Bias, Corruption & Accountability

Antidepressants Do Not Prevent Suicides, May Increase Risk

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When the CDC released data revealing an increasing suicide rate in the US, some experts, speaking to major media outlets, speculated that the increase...

Suicide Rates Rise While Antidepressant Use Climbs

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Multiple media sources are reporting on new data from the CDC revealing a substantial increase in the suicide rate in the United States between 1999...

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Halves the Risk of Repeated Suicide Attempts

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A new study suggests that cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) may halve the likelihood of re-attempting suicide, for those who have attempted in the past.
twins

Bad-Science Warning: The “Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart” (MISTRA)

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The huge impact of the MISTRA, in addition to the harmful and regressive social and political policy implications that flow from it, necessitates a detailed analysis of the “science” behind the study’s major claims and conclusions. Here I offer a new critique of this famous and influential “separated twin study.”

New Study Concludes that Antidepressants are “Largely Ineffective and Potentially Harmful”

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A new study published in Frontiers in Psychiatry concludes that “antidepressants are largely ineffective and potentially harmful.”

Adverse Effects: The Perils of Deep Brain Stimulation for Depression

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Hundreds of people have been given remote control deep brain stimulation implants for psychiatric disorders such as depression, OCD and Tourette’s. Yet DBS specialists still have no clue about its mechanisms of action and research suggests its hefty health and safety risks far outweigh benefits.

Confessions of a Trespasser

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In a recently published commentary in Psychiatric Times, Ronald Pies and Joseph Pierre made this assertion: Only clinicians, with an expertise in assessing the research literature, should be weighing in on the topic of the efficacy of psychiatric drugs. They wrote their commentary shortly after I had published on madinamerica “The Case Against Antipsychotics,” and it was clear they had me in their crosshairs.

Systematic Review Finds Antidepressant Withdrawal Common and Potentially Long-lasting

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Prominent researchers conduct a review of antidepressant withdrawal incidence, duration, and severity. Results lead to call for new clinical guidelines.

United Nations Report Calls for Revolution in Mental Health Care

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In a new report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius PĆ«ras, calls for a move away from the biomedical model and “excessive use of psychotropic medicines.”

Very Slow Tapering Best For Antidepressant Withdrawal

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A new article in Lancet Psychiatry finds that slower tapering of SSRIs is better for preventing antidepressant withdrawal effects.

New Study Investigates Negative Side Effects of Therapy

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Researchers find that nearly half of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) patients experience treatment side effects.

Multiple Researchers Examining the Same Data Find Very Different Results

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A new study demonstrates how the choice of statistical techniques when examining data plays a large role in scientific outcomes.
scientific freedom

Why We’re Establishing an Institute for Scientific Freedom

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Scientific freedom and integrity are constantly under attack, particularly in healthcare, which is dominated by the drug industry and other economic interests. To help preserve honesty and integrity in science, the new Institute for Scientific Freedom will open on March 9 with an international meeting in Copenhagen.

Fighting for the Meaning of Madness: An Interview with Dr. John Read

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Akansha Vaswani interviews Dr. John Read about the influences on his work and his research on madness, psychosis, and the mental health industry.

Johnson & Johnson: 170 Years of Scandal and Fraud

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-Highlights of Johnson & Johnson's many "decades of fraud and injury claims" in its pharmaceutical-related activities.

Antidepressant Use Leads to Worse Long Term Outcomes, Study Finds

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Results from a 30-year prospective study demonstrated worse outcomes for people who took antidepressants, even after controlling for gender, education level, marriage, baseline severity, other affective disorders, suicidality, and family history of depression.

Psychiatry Defends Its Antipsychotics: A Case Study of Institutional Corruption

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Jeffrey LIeberman and colleagues have published a paper in the American Journal of Psychiatry stating that there is no evidence that psychiatric drugs cause long-term harm, and that the evidence shows that these drugs provide a great benefit to patients. A close examination of their review reveals that it is a classic example of institutional corruption, which was meant to protect guild interests.

Researchers: “Antidepressants Should Not be Used for Adults with Major Depressive Disorder”

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A new review, published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine, concludes that antidepressants should not be used as the risks outweigh evidence for benefits.

Exploring Psychiatry’s “Black Hole”: The International Institute on Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal

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When Carina HĂ„kansson sent out an invitation for a symposium on "Pharmaceuticals: Risks and Alternatives," some of the world's top scientists, along with experts-by-experience, came from 13 countries to explore better ways to respond to people in crisis.

The Reckoning in Psychiatry Over Protracted Antidepressant Withdrawal

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Medically-induced harm—affecting tens of millions of people worldwide—has taken the field decades to take seriously.

Most Psychology Research Does Not Generalize to the Individual

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A new study claims that quantitative research in psychology is “worryingly imprecise” and that generalizations may be flawed and misleading.

What is the Evidence for Empirically Supported Treatments in Psychology?

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New meta-scientific review questions the evidence for the gold standard psychotherapies and empirically supported treatments.

Researchers: Antidepressant Withdrawal, Not “Discontinuation Syndrome”

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Researchers suggest that the pharmaceutical industry had a vested interest in using the term “discontinuation” in order to hide the severity of physical dependence and withdrawal reactions many people experience from antidepressants.

Twin Studies are Still in Trouble: A Response to Turkheimer

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Human behavioral genetics and its allied field of psychiatric genetics are in trouble, as unfulfilled gene discovery expectations during the “euphoria of the 1980s” have continued to the present day, leading to researchers’ “nonreplication curse” dysphoria of the 2010s. In my recent book The Trouble with Twin Studies: A Reassessment of Twin Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences, I presented a detailed argument that genetic interpretations of the common “classical twin method” finding that reared-together MZ twin pairs resemble each other more (correlate higher) for behavioral characteristics than do reared-together same-sex DZ twin pairs are invalid because, among other reasons, the twin method’s crucial MZ-DZ “equal environment assumption” (EEA) is false.

Mental Health Concerns Not “Brain Disorders,” Say Researchers

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The latest issue of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences features several prominent researchers arguing that mental health concerns are not “brain disorders.”