Why Implausible Theories Persist in Evidence-Based Research.
David Weinberg writes in Science-Based Medicine that implausible theories must be held to a higher standard of proof in evidence-based research. In a review...
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Breaking the Silence
It’s time to speak about what is happening with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the United States.
I have been...
Information on PRN Medication Practices is Lacking
The authors of an article in Journal of Psychosocial Nursing reviewed the literature on psychotropic PRN medications in order to respond to a request to...
Community Dialogues for Recovery and Wellness
The National Empowerment Center is promoting a new initiative called "Community Dialogues for Recovery and Wellness." These dialogues are designed to bring together people...
Kristina
The hospital rep brought Kristina into the hearing room, a windowless cubicle so crowded there was barely room for them to get to the...
“Unfortunate experiments” in New Zealand and Minnesota
Carl Elliott writes on the discrepancy between New Zealand's response to a research scandal - which lead to a national debate and dramatic reforms - and the silence following clinical trial scandals in the U.S.
Billing the Victims of Unethical Medical Research
Imagine for a moment that you are seriously injured in a medical research study and require expensive medical care. Imagine further that the study...
Department of Defense Reveals Forced Drugging of Detainees
A report from the Deputy Inspector General of the Department of Defense, obtained by Truthout under a Freedom of Information Act request, confirms that...
The Coming Tsunami of Mental Health Care for ‘Boomers
A report released yesterday by the Institute of Medicine, at the request of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says "at least...
Sickness Absence From Work: More Anxiety Than Otherwise
Norwegian, Australian and U.K. researchers find, in a study of 13,436 community members, linked with official records of sickness absence from work (SA), that...
Integrating Mental Health and Development in Nepal
PLoS Medicine's series on Global Mental Health Practice looks at the BasicNeeds model of Mental Health and Development. BasicNeeds is comprised of five key...
Antidepressants, School Shooters & Suicide
"A small percentage of those taking antidepressants will become homocidal and/or suicidal. But a small percentage of 30,000,000 is more than hundreds of thousands...
Michael Moore Discusses the Impact of Prozac on the Columbine Shootings
Michael Moore learned about the link between prozac and violence at the premier of his film "Bowling for Columbine." Here, he appears in Gary...
Teenagers on SSRIs
Last week, the Wall Street Journal has an article titled The Medication Generation by Katherine Sharpe which questioned the fact that a large number of teenagers are...
Letters From the Front Lines
Dear Bob:
Saw a young man recently, early 30s, who wanted help withdrawing from benzodiazepines.
He had been on escalating doses of Xanax for two years. The...
Withdrawal studies up to 9/23/2005
M.W. Agelink, A Zitselsberger, E. Kleiser, Withdrawal symptoms after discontinuation of Venlafaxine (letter), Am. J. Psychiatry, 154, 10, October 1997, 1473-1474.
G.W. Amsden, F. Georgian,...
Anatomy of a Coverup
The New York Times analyzes the process whereby Celebrex, an arthritis drug, was promoted by Prizer despite knowing that it was no more effective...
Killed by the Huffington Post, Article Now on the Newsstands in Skeptic
Now in the current issue of Skeptic, I have an article called “Depression Treatment: What Works and How We Know” (article rights owned by...
Norway Prosecutors Ask for Psychiatric Care, Not Prison
Saying "in our opinion, it is worse that a psychotic person is sentenced to preventative detention than a nonpsychotic person is sentenced to compulsory...
Association Between Age of Psychosis Onset and Cannabis Use
Researchers at Harvard, NYU, and the VA say in a study published online today by Schizophrenia Research that the age at which 57 subjects...
“Psychiatry Takes a Beating” in Norway
"Anders Behring Breivik is not standing trial alone in Oslo. Psychiatry is being judged as well," says Time magazine, as the trial nears its...
Holistic Recovery From Schizophrenia: A Mother and Son’s Journey
I am a mother of a son who was given a diagnosis of schizophrenia in December 2003, a son who is doing well today...
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy is Effective for Current Depression
A randomized, controlled trial by researchers in the Netherlands compared 102 subjects with recurrent depression receiving mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) + treatment-as-usual (TAU) with...
The Place of Medication in a Recovery Oriented System of Care
I was invited to present a work shop with Dan Fisher, MD PhD at the 2012 NAMI-VT annual meeting. These are my comments. They reflect my long term beliefs integrated with my reappraisal of practice in the past year.
