“Politicians and Experts Meet at Parliament to Explore Record Antidepressant Prescribing and Disability”
The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence is meeting today, May 11th, to discuss evidence of the link between the rise in disability...
“Another Study Finds Link Between Pharma Money and Brand-name Prescribing”
New findings from Harvard Medical School reveal that Pharma industry payments to physicians in Massachusetts are associated with higher rates of prescribing brand-name drugs that treat...
New York Times Hosts Debate on Psychiatric Institutionalization
In the Room for Debate section of this weekend's New York Times, specialists in ethics, psychiatry, social work, addiction, and human rights hash out their...
“FDA Rejects Creepy Abilify Surveillance Pill”
The FDA has rejected the drug/device combination designed to monitor patient adherence with Abilify from Otsuka Pharmaceutical and Proteus Digital Health. Just last week...
The FDA Is Hiding Reports Linking Psych Drugs to Homicides
In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined being drawn into a story of intrigue involving my own government’s efforts to hide, from the public, reports of psychiatric drugs associated with cases of murder, including homicides committed by youth on the drugs. But that is precisely the intrigue I now find myself enmeshed in.
“CDC Warns that Americans May be Overmedicating Youngest Children with ADHD”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new data indicating that as many as 75% of young children who are diagnosed with...
Feral Psychiatry: The Case of Garth Daniels
Garth Daniels, a 39-year-old Melbourne man, has been shackled for 110 days and forced to undergo ECT 94 times at three times a week against his will. Last year, his family asked me to provide a second opinion on Garth’s case. As predicted, my recommendations against continued ECT were quickly dismissed by the hospital. There are critically important issues at stake in this case.
“‘You Want a Description of Hell?’ OxyContin’s 12-Hour Problem”
A new LA Times investigation finds that Purdue Pharma’s claims that OxyContin, a chemical cousin of heroin, could relieve pain for twelve hours led some...
“Medical Error—The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US”
In this podcast from the BMJ talk medicine series, researchers discuss their finding that medical error is the third leading cause of death in...
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...
Restoring Study 329: Letter to BMJ
When we set out to restore GSK’s misreported Study 329 of paroxetine for adolescent depression under the RIAT initiative, we had no idea of the magnitude of the task we were undertaking. After almost a year, we were relieved to finally complete a draft and submit it to the BMJ, who had earlier indicated an interest in publishing our restoration. But that was the beginning of another year of peer review that we believed went beyond enhancing our paper and became rather an interrogation of our honesty and integrity. Frankly, we were offended that our work was subject to such checks when papers submitted by pharmaceutical companies with fraud convictions are not.
“World Benzo Awareness Day, First Step To End Global Dependency Woes”
“In a bid to raise awareness towards the global epidemic of abuse on Benzodiazepine or ‘benzos’ abuse, a global campaign dubbed as World Benzo Awareness...
Lancet Editorial Points to “Trouble with Psychiatry Trials”
While clinical trials make up the “bedrock of evidence-based medicine” in other specialties, psychiatry faces a number of both ethical and scientific problems related to its use of randomized control trials. According to a new editorial in The Lancet Psychiatry, the field of psychiatry research has particular problems with ethical issues in recruitment, inaccurate classification systems, and controversial placebo comparisons, and then, once the studies are finished, it often remains unclear what the “outcomes actually mean for people’s lives.”
“The Torturing of Mentally Ill Prisoners”
This week’s issue of the New Yorker examines the treatment of people diagnosed with mental health issues in Florida’s prisons. The horrifying stories of...
“What Drug Ads Don’t Say”
For the New York Times, Cornell psychiatrist Richard Friedman proposes new regulations to make direct-to-consumer drug ads reveal the relative price and effectiveness information that...
Unhelpful Utterances: 6 Comments We Should No Longer Hear From Mental Health Professionals
Professionals are paid to share their wisdom with those who are, typically, less informed. But, when dealing with mental health professionals in the psychiatric arena, it is wise to retain a degree of skepticism about the words spoken by the doctors and nurses commissioned to help reduce human misery and suffering.
Intensive Care Patients at High Risk for PTSD, Psychiatric Symptoms
People who survive life-threatening illnesses in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital are at high risk for depression and anxiety and nearly...
World Benzo Awareness Day Launch
Today, organizers have released a statement announcing a "World Benzo Awareness Day" to take place on Monday, 11th July 2016. "This day has been made...
Suicide Rates Rise While Antidepressant Use Climbs
Multiple media sources are reporting on new data from the CDC revealing a substantial increase in the suicide rate in the United States between 1999...
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.
“Court Orders Electroconvulsive Therapy for Girl with Depression”
The Irish Times reports that a judge has ordered ECT for a 16-year-old with depression and an eating disorder. The doctor asked the court...
Highly Cited JAMA Psych Paper Retracted for “Pervasive Errors”
A study, comparing the effects of antidepressants combined with psychotherapy for severe depression to antidepressants alone, has been retracted and replaced by JAMA Psychiatry....
My Response to the FDA’s ECT Rule Change
I lived through forced ECT from 2005-2006 at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut. My experience with ECT was the impetus for me to become involved in the antipsychiatry and Mad Pride movements, although I am not entirely opposed to voluntary mental health treatment. The following is the comment I submitted to the FDA on its proposal to down-classify the ECT shock device.
“California Courts Step Up Oversight of Psychotropic Medication Use in Foster Care”
The Mercury News reports that California’s judicial council is taking major steps to address the rampant use of psychiatric drugs in foster care. The...
“It Might Not Be Dementia—How Pharma for Seniors Can Go Seriously Wrong”
For Alternet, Martha Rosenberg discusses the dangers of overmedicating seniors and older adults. She interviews Dr. Harry Haroutunian about his new book, “Not As...
