Vermont Probes Whether Drug Makers Violated its Gift Ban
From STAT: The Vermont attorney general is currently investigating whether drug and medical device companies may have violated state law by giving gifts or payments to health...
Are Drug Companies Grooming New Customers in the Womb?
From The Baltimore Sun: Over time, studies have shown that antidepressants during pregnancy are linked with congenital defects as well as increased incidence of depression...
Pharma Backing of Advocacy Groups: A Call for Transparency
From HealthNewsReview.org: In light of the opioid crisis, lawmakers are growing increasingly concerned about financial conflicts of interest in patient advocacy groups. Ontario has enacted...
Hopeless But Not Broken: From George Carlin to Protest Music
From CounterPunch: Although people are often pathologized and shamed for feeling hopeless, hopelessness is sometimes a natural reaction to an oppressive political climate. George Carlin...
Drug Company Sales Reps Should be Banned From Hospitals
From STAT: Despite evidence that drug company sales reps skew prescribing habits, relatively few hospitals have taken the step of barring them. This is a...
ââYou Want a Description of Hell?â OxyContinâs 12-Hour Problemâ
A new LA Times investigation finds that Purdue Pharmaâs claims that OxyContin, a chemical cousin of heroin, could relieve pain for twelve hours led some...
How About Paying Poor People to Take Psychiatric Drugs?
-Healthy Debate discusses some experiments with doctors paying their patients to engage in healthier behaviors.
Psychologists Criticized For Roles In Forcing “Psycho-interventions” On The Unemployed
-"Curing unemployment is a growth market for psychologists. Job Centres are becoming medical centres, claimants are becoming patients, and unemployment is being redefined as a psychological disorder."
FDA Warns About New Impulse-Control Problems Associated With Abilify
Yesterday, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a warning that the antipsychotic drug aripiprazole or Abilify is associated with compulsive and uncontrollable...
US Congressman, 64, Admits to an Affair with ‘Close Friend’
From Daily Mail: U.S. Representative Tim Murphy, who proposed the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, which includes provisions to expand coercive treatment, has...
Ioannidis Questions Strength of Psychology and Neuroscience Literature
Last week, well-known Stanford scientist John Ioannidis and his colleague Denes Szucs released a new analysis online. They examined research published in eighteen prominent...
My Thoughts on an Alternative to HB1386 in Colorado (Open Letter)
I oppose HB1386 and request it be voted down. That, though, is not enough and I know it. So, here, I propose an alternative plan to HB1386.
âNYS Moves to Parity in Mental Health Treatmentâ
New York State has investigated five large insurance companies for violating state and federal mental health parity laws by illegally denying to cover claims for behavioral health conditions and drug abuse treatment, according to a report by North County Public Radio (ncpr).
Vikas Saini: Protecting Patients From Excessive Medicine
In this piece for the BMJ, Jeanne Lenzer profiles Vikas Saini, a cardiologist who is working to fight against excessive medical treatment. His work with...
Why Isn’t Big Pharma Paying for the Harm it Caused?
From Alternet: The pharmaceutical industry has played a major role in causing the opioid crisis by downplaying the potentially addictive and fatal effects of narcotic pain...
QuarterWatch Reports: Perspectives on Emerging Drug Risks
A new issue of QuarterWatch critiques the recent Ciprani meta-analysis on antidepressants and reports on the adverse effects of the newest antidepressant, vortioxetine.
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âWhere Police Violence Encounters Mental Illnessâ
In The Opinion Pages of the New York Times, Matthew Epperson discusses the devastating results of police acting as the primary responders to mental health crises. âIf we are to prevent future tragedies, then we should be ready to invest in a more responsive mental-health system and relieve the police of the burden of being the primary, and often sole, responders.â
Study Examines the Difficulty of Withdrawing from Antidepressant Drugs
Correcting unnecessary long-term antidepressant use is difficult and met with apprehension by providers and service-users.
Report Calls For Policy Changes In Response To Dependence and Withdrawal From Prescribed Drugs
Statistics from the UK reveal that prescriptions for painkillers and antidepressants continue to rise despite concerns over dependence and debilitating withdrawal effects. The British Medical Association (BMA) Board of Science has released a report that acknowledges changes to medical practice, research and policy necessary for addressing the dependence and withdrawal effects of benzodiazepines, opioids, and antidepressants.
“Evidence-Based Medicine”: Corporate Medicine’s Instrument
From Medium: The notion of "evidence-based medicine" is that a particular treatment is considered effective if research finds it safe and efficacious in the majority...
What Itâs Like to Be Involuntarily Committed
Ten years after being fired for taking a mental health leave after the Virginia Tech massacre, I was diagnosed as "schizophrenic" and involuntarily committed to a hospital. Now I have a job and a life, but I'm still forced to take drugs and report to a social worker.
Expert Urges Doctors to Stop Prescribing Seroquel for Insomnia
From National Post: Many physicians are prescribing a low dose of Seroquel, an atypical antipsychotic, to patients with insomnia. Experts warn that even a low...
The Psychiatry Sandcastle Continues to Crumble
Psychiatry would long since have gone the way of phrenology and mesmerism but for the financial support it receives from the pharmaceutical industry. But the truth has a way of trickling out. Here are five recent stories that buck the psychiatry-friendly stance that has characterized the mainstream media for at least the past 50 years.
Popular Drug Reveals the Issue of “Off-Label” Use
From The Washington Post: Despite major lawsuits and detailed reports pertaining to severe health risks associated with the antipsychotic Seroquel, the drug remains one of...
Why We’ve Been Thinking About Madness All Wrong
In this interview for Pacific Standard, David Dobbs, who profiled Nev Jones this month, discusses the ways that the mental health community is beginning to...
