Research

This month’s issue of JAMA Psychiatry ran an editorial commenting on recent research revealing that the majority of youth prescribed antipsychotics have not been diagnosed with a mental disorder.

In the September issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) three FDA advisory committee members describe the convergence of factors that made the committee’s recommendation to approve flibanserin especially challenging and politically charged.

In addition to hosting the Panorama programs and The Famous Grouse history of Study 329, Study329.org has a comprehensive timeline on the origins of concerns about the SSRIs and the risk of suicide, initially with Prozac and subsequently with Paxil/Seroxat. The hope is to provide a comprehensive repository for anyone who wants to study SSRIs, RCTs, and Study 329 in particular.

MedPageToday reports that Janssen Pharmaceuticals omitted data from a 2003 study that connected Risperdal with serious side effects. Janssen was previously sued by the FDA for marketing Risperdal for off-label uses and settled for $2.2 billion in 2013. Earlier this year, a man with autism was awarded $2.5 million after growing breasts while on Risperdal. According to MedPage, documents from this latest case reveal missing data tables from a 2003 study “designed to ferret out potential adverse effects of long-term risperidone use.” The missing tables were related to elevated prolactin levels and side effects, including gynecomastia in men.

Parents Opposed to Pot, a group opposed to the legalization of marijuana, criticizes a recent University of Pittsburgh study which found no correlation between pot use and mental health. They contest the results and insist that since the long-term study began in 1987, “skunk” or high THC pot has been on the rise.

An editorial in the Guardian discusses the fact that the number of people with intellectual or learning disabilities “who are being treated with psychotropic drugs far exceeds those with mental illness.” The authors of a new study examining the overuse of psychotropic drugs on people with learning disabilities, published this month in BMJ, argue: “If people without mental illness are given psychotropic drugs… it is probably to control their behavior.”

Writing for Forbes, Matthew Herper documents the FDA’s increasing drug approval rates. “In 2008, BioMedTracker says the FDA approved 20 new molecular entities (NMEs) and rejected 20, for an approval rate of 50%.” So far this year, he writes, “the FDA approval rate is more like 96%.”

Bertha Madras, professor of psychobiology at Harvard Medical School, has printed a critique listing 20 flaws to a recent study finding no differences in physical or mental health problems between users and non-users of marijuana.

On Saturday morning, Susan Inman, writing for HuffPost Canada, published “What You’re not Hearing About the Hearing Voices Movement.” In it, she criticizes HVM for “failing to differentiate between the needs of people who actually have psychotic disorders and those who don't.” On Sunday the Bay Area Hearing Voices Network published an open letter in response, writing: “Ms. Inman has profoundly mischaracterized hearing voices networks (HVNs) and also demonstrates a troubling lack of understanding of the empirical literature on psychosis, optimal psychosocial intervention and recovery.”

The International Business Times covers a new study showing “trials for new antidepressant medications may not be applicable to the population at large.” “The finding, published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, shows recent trials are less generalizable than the prior studies, as researchers excluded most depressed patients from drug company-sponsored treatment studies.”

Today’s NY Times front page featured a story on the problem reproducibility poses for many psychology studies. The story is based on the results of a year-long study where the researchers found they were unable to reproduce 60 out of 100 studies published in three leading psychology journals. “The overall ‘effect size,’ a measure of the strength of a finding, dropped by about half across all of the studies.”

Despite updated standards requiring preregistration of clinical trials aimed at improving transparency, most studies published in the top-5 psychiatry journals from 2009 to 2013 do not meet the new guidelines, according to an analysis published in PloS one.

Paul Thacker and Charles Seife provide an update on the ongoing battles over transparency in science, writing for the PLOS Biologue blog. While transparency is important for accountability and the public trust, some have begun to argue that requests for personal communications between companies and researchers have gone too far.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Flibanserin (Addyi) to treat low sexual desire in women despite concerns about the drug's limited efficacy and doubts over its clinical relevance. That the drug is being called the "pink Viagra" can be misleading as Viagra treats erectile dysfunction by improving blood flow while Flibanserin targets the brain, and must be taken daily.

“When people with early-stage symptoms took omega-3 supplements for three months, they had much lower rates of progression than those who did not,” according to research out of Australia covered in this month’s issue of the New Scientist.

A study in PLoS One shows that the number of National Heart Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded drug trials reporting positive results declined precipitously after the implementation of the clinicaltrials.gov registry, which requires researchers to record their trial methods and outcome measures before collecting data. Of the 55 studies examined, 57% percent of those published before the implementation of clinicaltrials.gov in 2000 yielded a positive result. After 2000, only eight percent of trials claimed a significant benefit to the intervention examined.

Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove discuss their new book Psychiatry Under the Influence in an interview with psychologist and social critic Bruce Levine for Truthout. In the book, Whitaker and Cosgrove apply the institutional corruption framework, developed by Larry Lessig, to psychiatry and determine that “just as elected officials develop dependency on special interests and become beholden to these funders instead of the citizenry,” psychiatry has “had its social mission subverted by drug companies as well as by the psychiatry guild's self-preservation and expansionism needs.”

Fox 5 Atlanta featured a back to school story about the growing percentage of preteens and teens being prescribed antipsychotic medication for ADHD.  They report:...

Research published in the May 2015 issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry questions the use of exposure therapy, the "gold standard" treatment for patients...

-Tom Jefferson updates on the "revolution" promised by European Medicines Agency policies on publicly releasing more detailed data from drug clinical trials.

-A survey of 120 psychiatrists found that the more psychiatrists fear death, the more negative emotions they have towards people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

-She won a seminal court case requiring insurance companies to pay for stays in residential treatment centers for eating disorders, and now Jeanene Harlick has begun an investigative expose on those same centers' poor practices.

Bloomberg reports that, "Adults in the U.S. have overtaken children in taking medication for the condition and accounted for 53 percent of the industrywide...

-A US Congressional Research Service report reviews various sources of information on how many different types of mental health workers there are and how much money they earn.

An independent health research organization created to advise the Quebec government on best-evidence guidelines has called for psychotherapy to become the "front-line treatment choice in the mental-health system."