Bias, Corruption & Accountability

MIA's Peter Simons interviews David Cohen, PhD, on his path to researching mental health, coercive practices, and discontinuation from psychiatric drugs.

Peter Gøtzsche's Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime has won first prize in the "Basis of Medicine" category of the British Medical Association's annual book...

In a philosophically rigorous article, Spanish researcher Marino Pérez-Álvarez examines the logic of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

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.

Amid calls for a retraction, Lancet Psychiatry publishes articles criticizing the original finding and a response from the authors.

Researchers discuss the evidence that antipsychotic medications may cause brain atrophy in children, whose brains are still developing.

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

Ghostwriting, which is prominent in the psychiatry literature, is a scam in which pharmaceutical companies use an academic sleight of hand to stump the naïve reader. It is time for editors of the major medical journals to use the same standards of authorship found in the humanities and social sciences.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has issued a watchdog report titled “Illness Inflation” that examines how new medical conditions are often the product of industry...

Findings suggest that treatment not only fails to reduce the severity of “ADHD” symptoms in adulthood but is associated with decreased height.

A group of researchers in Denmark examines what existing animal studies can tell us about the sexual side-effects of SSRI antidepressants.

A new study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, found no link between genetics and the occurrence of depressive symptoms.

Researchers examine how rapid discontinuation can mimic the relapse of mental health symptoms and confound psychiatric drug studies.

If academic psychiatry is evidence-based, why did it take two decades to recognize SSRI withdrawal as widespread and chronic among patients?

The abuse of ADHD drugs on college campuses has reached epidemic proportions, according to the authors of a recent review in the journal of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. ADHD drugs, like Ritalin and Adderall, have become so commonplace on college campuses that students abusing these drugs for studying, weight loss and partying have underestimated their risks. As a result, we have seen exponential increases in emergency room visits, overdoses, and suicides by students taking these drugs.

Experts across the globe point to the harms of drug companies’ influence on research, practice, and education in healthcare noting that it compromises patient care.

Members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Psychiatry Products division go on the defensive in a new article, responding to concerns about the agency’s approval of digital aripiprazole.

Scholars contend that stigma functions as a mechanism of power in analysis of UK Heads Together mental health campaign.

Are diagnoses of mental disorders among children and adolescents in developed countries disproportionate to disease prevalence trends?

The largest-ever meta-analysis of antidepressant trials appeared yesterday in the British Medical Journal. Researchers from the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed 70 trials (involving 18,526 subjects), to find that - counter to the initially-reported findings - antidepressants doubled the risk of suicide and aggression in subjects under 18. This risk had been misrepresented in the original study reports, the authors say, and suggest that the risks to adults may be similarly under-reported.

ADHD behaviors were linked to the presence of both high levels of pollutants and persistent economic deprivation at birth and through childhood.

New research suggests that clinicians should exercise caution prescribing SNRIs as first-line treatment for mood and anxiety disorders.

Researchers examine psychiatrist-client interactions and find that clients are often left with few opportunities to make explicit requests to change their medication regimen.

A new study, published this month in the Journal of Affective Disorders, investigated the effectiveness of weekly intravenous ketamine injections as a treatment for...

Concerns have been raised about inconsistent and unreliable results, which may lead to injustices in sentencing or even wrongful convictions.