Antipsychotics

At least 250 lawsuits involving Johnson & Johnson's improper marketing of Risperdal are pending in Pennsylvania's Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, according to information...

When I lived in Massachusetts I taught yoga and led writing groups for alternative mental health communities. While the organizations I worked for were alternative, many of the students and participants were heavily drugged with psychiatric pharmaceuticals. There was one skinny teenager I'd never have forgotten who listed the drugs he was on for me once in the yoga room after class: a long list of stimulants, neuroleptics, moods stabilizers; far too many drugs and classes of drugs to remember. I was at the housewarming party of an old friend, and who should walk in but that boy who used to come to my yoga classes and writing groups religiously. And he was no longer a boy; he was now a young man. “I'm thinking yoga teacher,” he said. I nodded. Did he remember where? “I'm not stupid,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I'm not on drugs anymore. I'm not stupid anymore.”

A Texas man filed a lawsuit in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas against Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary, Janssen, in connection to...

The whistleblowers who helped to build the case for prosecuting Johnson & Johnson for illegal marketing of Risperdal will take home nearly $168 million...

Following Johnson & Johnson's $2.2 billion settlement for off-label marketing and kickbacks related to its antipsychotic Risperdal, Pennsylvania legislators Brandon Neuman and Tony DeLuca...

The American Journal of Psychiatry explores the implications for science and ethics of the rising placebo response rate in trials of antipsychotic drugs, in an...

Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries will pay more than $2.2 billion - one of the largest health-care fraud settlements in history - to...

Antipsychotics Raise Diabetes Risk →

Sandra Steingard writes in Community Psychiatrist about Lex Wunderink's study, published in the August JAMA Psychiatry, which found that people who discontinued medication have...

The recent incident in the grounds of Washington Capitol, involving a young educated woman, brought shock to many people. It was another opportunity to blame a victim of mental illness and demand further restraint and medical attention for such individuals. Yes, we are lacking dignified, caring, discerning and attentive treatment for those whose spirits are broken. But we certainly don’t suffer from a lack of medical treatment for such individuals. It is time for policy-holders, and our scientific community to ask the 'heretical' question; “Could the drugs be the culprit behind the violence?”

Miriam Carey, who was shot and killed yesterday by D.C. police after she attempted to drive through a White House barricade with her 1-year-old...

"For drugs designed for a relatively small number of very disturbed patients, antipsychotics are now among the most profitable drugs in the world, just...

First episode psychosis (FEP) and duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) remain the foci of great numbers of early intervention programs in Western countries. “Untreated” in DUP-anese is synonymous with unmedicated, which often creates a sense of urgency and a myopic fixation on getting these youth started on anti-psychotics and keeping them on. What is the impact of this medical model and its accompanying chemical imbalance narrative on these emerging adults? How often does it set them on a course of regained functioning and restored hope, or does it serve as a gateway into a lifetime of disability and discouragement?

The American Psychiatric Association, as part of the American Board of Internal Medicine's "Choosing Wisely" initiative, released new practice guidelines yesterday that advise against...

A Federal Judge ruled Monday that the science linking Seroquel to tardive dyskinesia is sufficiently reliable to be heard by a jury, saying that...

In a recent interview, Nancy Andreasen, former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry, reaffirmed her earlier findings that antipsychotics shrink brain tissue. "We spent a couple...

As we approach world hearing voices day 2013 Karen and I are in Canada. We have just enjoyed running a preconference workshop for about 100 people in Winnipeg. I am sitting in my room before breakfast writing this piece and as I sit I am thinking back twenty-three years ago; I am in a psych unit in Manchester and I have a new support worker called Lindsay. By then I had been a psych patient for almost ten years and was fast approaching spending the rest of my life in the system. My support worker had convinced me to go to a new group that was starting in Manchester called a hearing voices group.

It took over twenty years for the state medical board to sanction a Minnesota psychiatrist who was responsible for the deaths and injuries of 46 patients. Today, in the Markingson case, it looks as if history is repeating itself. How many patients die while bureaucrats delay?

A 28-week randomized controlled study by researchers in Japan, Canada and the United States finds that a 50% reduction of risperidone or olanzapine significantly...

Concentrations of pharmaceuticals in Lake Michigan are undiluted two miles from treated sewage outfalls, according to research published in Chemosphere. Research has linked pharmaceuticals...

The Wunderink study has been discussed here in other blogs. In brief, using a randomized control design, Wunderink found that in adults diagnosed with a psychotic disorder continuous use of neuroleptics was associated with worse functional outcomes. Is this study relevant to those who do not experience psychosis?

The idea of spending more time as a bureaucrat in the US Embassy in Iceland did not appeal to me. I longed for the freedom that academics have. While pursuing that dream I stumbled into the world of international media, “chemical imbalance”, book publishing and a greedy professor of psychiatry which was a prelude to my second annus horribilis.

Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), acknowledged yesterday in his "Director's Blog" that the long-term outcome studies of...

Dan Markingson was floridly psychotic and unable to give informed consent when University of Minnesota researchers coerced him into an industry-funded drug study. His mother, Mary Weiss, warned the researchers that Dan was in danger of killing himself, but she was ignored. Dan committed a violent suicide in 2004. Last week, after fighting the university and research regulators for nine years, Mary suffered a severe stroke. Her struggle for justice is in serious danger.

Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark find from a 10-year follow-up of participants in a randomized controlled study of brief antipsychotic medication (the OPUS...