Fewer Involuntary Admissions by Psychiatrists than Physicians
In October of 2006 Switzerland enacted a law requiring a certified psychiatrist - rather than a physician or resident - to compel an involuntary...
Nonwhites Twice as Likely to Receive Injectable Antipsychotics
Research published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry shows that of all 901 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia from July 2009 to June 2010 at a...
DSM-5 Adds “Behavior” to List of Addictions
The APA convention last week included a debate about the addition of "Behavioral Addiction - Not Otherwise Specificed" to the new edition of the...
Policy and Staffing are Key to Reducing Seclusion Rates
Dutch researchers examined the belief among psychiatric ward staff that patient characteristics explained the different rates of seclusion observed between facilities. They conclude that...
Former APA Member Protests the DSM on Fox News
Dr. Keith Ablow, who resigned from the APA in protest "some time ago," criticizes the unscientific and arbitrary process by which diagnoses are generated...
Differentiation of SSRI and Benzo Dependence/Withdrawal “Not Rational”
Researchers from the Cochrane Center and University of Copenhagen in Denmark, publishing in the May issue of Addiction, "explore the rationale for claiming that...
Utah Supreme Court Allows Lawsuit for Psychotropic-Induced Murder
Ruling that health care providers, while important, "are not entitled to an elevated status in tort law that would categorically immunize them from liability...
Does Everyone Have a Mental Illness?
Psychiatrist and author Allen J. Frances, former chair of the DSM-IV task force, outlines why he thinks the DSM-V will lead to millions of...
Motherhood: Pride & Recovery
Researchers at the Rockland Psychiatric Center in New York found that of the 39% of female inpatients who were mothers, the majority reported having...
Former DSM Chair: DSM-5 “A Disaster,” Calls for APA Monopoly to End
Former DSM task force chairman Allen Frances reviews the rise of the DSM, crossing over from a research instrument to to a popular bestseller...
Call For DSM-5 Reform Continues
Over 13,000 mental health professionals have signed an open letter from The Society for Humanistic Psychology (Div. 32 of the APA) to the DSM-5...
Involuntary Treatment Burdened by Lack of Evidence
A review of Cochrane data finds a lack of evidence for the effectiveness of involuntary treatment; and an ethos of tradition rather than standards....
Disconnect Between Antipsychotic Prescribing and Metabolic Screening
Despite American Diabetes Association and APA recommendations of glucose and lipid testing for all patients started on antipsychotics, there is a disconnect between prescribing...
Army to Study Use of Off-Label Meds for PTSD
The Army will launch a major research initiative next year on the effectiveness of commonly prescribed medication for PTSD. Speaking at the APA meeting...
DSM-5 Field Trials Fail to Compare New Diagnostic Criteria with DSM-IV Criteria
Field trials for the DSM-5 fail to explicitly compare new proposed diagnostic criteria with those in the DSM-IV, a step that would be too...
Incoming APA President Emphasizes “Positive Psychiatry”
President-elect Dilip Jeste intends to lead the APA into an era of "positive psychiatry." "We should not be satisfied merely with treating symptoms in...
Abbott to Pay $1.6 Billion for “Elder Abuse”, Off-Label Marketing
Abbott Laboratories has pled guilty to civil and criminal charges of illegally marketing Depakote for the control of agitation and aggression in elderly patients...
Ethics Complaints Over DSM Filed With the APA
Paula Caplan writes in Psychology Today about ethics complaints which have been filed with the APA (including one by her as an "interested party")...
AARP Joins Antipsychotic Lawsuit Against CA Nursing Home
The AARP has joined an "unprecedented class-action lawsuit" against a California nursing home accused of using antipsychotics without informed consent from residents or family...
Pharmacology Gets More Cooperation Than Psychosocial Advice
In a study of conformance to evidence-based treatment recommendations at mental health clinics among people diagnosed with schizophrenia, Canadian researchers found that conformance to...
Rate of Antipsychotics in Foster Care Climbs
One in six adolescents were taking antipsychotic medications by the end of a five-year study of 686,000 children in foster care in 48 states....
Psychiatric Journals are More Biologically Skewed than Internal Medicine Journals
Researchers from Tufts University (including Nassir Ghaemi) assessed the ratio of "biological" to "non-biological" in both psychiatric journals and journals of internal medicine. Though...
Nursing Homes Shift Tactics on Dementia
As part of a series on the inappropriate use of antipsychotics in nursing homes, the Boston Globe explores alternative approaches, such as llama therapy,...
Review of the Evidence: Childhood Adversity High in Schizophrenia and Other Disorders
Researchers from Australia and the UK found that people with a schizophrenia diagnosis almost four times more likely than controls to have a history of...
Increased Competition Drives Falsified Research
A ten-fold rise in retractions of scientific (in particular biomedical) papers over the past decade reflects a massive increase in competition for scarce funding...
