Psychiatric Drugs

LAW360 reports that a Pennsylvania federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit over a movement disorder attributed to Bristol-Myers' drug Abilify.  The judge held that...

Thirty years ago, the prescription of neuroleptic drugs to children under 14 years of age was almost unheard of. It was rare in adolescents, and even in adults was largely confined to individuals who had been given the label schizophrenic or bipolar. By 1993 about a quarter of 1% of the national childhood population were receiving antipsychotic prescriptions during office visits. The percentage for adolescents was about three quarters of 1%. By 2009, these figures had increased to 1.83% and 3.76% respectively. The devastating effects of these neurotoxic drugs are well known, and it is natural to wonder what forces might be driving this trend.

Law 360 reports that Johnson & Johnson asked a Pennsylvania judge to keep a series of clinical studies related to the drug Risperdal under...

The widow of  Darwin Stout - who murdered their son and took his own life while taking the nicotine-cessation drug Chantix - has filed...

The ocean’s waves are constant and unchangeable, bound by earth and gravity; for a long time I believed life was this way, too—that who I was and how I felt and what I believed about myself were all bound by some invisible force that would always keep me trapped in a perpetual state of agonizing being. What a beautiful thing to know that after so many years of believing this, I’ve proven myself wrong.

For a scathing, 11-minute overview of the death of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota, and new allegations of coercion into psychiatric clinical trials, you can't do much better than this excellent investigative report by Jeff Baillon.

Britain's HealthTalkOnline.org offers videotaped interviews with 36 people in their homes, talking about their decision to take antidepressants and the impact of that decision...

Following Johnson & Johnson's record $2.2 billion settlement for criminal marketing — including $1.4 billion related to its marketing of Risperdal, making it one of the...

Research from London and Taipei finds that neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) is associated with the number of different antipsychotics used (polypharmacy), rather than the overall...

Researchers in Taiwan found a 3.33x greater risk of benign brain tumors in patients who had been prescribed benzodiazepines for at least 2 months....

Two studies of the effects of antidepressants on sexual function - one on the relative effects across classes of antidepressants on men, the other...

If I had remained med compliant I wouldn’t understand the simple joys of caring about my hygiene and my surroundings. I’ve wanted to write about this for a long time but I’ve not done it and I think it’s because I still have shame around how slovenly I became. I hid it from others fairly well most of the time, but I couldn’t hide it from myself. The fact is the drugs stripped me of some very basic elements of human care. When one doesn’t care about their immediate environment and their bodies, they really just don’t care about themselves. It’s a very painful place to be and yet when it’s caused by drugs it’s all muted and weird and not really who we are at all and so really all that is left is horrible shame.

Part of what has scared me straight about ever starting a patient on an antidepressant (or antipsychotic or mood stabilizer) again is bearing witness to the incredible havoc that medication discontinuation can wreak. I am half way through the first e-course of its kind (on withdrawing from psych meds), and it has been incredibly well-received. There are so many people out there, disenfranchised by psychiatry, skeptical of its promises, and who want a better way, a more thoughtful assessment of them as whole persons. We seem to be onto something here, so let’s keep the dialogue flowing, keep our eyes wide open, and reform what psychiatry means, one patient at a time.

"My studies in this area lead me to a very uncomfortable conclusion: Our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market, as doctors are unable to handle them. It is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good." - Peter Gøtzsche, MD; Co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration

The U.K. newspaper The Guardian asked readers of five newspapers in the U.K., Germany, France, Spain and Italy to talk about their experiences of...

Research from Boston University suggests that exposure to stimulant medications such as Ritalin during adolescence may result in cocaine addiction in later life. “You...

The New York Times reports on new research from multiple sources that finds focused attention on insomnia is proving to be a "cheap, relatively...

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...

A colleague and I have been tracking individuals who elect to reduce their dose of neuroleptic drug. The two year results are presented here.

In recent months the English pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has assiduously portrayed itself as an advocate of transparency, and in support of access to clinical trial data. Well, in support of "Responsible Access." "Responsible" here essentially means that a researcher commits to the primacy of RCTs and statistical significance over an analysis of adverse events. It would not, for example, be responsible to claim that an SSRI causes suicide, a statin muscle damage or cognitive failure, or hypoglycemics cause hypoglycemia unless a trial has shown this to happen to a Statistically Significant extent – and they never do.

At least 250 lawsuits involving Johnson & Johnson's improper marketing of Risperdal are pending in Pennsylvania's Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, according to information...

Analysis in the British Medical Journal concludes that the lowered thresholds for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder diagnosis in DSM-5 will mean "that many children...

When I lived in Massachusetts I taught yoga and led writing groups for alternative mental health communities. While the organizations I worked for were alternative, many of the students and participants were heavily drugged with psychiatric pharmaceuticals. There was one skinny teenager I'd never have forgotten who listed the drugs he was on for me once in the yoga room after class: a long list of stimulants, neuroleptics, moods stabilizers; far too many drugs and classes of drugs to remember. I was at the housewarming party of an old friend, and who should walk in but that boy who used to come to my yoga classes and writing groups religiously. And he was no longer a boy; he was now a young man. “I'm thinking yoga teacher,” he said. I nodded. Did he remember where? “I'm not stupid,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I'm not on drugs anymore. I'm not stupid anymore.”

A Texas man filed a lawsuit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas against Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary, Janssen, in connection to...

Research from the University of Cambridge finds that "dopamine dysregulation per se is unlikely to be the primary cause underlying attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder pathology...