Media

In his “Mind the Brain” blog for PLOS, well-known researcher James Coyne reviews the controversy surrounding the latest case of a fraudulently reported study...

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.

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

In this piece for Literary Hub, Barbara Ehrenreich critiques the overuse of preventative medicine and describes how our healthcare system's emphasis on screenings and early...

For STAT, Meghana Kashavan reports on a new, candy-flavored, chewable, fruity, amphetamine drug on the market for children diagnosed with ADHD. “It’s a move...

An international group of researchers, including several with financial ties to manufacturers of antidepressants, explore possible explanations for why long-term users of antidepressants become chronically depressed.

The narratives about Bipolar Disorder promoted by drug companies may influence how those diagnosed understand themselves.

Confronting existential anxiety through “Basal Exposure Therapy” shows promising results in people withdrawing from psychotropic drugs.

Citing the work of Lisa Cosgrove and Robert Whitaker in Psychiatry Under the Influence, Giovanni A. Fava, MD, provides an analysis of some subtle...

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.

“Children with attention-deficit problems improve faster when the first treatment they receive is behavioral therapy — like instruction in basic social skills — than...

Patients who recover from a single episode of psychosis are often prescribed antipsychotics long-term, despite a lack of evidence for this practice

Results of a large government-funded study call into question current drug heavy approaches to treating people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The study, which the New York Times called “by far the most rigorous trial to date conducted in the United States,” found that patients who received smaller doses of antipsychotic drugs with individual talk therapy, family training, and support for employment and education had a greater reduction in symptoms as well as increases in quality of life, and participation in work and school than those receiving the current standard of care.

Citing a 43 percent jump since 2003, researchers estimate that 5.8 million school-aged children and teens in the US now have an ADHD diagnosis, a staggering 12 percent of this population. The new NIH-funded analysis also found that the percentage of girls diagnosed with ADHD was up 55% and that the percentage of Hispanic children diagnosed shot up 83% over the same timeframe.

In 2004, the FDA added a black-box warning to SSRI antidepressants on the increased risk of suicide among children taking these drugs. A new study suggests that this warning has increased the proportion of children who begin an antidepressant on a low dose, but the majority are still receiving higher than recommended doses.

-MIA Bloggers Jonathan Leo and Jeffrey Lacasse review the New York Times' history of reporting on ADHD and the ensuing epidemic of ADHD.

Coordinated care with employment support and family therapy leads to superior outcomes for those diagnosed with psychotic disorders.

Industry-funded continuing medical education (CME) influences physicians to prescribe more opioids, focus less on the consequences.

In a review article for this month’s American Journal of Psychiatry, Daniel Weinberger and Eugenia Radulescu from John Hopkins University push back against the overreliance on MRI scans in recent psychiatric studies. While acknowledging that they both have contributed to this type of research in the past, the authors warn that “findings” from these studies “pose a serious risk of misinforming our colleagues and our patients.”

In recent months, two teams of researchers in the UK and the US published complementary findings about the epigenetic origins of schizophrenia that have scientific communities who indulge in ‘genetic conspiracy theories’ abuzz. While these results are intriguing, and no doubt involve pathbreaking research methodologies, this line of thought represents a decontextualized understanding both of the symptoms that are typically associated with schizophrenia, and their causes.

A new as-yet-unpublished trial of duloxetine (Cymbalta) for fibromyalgia has presented more evidence of suicidal events in teens.

Questionable research practices and poor reproducibility in electrical brain stimulation (EBS) studies.

From The Health Law & Policy Brief: Last month, Patient Services Inc. (PSI), a pharmaceutical industry-funded charity, launched a lawsuit against the Department of Health...

Two facts about Robert Califf are beyond question. He is an expert on clinical trials, who is already seen as a leading architect of the future of medical research. And as the New York Times put it, he has “deeper ties to the pharmaceutical industry than any FDA commissioner in recent memory”. A lot of senior figures in medicine support Califf in spite of his ties to Pharma. The guy is just so bright, and understands the nuts and bolts of drug research so well! Surely a person like this is more useful than some outsider who offers only a squeaky-clean resume, they argue.

Counter-messaging and a lack of critical analysis may lead doctors away from suggesting exercise for depression.