Benzodiazepines

Current long-term users of benzodiazepines and Z-drugs identify barriers and facilitators for discontinuation.

Benzodiazepine medications that are commonly used for calming or sedating people can sometimes apparently cause violent or aggressive responses in some people, according to...

A new study reveals many benzodiazepine users are misinformed about the risks of withdrawal and experience devastating consequences.

Researchers Identify risk factors for long-term benzodiazepine use to prevent harmful effects.

White race and size of initial prescription, along with poor sleep quality, are associated with long-term benzodiazepine use in older adults.

Despite the well-known risks of the drugs, especially for the elderly, prescription use of addictive benzodiazepine sedatives in the United States increases steadily with age, according to a large-scale study published in JAMA Psychiatry. Overall, as of 2008, 5.2% of American adults were taking the drugs. The study also showed that women were twice as likely to be taking benzodiazepines as men. National Institute of Mental Health director Thomas Insel called the findings "worrisome."

Researchers from the Taiwan and the United States find through a study of 5,183 subjects with motor vehicle accidents (MVAs) and 31,093 matched controls...

Researchers in the U.K. find in a 22-year prospective study of 1134 men, 103 of whom took benzodiazepines regularly for one or more period...

A recent article in the American Journal of Public Health calls for policy level interventions to reduce the use of benzodiazepines, drugs commonly prescribed...

MiA blogger Jeffrey Lacasse's study of psychiatric prescribing in response to perinatal/neonatal death (co-authored with Joanne Cacciatore) finds that 37% of participants in an...

A 15-year prospective study, in the British Medical Journal this week, of 1063 subjects by researchers from the University of Bordeaux and Harvard University...

Researchers at the University of Milan and King's College, London thoroughly reviewed the literature available on Medline and Cochrane regarding the use of benzodiazepines...

Researchers find that adverse effects often last over a year, with many users experiencing substantial life changes.

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) publication Psychiatric News has released an article about the recent British Medical Journal study finding strong links between long-term...

The FDA has finally acknowledged the adverse effects of benzodiazepines, the dangers of withdrawal, and that the current packaging does not sufficiently warn of these harms.

The researchers found that, of those who were initially prescribed both antidepressants and benzodiazepines, approximately 12% went on to engage in long-term benzodiazepine use.

Researchers in Taiwan found in a retrospective analysis of data from the Taiwanese National Health Insurance system concerning 59,647 patients from 1996 to 2000 that...

Benzodiazepine prescription practices may be in response to an epidemic of distress, rather than being used to treat specific mental health diagnoses.

Psychotropic medications, including short-acting benzodiazepines, strongly increase the frequency of falls in the elderly, according to research from the Netherlands published in Maturitas: The...

A meta-analysis of all relevant studies on MEDLINE, EMBASE, OVID and ScienceDirect published through January 2013 finds that the use of benzodiazepines, especially short-acting,...

In a review of the evidence regarding benzodiazepines, researchers from the University of Michigan find that benzodiazepines used in the treatment of PTSD are...

A large study of the population in Taiwan reveals that long-term use of benzodiazepine drugs, commonly prescribed for anxiety, significantly increases the risk for brain, colorectal, and lung cancers. The research, published open-access in the journal Medicine, also identifies the types of benzodiazepines that carry the greatest cancer risk.

"Fish that have been exposed to a common anti-anxiety drug are more active and have better chances of survival than unexposed fish," reports Nature....

Recent research implicates benzodiazepines as being involved in a high rate of emergency department visits in the US.

A new study reported on in Medscape, examined risk factors for misuse of benzodiazepines (drugs such as Xanax, Ativan, and Klonopin). The researchers found that patients who had been prescribed the medication on an as-needed basis were more likely to end up abusing it than those who had been prescribed a standing dose.