Psychiatric Drugs

The settlement of an Australian class action lawsuit about Pfizer Parkinson's drugs that caused severe gambling and sex addictions in 172 people has been delayed by a judge concerned that the plaintiffs were not fully informed of their rights.

About 65% of preschool children who were diagnosed with ADHD and given stimulant drugs were still taking those drugs six years later.

-The debate on drug harms lands in the pages of the British Medical Journal and The Guardian.

Pregnant women taking antidepressant medications, especially during the second trimester, have an increased risk of preeclampsia, a potentially serious or even fatal condition.

The US FDA has requested that Otsuka "immediately cease" distributing some of its educational materials for its top-selling antipsychotic Abilify.

This column is partly a report on the marketing of Abilify, the atypical antipsychotic that has become America’s best-selling drug.   It’s also an appeal for advice and feedback from the RxISK and Mad in America communities, and a call for some brainstorming about strategy.  The plans laid out by drugmakers Otsuka and Lundbeck for Abilify’s future, and the cooperation they’re getting from leading universities, are alarming enough to me that reporting on them seems inadequate.  We need action, although I’m not sure exactly what kind.

-Pharmaceutical companies and psychiatric researchers still "aren't telling you the whole truth" about treating anxiety.

Healing mental health issues through correct supplements as well as nutrition is, I believe, the final factor for me in my journey. This is possibly what was missing in my first attempt at coming off, and why my brain and body couldn’t handle the extreme anxiety I felt in December 2013. I am ensuring that as I prepare to taper off the Lexapro in 2015, my brain and body are being supported in every way possible.

Psychiatrists are giving drugs to most people with emotionally unstable personality disorders outside of the best-practice clinical guidelines, and an accompanying editorial stated that the reason is because "therapy takes time."

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy worked as well -- and as poorly -- as antidepressants for preventing relapses in depressed people. Though the mindfulness participants may have been in acute withdrawal.

The pilot who deliberately crashed a Germanwings commercial airplane was questioned by the Federal Aviation Administration and denied a license to fly. The Agency...

In a well-researched, comprehensive article in today's Huffington Post Art Levine has brought to the attention of the mainstream media the government's complicity in the illegal psychiatric drugging of poor children, especially foster children, through Medicaid.  The article, Feds Pay for Drug Fraud: 92 Percent of Foster Care, Poor Kids Prescribed Antipsychotics Get Them for Unaccepted Uses is the only mainstream article I know about that has really pressed the federal government over its refusal to enforce Medicaid's coverage restrictions to "medically accepted indications."

-Forensic psychiatrist Andrew Shepherd reviews a recent study on withdrawal effects from coming off antidepressant drugs.

The BMJ article on The Marketing of Serotonin has stirred some interest. There are some  highly technical comments on the BMJ site but of course the key point behind the piece is the rather obvious fact that twenty-five years ago many people were saying it was all a myth. The extraordinary Michael Leunig nailed it twenty years ago in the sketch above. (Leunig is wonderful across the board and razor sharp on medicine and mental health).

-Johanna Ryan writes about her efforts to avoid following psychiatrists' pressures to take antipsychotics for her depression.

-The Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry reports that antidepressant use in the UK has increased 7.5% since 2013, and over 500% since 1992.

A recent article on the website i09 titled, ‘The Most popular Antidepressants are Based on an Outdated Theory” has again raised the issue of Chemical Imbalances.  It is interesting that the author of the  i09 piece cites Dr. Peter Kramer and states, “Some psychiatrists vehemently disagree with the way journalists and other psychiatrists have pushed back against the chemical imbalance theory….” In both cases he cited what he considered the best evidence in support of the theory, but he did not discuss the research in any depth. Back in 2008, we took an in-depth look at the evidence that Dr. Kramer used to support the chemical imbalance theory. When one takes a closer look at that research we do not think it supports the theory. For this reason, we are reposting our 2008 essay about this.

Researchers found some antipsychotics to be worse than others for causing sexual dysfunction.

Lithium appears to reduce libido and sexual function, and more research into the problem is needed.

The serotonin reuptake inhibiting (SSRI) group of drugs came on stream in the late 1980s, nearly two decades after first being mooted. The delay centred on finding an indication. They did not have hoped-for lucrative antihypertensive or antiobesity profiles. Even though a 1960s idea that serotonin concentrations might be lowered in depression had been rejected, drug companies marketed SSRIs for depression even though they were weaker than older tricyclic antidepressants. They sold the idea that depression was the deeper illness behind the superficial manifestations of anxiety. The approach was an astonishing success, central to which was the notion that SSRIs restored serotonin levels to normal, a notion that later transmuted into the idea that they remedied a chemical imbalance.

Zoloft caused up to six-fold increases in build-up of atherosclerosis plaque in the coronary arteries of monkeys.

A JAMA Psychiatry study found links between PTSD, type 2 diabetes, and antidepressants.

The impact of long-term SSRIs on memory-related nerve cell receptors does have functional consequences. Research shows that SSRIs impair the acquisition of fear memories. (Perhaps a positive outcome.) But unlearning fear memories involves new learning as well, and according to a study by LeDoux and colleagues, long-term exposure to SSRIs makes it harder to unlearn fear memories.

Antipsychotic drugs increased the risk of children developing diabetes by 50%, and with an antidepressant added, their risk doubled.

-A selection of recent commentaries from around the web about the Germanwings plane crash...