Research News

Summaries of research findings that tell of a scientific need to "rethink psychiatry."

Research Explores the Experience of Benzodiazepine Withdrawal

7
A new study reveals many benzodiazepine users are misinformed about the risks of withdrawal and experience devastating consequences.

How to Distinguish Antidepressant Withdrawal from Relapse

5
Mark Horowitz and David Taylor provide advice on how to tell the difference between antidepressant withdrawal and depression relapse.

Did Psychiatry Ever Endorse the Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression?

26
With the chemical imbalance theory falling out of fashion, researchers examine the claim that psychiatry never truly endorsed it.
Image of a young girl looking at a handful of antidepressants.

Antidepressants Do Not Improve Quality of Life

13
A new study found that taking antidepressants did not improve quality of life.
Bored young man, staring out the train window on a rainy, grey and dull day

Patient Reports Reveal SSRI Antidepressants Often Lead to Emotional Blunting

7
According to patient reports, SSRI antidepressants most frequently lead to the subjective experience of emotional blunting.

Psychiatric Drugs Increase Dementia Risk Threefold After COVID in 65+ Population

14
Hospitalized COVID patients over 65 were three times as likely to receive a dementia diagnosis if they took psychiatric drugs.

Many Service Users Interested in Decreasing Antipsychotic Use with Professional Help

8
New research examines service user attitudes on discontinuing and reducing antipsychotic drugs.

Antipsychotics Often Prescribed Without Informed Consent

27
New research reveals that patients are often not given fully informed consent before being prescribed antipsychotics.

Antipsychotics Worsen Cognitive Functioning in First-Episode Psychosis

1
Withholding antipsychotics may be beneficial for memory, the researchers write.
Girl, looking confused, holding pill bottle

Official Guidelines on Antidepressant Discontinuation Fail Practitioners and Patients

2
A review of clinical practice guidelines for antidepressant discontinuation from across the English-speaking world reveals major pitfalls.
Doctor welcoming a patient

How Providers Can Support Psychiatric Drug Discontinuation

2
Supportive patient-practitioner relationships are crucial to the successful discontinuation of psychiatric medication.
Depression related documents and drugs

Shifting Away from ECT and Antidepressants for Depression

2
Researchers argue that we need a paradigm shift away from the biomedical model of mental illness to one informed by political action and common sense.

Negative Antidepressant Trials Still Unlikely to Be Published

0
Antidepressant trials with negative results are still more likely than not to either be misleadingly spun as positive or unpublished.
Doctor attentively examines the MRI scan of the patient.

SSRI Antidepressants Do Not Improve Depression After a Stroke

5
A study in JAMA Neurology finds that antidepressants do not reduce depression symptoms more than placebo in patients recovering from a stroke.
guy holding pill

New Review: Antidepressants Come with Minimal Benefits, Several Risks

10
A review of research on antidepressant efficacy finds that an unfavorable risk-to-benefit ratio.

Common Statistical Method Conflates Withdrawal with Relapse

4
Researchers argue that common study methods for psychiatric drugs may inadvertently minimize withdrawal effects and inflate drug efficacy.

Overuse of Psychiatric Drugs is Worsening Public Mental Health, Doctor Argues

12
A new research article asserts that the overuse of psychiatric drugs may create neurobiological changes that hamper long-term mental health recovery.
Picture of distressed man facing pills

What Helps Long-Term Users of Benzodiazepines and Z-Drugs Discontinue?

3
Current long-term users of benzodiazepines and Z-drugs identify barriers and facilitators for discontinuation.

Kenneth Kendler: “Implausible” That Psychiatric Diagnoses Even “Approximately True”

92
In JAMA Psychiatry, prominent psychiatrist Kenneth Kendler writes that psychiatric diagnoses are “working hypotheses, subject to change.”

Lithium No Better Than Placebo for Preventing Suicide Attempts

4
A trial in veterans who had survived a previous suicide attempt was stopped early because the drug was found to be no better than a placebo.

Researchers Push to End Placebo Run-in Periods in Antidepressant Studies

7
Meta-analysis finds that the placebo run-in methodology reduces the placebo effect and finds antidepressants to be less useful.

Withdrawal Symptoms Cloud Findings of Antidepressant “Relapse” Trial

3
Leading researchers point out that a new antidepressant study in NEJM failed to account for withdrawal symptoms, casting doubt on the results.

Researchers Provide Guidance for Reducing and Stopping Psychiatric Drugs

28
New guidance on how to taper and discontinue from psychiatric drugs from leading researchers Mark Horowitz and David Taylor.

Manufacturer of Tardive Dyskinesia (TD) Drugs Finds TD Emotionally Devastating

17
“Patients expressed feeling unaccepted by society or uncomfortable in their own skin… A few indicated that they would rather be dead than have tardive dyskinesia.”

Antipsychotics Linked to Increased Breast Cancer Risk

2
Long-term exposure to prolactin-increasing antipsychotics increases the odds of developing breast cancer.