MIA Articles about Psychiatric Drugs and Withdrawal

A jury decided Johnson & Johnson must pay a Philadelphia man $2.5 million in damages "for failing to warn that its Risperdal antipsychotic could cause gynecomastia."

David Cohen's work begins to address a paradox: medication effects are not simply chemical impacts on a biological brain, but rather the complex interactions of social factors, expectation, placebo, "nocebo," and learning. As a harm reduction approach to withdrawal emphasizes, empowerment may be the most important consideration for supporting people's wellness.

Patient Drug News advises avoiding use of the antidepressant Vortioxetine (also called Brintellix or Trintellix), because the most recent evidence from the FDA shows...

-A fired government health economist says that his research was showing that 60,000 Americans now taking antipsychotic medications will die prematurely.

"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."

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

The Cochrane Library reports that "many older people with Alzheimer's dementia and NPS (neuropsychiatric symptoms) can be withdrawn from chronic antipsychotic medication without detrimental effects...

This week the drug monitoring and patients' rights website, RxISK, launched the Centre for Medication Withdrawal, a page dedicated to establishing what causes dependence and how to treat it.

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...

-Forensic psychiatrist Andrew Shepherd reviews a recent study on withdrawal effects from coming off antidepressant drugs.

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