We’ve already discussed the J&J Center for Pediatric Psychopathology Research at Mass General [harvard for sale…] that started in 2002, and noted the dramatic increase in publication by Biederman’s group at Harvard. But the interest wasn’t just in Boston, the notion of the Bipolar Child caught the interest of the whole international psychiatric community. Beyond […]
The American Psychiatric Association Preliminary Scientific Program for the Annual Meeting is on-line, and I was perusing it looking for something specific. I remain awed that the Harvard Master Class Psychopharmacology Course still has veterans from Chuck Grassley’s Senate Investigation [see april fools day – 2016…]. So I was curious to see if they were […]
A 2002 article by Stanford Biostatistician Helena Chmura Kraemer et al summarizes the "characteristics of a well-performed RCT" [referencing the 1986 classic, Clinical Trials: Design, Conduct, and Analysis, by Curtis Meinert]: Considerable progress has been made in the development and evaluation of treatments, both pharmacologic and psychological, for a variety of different psychiatric disorders. This […]
Well, I didn’t plan it, but this post actually turns out to be a sequel [maybe prequel] to another post from two weeks ago [probably approximates zero…]. There, I was reporting on an analysis that showed that the major use of antipsychotics in children is not to treat psychosis, but rather to control disruptive impulsiveness […]
When Risperdal® [Risperidone] came along in 1994, it was widely hoped [and hyped] that it would release patients from the heavy and sometimes dangerous side effect burden of the earlier neuroleptic medications. One of Janssen’s targeted indications was in to control disruptive behaviors in intellectually impaired children. This RCT was completed in 1998, and used […]
I’m old enough to have been in training when the classic version of Manic Depressive Illness was still the predominant view – a familial Illness characterized by recurrent episodes of either Mania or Severe Depression that began in adulthood. After the coming of the DSM-III, the domain of that diagnosis expanded in multiple dimensions, and […]
Study Finds Olanzapine-Fluoxetine Combo Superior to Placebo for Bipolar Disorder in Children PSYCHIATRICNEWS alert [The Voice of the American Psychiatric Association and the Psychiatric Community] December 30, 2014 A combination of the antipsychotic olanzapine and the antidepressant fluoxetine proved superior to placebo for acute treatment of bipolar I depression in patients aged 10-17 in a […]
With the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry meeting in San Diego right now, I’m having something of a remembrance of things past period. Of course there’s Paxil Study 329 which stands in my mind as a paradigm for an infamous era, along with a other less well known Clinical Trials suggesting that the […]
As for efficacy, Tyrer et al say [see part one: the bind…]: What is the evidence for the benefits of these drugs in the treatment of challenging behaviour? Virtually none. Almost all the evidence in favour comes from small trials conducted by drug companies. Yet it would be perverse if doctors continued to prescribe these […]
Even though we know the long term consequences of using antipsychotics, most psychiatrists think that antipsychotics are helpful in controlling challenging/disruptive/oppositional behavior in intellectually impaired or autistic kids. Tyrer et al call it "Dogma," and that seems right [part one: the bind…]. Why do we think that? For one thing, we’ve seen antipsychotics used in […]