Legislation & Regulation

Despite updated standards requiring preregistration of clinical trials aimed at improving transparency, most studies published in the top-5 psychiatry journals from 2009 to 2013 do not meet the new guidelines, according to an analysis published in PloS one.

The Intercept illustrates the growing insecurity of our medical and mental health data in an age of privacy breaches. Individual stories detail instances of electronic therapy notes being shared between all doctors in a practice, employees being fired after mental health information is disclosed through workplace wellness programs, and police data on past suicide attempts being used to prevent Canadian citizens from crossing the US border.

Healthline reports that as five second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs) lose patent protection, Medicaid expenditures for antipsychotics are projected to be cut in half over the next five years. But some worry that the decrease in spending may lead policymakers to lift existing restrictions on antipsychotics at a time when most SGAs are prescribed to children for off-label reasons.

The Toronto Star reports on a 40-page analysis of the criminalization of mental illness released by the John Howard Society of Ontario last week. The crime and justice non-profit claims that “jails have replaced asylums as repositories for people who don’t have adequate resources to cope with community living,” with the unintended consequence that people in need of treatment “are forced to navigate a system that was never intended to be therapeutic.”

Paul Thacker and Charles Seife provide an update on the ongoing battles over transparency in science, writing for the PLOS Biologue blog. While transparency is important for accountability and the public trust, some have begun to argue that requests for personal communications between companies and researchers have gone too far.

The majority of children, adolescents and young adults prescribed antipsychotic medications have not been diagnosed with a mental disorder, according to a recent study published in JAMA Psychiatry.

-Tom Jefferson updates on the "revolution" promised by European Medicines Agency policies on publicly releasing more detailed data from drug clinical trials.

-Psychiatry Advisor reports on psychiatrist James Rucker's campaign for more research into the therapeutic potentials of psychedelic drugs, and on critics who point to the risks.

-Two different articles examine cases of US colleges and universities forcing students with depression to go on leave, and never come back.

-Mind Hacks has an interview with Will Davies, author of The Happiness Industry, that "looks at the history and practice of positive psychology as government, and ‘well-being’ as a way of managing people."

-People could be sentenced to two years in jail for publicly disclosing information about health and mental health conditions in Australian immigration detention centers.

Representative Murphy has released the second version of the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (H.R. 2646). Few can argue that the mental health system and the current approach towards helping individuals and families in crisis are abysmal. H.R. 2646 is an effort to create increased service provisions and to enhance interventions that many professionals, family members and service users alike believe to be effective. When people are desperate and suffering they do not wish to be told "Sorry, there's nothing we can do." And so, it is understandable and even laudable that so many support the proposals laid out in H.R. 2646. But the bill is based on distorted and faulty logic that misrepresents the research and evidence base. This is highly disconcerting. And so a collective of mental health professionals, mental health advocates, and persons with lived experience came together to produce the following documents in response to H.R. 2646.

-"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."

-Green Party Senator Rachel Siewert calls "insidious" an Australian government plan to take income support away from anyone undergoing psychiatric confinement.

If we accept Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove’s assessment that informed consent for a person to participate in psychiatry is not informed consent because of the fraud that Americans are subjected to by organized psychiatry, then the consensus for laws that support forced psychiatry have also not been garnered with informed consent. If the average person is offering support to psychiatry via their legislators, because they are operating under the fraud organized psychiatry has perpetrated on the people, then that support is illegitimate.

A Kings College London psychiatrist worries what broad new British restrictions on psychoactive substances could mean for psychedelic research.

-"The civic lawsuit demands that Comptom schools incorporate proven practices that address trauma..."

A company that conducts clinical drug trials for pharmaceutical companies is taking legal action against the UK government over transparency requirements.

-The Intercept discusses the vagueness of the concept of "competency" and why people on death row who are deemed to be mentally ill get little sympathy.

-A social worker explains why people should be more careful, if they believe it's a good idea to call the police to deal with someone who is disruptive.

Recently, the Murphy Bill in the United States Congress has resurfaced as a tangible threat to the civil liberties of individuals labelled "seriously mentally ill." As many others might relate, my reaction was one of rage, sadness, and utter bafflement. Yet, here we are. Having defeated the bill once, it is back like herpes. After my frustration and anger dissipated a bit, I pondered this and was hit with a "duh" moment. Politics is not about facts; politics is about power, money, and playing on the emotions of society.

How we think about health, happiness, and self-fulfillment, how they are linked with flawed systems of government has been assigned to the domain of social scientists. The most influential of those are the psychiatrists who have been given the government-mandated power to diagnose, incarcerate and forcibly drug those who are perceived to have a form of mental illness. I believe that such power is arbitrary, unjust and frequently harmful.

A manufacturer of a prescription omega-3 fatty acid derivative wants the right to tell physicians about benefits of its drug which the FDA has not approved.

-Two commentaries in The Lancet Psychiatry debate what the OCTET trials have shown about community treatment orders.

Drug companies must start publicly releasing information about different types of payments to Australia's physicians.