Bias, Corruption & Accountability

A large review and meta-analysis of 167 studies across 60 years dissects placebo-controlled randomized controlled trials of antipsychotic drugs.

A new article documents the “flimsy evidence” behind the recent FDA approval of the party drug esketamine for the treatment of depression.

-Surgeon James Rickert discusses financial conflicts of interest which affect physician decisions, and how patients can protect themselves.

A new review highlights the effects that psychiatric diagnosis has on children and adolescents’ social relationships and views of self.

-An NEJM "Reader Poll" shows nearly 80% of respondents trusting that scientific reviews can be responsibly written by people taking money from pharmaceutical companies, but not who work with patient-advocacy groups.

Randomized controlled trials published in four leading behavioral health journals show that new requirements for registering of trials does not seem to be improving trial design or transparency.

A “not otherwise specified” (NOS) diagnosis is often used when an individual may have some symptoms related to a psychiatric diagnosis but does not meet enough criteria to warrant a particular diagnosis. A new study, published online ahead of print in Psychiatric Services, reveals that the proportion of mental health visits resulting in such NOS diagnoses rose to nearly fifty percent, and that these diagnoses do not result in more conservative psychiatric drug prescriptions.

“Adolescents whose mothers took certain antidepressants while pregnant with them are more than four times as likely to become depressed by age 15, compared with...

In an open letter to all US presidential candidates published Thursday in the BMJ, a group of global health care experts assert that current research regulations allow drug companies to publish incomplete and misleading results. They ask the candidates to declare whether they support improved transparency measures that would make data on drug studies publically available and open to scrutiny.

-Thomas Moore of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices asks, "What has been learned about electronic health data as a primary data source for regulatory decisions regarding the harms of drugs?"

Researchers find few existing "psychopathology scales" are appropriate for global utilization.

From HealthNewsReview.org: The Alliance for Patient Access (AfPA), a nonprofit organization that claims to advocate for patients to have access to FDA-approved treatments, has consistently worked...

In a video interview with Psychetruth, psychiatrist Dr. Colin Ross provides a concise introduction to the challenges and problems of relying on information from...

The October edition of the Journal of World Psychiatry, the 3rd ranked journal of Psychiatry, will publish a reanalysis of antidepressant efficacy versus placebo in major depression. When the researchers, Arif Khan and Walter Brown, analyzed the data from the FDA archives for antidepressants approved between 1985 and 1997, “it was evident that the conventional wisdom of 70% response with antidepressants was at best an overestimate.” In fact, “the magnitude of symptom reduction was about 40% with antidepressants,” compared to “about 30% with placebo.”

“The drug industry spent $272,000 in campaign donations per member of Congress last year,” Martha Rosenberg writes for Alternet. As a result, Pharma is taking...

Majority of top-selling and most promoted drugs in Canada are rated as having very limited safety and efficacy.

In a scathing editorial in this month’s Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Dr. Giovanni Fava takes aim at prominent medical experts who have downplayed the role...

-A large excerpt from a post by David Healy is sandwiched between commentary by psychiatrist Allen Frances.

Data demonstrate an overreliance of non-representative and non-diverse sampling biases in psychological research.

“In 2014, the number of people who died from drug overdoses in the United States reached 47,055 — an all-time high, according to a disturbing report published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC),” but “the effort to get physicians to curb their prescribing of these drugs may be faltering amid stiff resistance from drugmakers, industry-funded groups and, now, even other public health officials.”

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

From Fear and Loathing in Bioethics: A new fifteen-minute television documentary investigates New Zealand's "unfortunate experiment," a horrific case of nonconsensual experimentation at the National...

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

Behind the U.S. task force recommendation to screen all children and adults for depression.

From STAT: On March 20th, President Trump blamed this country's "outrageous" drug prices on campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry. The next day, pharmaceutical companies...