Re: Changes in antidepressant use by young people and suicidal behavior after FDA warnings and media coverage: quasi-experimental study by Catherine W Barber, Matthew Miller, and Deborah Azrael British Medical Journal 2014 348:g359. In the spirit of Lu et al’s [1] warning not to sound alarms about antidepressant use prematurely, we used readily available national […]
I work in a fairly unusual charity clinic, one that only has one paid employee – a Director. The place is teeming with volunteers, most of us with grey [or little] hair – many living in retirement communities nearby. The doctors who started the clinic had an amazing vision, so we have a pharmacy stocked […]
Back in early May, I was looking into the NIMH ARA funded RAISE study [Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode], an as yet incompleted program being used as a template for a Congressionally mandated SAMHSA block grant allocation of funds to treat these patients: a fabrication?… where’s the beef?… out of the loop… its effectiveness… […]
Management Board delays formal adoption of EMA publication of clinical trial data policy to October 2014 Further discussion required on wording and practical arrangements European Medicines Agency Press Release 09/07/2014 The Management Board of the European Medicines Agency [EMA] has postponed formal adoption of the policy on publication of clinical trial data to its 2 […]
Psychiatric drugs are doing us more harm than good As with benzodiazepines in the 1980s, the UK is prescribing SSRI antidepressants at a staggering rate – and to no good effect The Guardian by Peter Gøtzsche 30 April 2014 We appear to be in the midst of a psychiatric drug epidemic, just as we were […]
Families that communicate with Double Binds create children who often spend an inordinate amount of time in their lives trying to find solutions to problems that really have no solution [part one: the bind…]. To review the elements of a Double Bind: [1 & 2] Two mutually exclusive commands ["lose weight" and "clean your plate"]; […]
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 […]
Drug treatments in people with intellectual disability and challenging behaviour by Peter Tyrer, Sally-Ann Cooper, and Angela Hassiotis British Medical Journal. 2014 348:g4323. [full text on-line] Time to rethink? Do we still need to be reminded that the drug treatment of people with intellectual disability is often prolonged and not without dangers? We probably do. […]
It has been eight months since this apology was published in JAMA Psychiatry. After over a decade of Dr. Kupfer self-righteously swatting away accusations that his DSM-5 Task Force was riddled with members who had conflicts of interest, he was forced to acknowledge that he had a whopper of a conflict of his own – […]