MIA Articles about Psychiatric Drugs and Withdrawal

A new review of strategies to support both patients and practitioners through the process of discontinuing antidepressants.

"The last four years have seen a 90% increase in the number of serious adverse drug reports received by the Food and Drug Administration," according to a report by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices." Among them, a "signal" that Cymbalta causes "an array of problems such as crying, suicidal ideation, and anger, and other symptoms including effects on appetite and weight gain."

A retrospective study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry examined cases of people who suffered sexual dysfunction that endured even after stopping taking SSRI antidepressants.

Martin Harrow and Thomas Jobe have a new article coming out in Schizophrenia Bulletin that I wish would be read by everyone in our society with an interest in “mental health.” Harrow and Jobe, who conducted the best study of long-term schizophrenia outcomes that has ever been done, do not present new data in this article, but rather discuss the central question raised by their research: Does long-term treatment of schizophrenia with antipsychotic medications facilitate recovery? Or does it hinder it?

Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), authored an editorial for BMJ this month warning that the opioid abuse epidemic could have dangerous consequences for pregnant women. While the effects of opioid exposure on the developing brain are yet unknown, research suggests that infants may suffer from withdrawal syndrome, nervous system defects, and impaired attachment with the mother.

Adverse effects of antidepressants, including sexual difficulties and emotional numbing, apathy, suicidality and withdrawal effects may be more frequent than previously reported, according to...

Study reveals schizophrenia patients find little support from mental health staff in reducing side effects-heavy drugs.

A few weeks ago, while I was at a birthday celebration, a friend who works in a mental health setting remarked that she was...

Common scientific beliefs about serotonin levels in depression and how antidepressants act on the brain appear to be completely backwards.

This month, the seventh study and eighth study came out on the topic of antidepressant exposure during pregnancy and autism.  And these studies showed, as essentially all of the others have, that antidepressant use during pregnancy (principally with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs) is associated with autism in the exposed children. With so many children being diagnosed with autism and so many women taking antidepressants during pregnancy, everyone wants to know: are these things (the antidepressants) associated with autism or not?  Quite frankly no one has the time to read through all eight scientific papers (and dozens more animal and basic science studies) to understand this important area, so I will do my best to briefly summarize it here.

Psychiatrist and psychologist outline pharmacological and psychotherapeutic strategies for discontinuing antidepressants.

First generation antipsychotics seem to cause general brain volume loss, while second generation antipsychotics seem to both increase and decrease the thickness of different parts of the brain.

Anyone who has used benzodiazepines and sleeping pills knows how difficult it is to get off them (worse than heroin!) and how much time it takes to recover. Although there is a lot more helpful information on the web these days, a lot of it is based on anecdotal accounts, personal stories and theories rather than “real” evidence.

New guidance for primary care doctors in the UK on antidepressant discontinuation acknowledges severe and long-lasting withdrawal symptoms.

The Boston Globe interviews people who became ever more severely dependent on sedating benzodiazepines without realizing it, because as they tried to stop taking...

Careful reductions in dosage levels of antipsychotic medications over time improved long-term rates of recovery and functional remission in patients diagnosed with a first-episode psychosis.

Two South African researchers review scientific understanding of the brain changes that lead to antidepressant discontinuation syndrome (ADS) in Human Psycho-pharmacology: Clinical and Experimental....

German author and activist Peter Lehmann presents "Recovery by Taking Psychiatric Drugs versus Recovery by Coming Off of Psychiatric Drugs" at the 2012 International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry (ISEPP) Conference in Philadelphia, PA.

Psychiatrists argue that current practice fails to account for the interaction of biological, psychosocial and iatrogenic factors.

Calling it “Poison,” plaintiff Claudia Herrera testified she would not have taken Eli Lilly's drug Cymbalta had she known the risks. Lilly hid the risks of...

Long-term treatment with antipsychotic drugs is currently considered the standard treatment for patients diagnosed with ‘schizophrenia.’ A new study challenges this practice, however. The...

“Psychiatric Drugs are More Dangerous than You Ever Imagined” is the newest video in my series Simple Truths about Psychiatry.  It provides a simple, direct and inescapable warning about this epidemic of harm induced by psychiatric drugs. The video sounds a necessary alarm about this growing tragedy, involving millions of people and their families, who never foresaw the disabling results of taking psychiatric drugs and giving them to their children.

In her blog on USC Annenberg's Reporting on Health, journalist Martha Rosenberg reviews some of the quantitative evidence and qualitatively bizarre anecdotal evidence of...

A psychiatrist with lived experience advocates for a more humane, collaborative approach to antipsychotic discontinuation that respects diverse ways of knowing.

One of the main arguments for continuing drug treatment for depression, psychosis and bipolar disorder is that you will get worse from stopping the drugs, especially if they are stopped abruptly. These are findings from mainstream psychiatry. However, if we combine this information with the methodology of the randomized controlled trial, we may see that these drug trials do not show efficacy of drugs, and may not be usable to show safety. The positive side to this is that the trials may actually demonstrate the healing power of our own minds.