of dementia increased 22% for every additional twenty daily doses of benzodiazepine medications annually.

-Zevic Mishor writes about the development and release of a free guide to supporting people through extreme states induced by the use of psychedelic drugs.

A new study has reinforced earlier warnings that taking SSRI antidepressants late in pregnancy appears to put mothers at a slightly increased risk of having newborns with persistent pulmonary hypertension.

-NPR interviews some of the psychiatrists who feel that the fast-acting drug ketamine is a "revolution" in depression treatment.

The brains of adolescents diagnosed with bipolar disorder develop differently than the brains of teens without the disorder, according to a study in Biological...

-Correspondence in The Lancet Psychiatry suggests that a study linking depression to acts of violence should have examined antidepressant medications as possible causes.

Not an Onion Study: The first-ever injectable antipsychotic that lasts for three months was approved based on one clinical trial in which it prevented relapses better than putting people into sudden withdrawal.

Medicating children for a host of mental disorders has become very popular in some parts of the USA. More than 8 million kids from 6 months to 17 years of age are on pharmaceutical drugs in this wonderful country. We lead the world in drugging youth for behavioral, cognitive and attention issues. We are once again #1. But I would like to share with parents as well as adults working with children a few not so readily available facts related to medicating kids for behavior issues.

A Kings College London psychiatrist worries what broad new British restrictions on psychoactive substances could mean for psychedelic research.

Depressed pregnant women need good care.  They should not be made to feel guilty for the choices they make concerning their depression or lectured to by those who don’t understand the area or lack compassion for them.  In that sense, Andrew Solomon does the public a service by turning his attention and writing talents to the topic of depression and pregnancy this week in the New York Times.  However, a crucial part of providing good care to depressed pregnant women is to give them accurate information on the topic.  In this sense, Andrew Solomon falls short.

-Buzzfeed looks at the history -- and present -- of how antipsychotic drugs became a common treatment for depression, despite their apparent lack of effectiveness.

Not an Onion Study: SSRI antidepressants did consistently outperform placebo in clinical trials, researchers discovered, so long as 16 of the 17 questions about patients' feelings are ignored.

Children's positive responses to SSRI antidepressant treatments for depression are even less significant than adult responses, and do not last beyond four weeks.

"Depression can double risk of stroke," reported many news outlets, covering a study by Harvard School of Public Health researchers in the Journal of the American Heart Association

Irving Kirsch and Joanna Moncrieff have reanalyzed the clinical trial data on antidepressants.

Researchers believe that they have gained a clearer understanding of how cocaine, amphetamines and related psychostimulant drugs "disrupt the normal functioning of the dopamine transporter in the brain."

A study of 5-year outcomes for people taking either an ordinary oral antipsychotic or a long-acting injection of an antipsychotic found no differences between the two.

There were some differences between the study, the abstract, the press release and the media coverage about the risks of taking antipsychotics during pregnancy.

Women diagnosed with bipolar or depression did not perform as well on tests measuring the ability to "sustain attention and respond quickly."

Zolpidem, the active ingredient in many common sleep aids, accounts for more emergency hospital visits than any other psychoactive drug.