Research

No one has been tracking whether or not US veterans have been benefiting in any way from over $3.2 billion annually in mental health...

A group of mental health experts are calling for Manchester University and the UK National Institute for Health Research to immediately suspend and investigate...

Thanks to the work of Dr. Irving Kirsch, we now know that the majority of the effect of antidepressants is attributable to the "active placebo effect" or the belief that receiving a memified brain-chemical-corrector will actually help alleviate symptoms. As I discuss in this post, evaluation of published and unpublished data, in two metanalysis, demonstrated a non-clinically significant difference between placebo and antidepressants. A fascinating new study entitled The Role of Patient Expectancy in Placebo and Nocebo Effects in Antidepressant Trials further explores the power of belief in psychiatric treatment.

Pharmaceutical industry executives who mislead the public could soon face fines of up to $5 million or two years in jail in Canada. According...

As a trauma survivor growing up in various adolescent mental health systems, I never learned any useful self-care tools or practices. I was taught that my current coping skills (self-injury, suicidal behavior, illicit drug use) were unacceptable, but not given any ideas as to what to replace them with. No one seemed to want to know much about the early childhood traumas that were driving these behaviors. Instead, I collected an assortment of diagnoses. I was told that I would be forever dependent on mediated relationships with professionals, and an ever-changing combination of pills. The message was that my troubles were chemical in nature and largely beyond my control.

Business Week has run a Reuters Shanghai article recounting how increasing numbers of senior drug company executives are considering leaving China due to the...

An entire special issue of the journal Children & Society is dedicated to examining questions surrounding “psychiatrised children.” Various studies explore how rarely children’s...

Researcher Michele Tine of Dartmouth College’s Poverty and Learning Lab reports in the journal Frontiers in Psychology that 12 minutes of aerobic exercise caused...

The European Medicines Agency has announced a new policy that it says will open public access to pharmaceutical companies’ medical trial data. The new...

In a review of 852 trials of pharmacotherapies and psychotherapies for major psychiatric disorders, involving 137,126 patients, an international team of researchers found that...

Should influential psychology research studies be replicable, as hard science studies commonly are? In a Guardian Headquarters blog post, Cardiff University cognitive neuroscientist Chris...

Noting that "childhood adversity is gaining increasing attention as a plausible etiological factor in the development of psychotic disorders," researchers from Johns Hopkins, Aarhus...

The magazine Science has published a feature story about MIA Blogger Carl Elliott and his years of efforts to get the University of Minnesota...

Keris Myrick, MIA blogger and, as of today, the former chair of the board of the National Alliance for Mental Illness, will be the...

A study published today in Jama Psychiatry finds that mental health care ties with cancer for the third highest medical expense in the United...

Rates of adverse outcomes, including premature death and violent crime, have increased among people with schizophrenia and related diagnoses since the 1970s when compared to...

After ten years of litigation, Pfizer has agreed to pay $325 million for marketing its anticonvulsant Neurontin for unapproved purposes.  The settlement comes six...

KMSP News has aired a report of yet another mentally ill man pressured to enroll in a study of an unapproved antipsychotic drug, with near-disastrous results. His story bears a striking resemblance to the case of Dan Markingson, who committed suicide in a University of Minnesota study in 2004.

A review of "potential neurobiological ramifications of the popular cognitive enhancers," in Frontiers of Systems Neuroscience, finds that stimulants reduce performance at higher dosages, and...

Professor Leigh Turner of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics blasts the Board of Regents for ignoring psychiatric research abuse.

When evidence-based medicine (EBM) was announced in the early 90s, according to a paper in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, it was hailed...

My name is Leah Harris and I'm a survivor. I am a survivor of psychiatric abuse and trauma. My parents died largely as a result of terrible psychiatric practice. Psychiatric practice that took them when they were young adults and struggling with experiences they didn’t understand. Experiences that were labeled as schizophrenia. Bipolar disorder. My parents were turned from people into permanent patients. They suffered the indignities of forced treatment. Seclusion and restraint. Forced electroshock. Involuntary outpatient commitment. And a shocking amount of disabling heavy-duty psychiatric drugs. And they died young, from a combination of the toxic effects of overmedication, and broken spirits.

A comprehensive meta-analysis of randomized trial data by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health finds that children and young adults who start...

Inspired by the plight of Justina Pelletier's family, Representative Steve Stockman (R-TX) will introduce a bill to Congress that proposes to cut off funds...

Peter Gøtzsche comments in The Guardian, on the occasion of the launch of the Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry, that "My studies of the research...