Those of us on this side of the psychiatric debate have long maintained that there is a link between the so-called antidepressant drugs and the mass murders that have become an increasingly common feature of American society in recent decades. The call for a formal investigation of this link, however, has been consistently resisted, and instead there has been a well-orchestrated medical campaign clamoring for more mental health services and more active outreach and prevention services. As an example, see Jeffrey Lieberman’s guest post on Everyday Health, In the Wake of the Navy Yard Shooting: A Way Forward. ...

There’s an interesting article on Mad in America dated September 17, 2013. It’s titled Psychiatry & Suicide Prevention: A 30-year Failed Experiment, and was written by Maria Bradshaw. Maria Bradshaw is the founder of CASPER, an organization that rejects the medical model of suicide prevention in favor of a sociological model. Ms. Bradshaw founded CASPER after her son’s antidepressant-induced suicide. Here’s the gist of Ms. Bradshaw article: Roger Mulder, MD, is head of psychiatry at Otago University in New Zealand. For at least the last 15 years, he has supported the notion of psychiatric intervention as a suicide-prevention measure. For instance, here’s something he wrote in 2008 in an article published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica: ...

There’s an article in the current issue of Clinical Toxicology, titled Drug-induced seizures in children and adolescents presenting for emergency care: Current and emerging trends, authored by Y. Finkelstein et al. The authors conducted an observational study, on 37 sites, of all pediatric Emergency Room reports which included a chemical or drug-induced seizure and required a toxicology consultation between April 2010 and March 2012. RESULTS "Antidepressants were the most commonly identified agents ingested…"(42%). ...

This is an excellent book, published by Pegasus Books earlier this year. The cover blurb says that it is “…scathing about every aspect of psychiatry.” Dr. Davies, who is a practicing therapist in the UK, brings to the subject enormous energy and enthusiasm. He has interviewed Robert Spitzer, Allen Frances, Irving Kirsch, Joanna Moncrieff, Sami Tamimi, Peter Breggin, and many, many others. Some of the points he makes will be familiar to those of us on this side of the debate, but there is an enormous amount of fresh material and insights. The book careens, almost literally, from one psychiatric outrage to the next, and the arguments are supported by appropriate citations. ...

There’s an interesting article on Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. It’s called Learning from Negative Feedback in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder is Attenuated by SSRI Antidepressants. The researchers evaluated learning ability in three groups: medication-naïve individuals who met the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder individuals who met the criteria for MDD and were receiving the SSRI paroxetine (Paxil) "healthy" controls All subjects were given a learning task that allowed the researchers to distinguish learning from positive feedback versus learning from negative feedback The results were: ...

There’s an interesting article by J. Sareen et al on Cambridge Journals Online, September 2013. It’s call Common mental disorder diagnosis and need for treatment are not the same: findings from a population-based survey. Five of the six authors are working at universities in Canada, the sixth at a university in California. [Thanks to Mad in America for the link to the abstract. The full article is, unfortunately, behind a paywall.] ...

On September 12, Jeffry Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, posted an article on Psychiatric News titled IPS to Feature Patrick Kennedy, Celebrate Community Psychiatry. The article is a preview of an APA conference scheduled for October 10-13 in Philadelphia: “Transforming Psychiatric Practice, Reforming Health Care Delivery.” Dr. Lieberman tells us that he is very excited about the conference, and that the theme is particularly relevant "…given the changes we are experiencing in the profession and some of the exciting program events that I hope will support APA’s goal of being in the forefront of changes in the profession under health care reform." ...

A mass murder occurred yesterday, September 16, at the U.S. Navy Yard in Washington D.C. There are reports of at least 12 dead, and several wounded. Early news stories describe the perpetrator as having “mental issues,” and it is reported that he “…had been treated since August by the Veterans Administration for his mental problems.” It is likely that this “treatment” involved the prescription of psychiatric drugs. And still no government inquiry into the link between psycho-pharmaceutical products, especially SSRI’s, and acts of violence/suicide. ...

In my view, one of the most destructive developments in psychiatry in recent years is the prescribing of neuroleptic drugs to children. Much of this prescribing is off-label, meaning that the prescribed use is not approved by the FDA. Off-label drug prescribing is legal, however. Once the FDA has approved a drug for one purpose, a physician may prescribe it for another purpose. But under Medicaid rules, the physician is not permitted to bill Medicaid for writing this prescription unless the use of the drug in the specific circumstances is endorsed by any of the three pharmaceutical compendia approved by Congress for this purpose. A physician who deliberately submits a bill to Medicaid and, thereby, effectively causes Medicaid to pay for, a prescription that is both off-label and unapproved by any of the compendia is open to a charge of Medicaid fraud. Medicaid, incidentally, is the US government’s health insurance system for poor people. Eligibility is based on income. ...

Thanks to Graham Davey and Richard Pemberton on Twitter for the link to an interesting article in the August 29, 2013 issue of the Lancet. It’s titled Global burden of disease attributable to mental and substance use disorders: findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010, and was written by Harvey A. Whiteford, et al. The Global Burden of Disease survey is a systematic, scientific attempt to quantify the comparative magnitude of disease, injuries, and risk factors by age, sex, and geography over time. ...