In December 2012, Mark Olfson, MD, et al, published an article in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The title is National Trends in the Office-Based Treatment of Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Antipsychotics. The authors collected data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys for the period 1993-2009, and looked for trends in antipsychotic prescribing… Continue Reading
Causes of High Mortality in People Labeled ‘Mentally Ill’
ANOTHER VIDEO FROM DR. LIEBERMAN On October 28, Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, made another video. This one is titled An Important Look at Mortality in Mental Illness: A Decade of Data on Psychotropic Drugs, and was made for Medscape. You can see the transcript at the same site. Medscape is a web… Continue Reading
Submitting Claims for Off-label Prescriptions to Medicaid May Constitute Fraud
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,… Continue Reading
Antipsychotics: A Euphemism for Neurotoxins
I guess everybody knows by now that Robert Whitaker spoke at the NAMI conference in San Antonio last Saturday (June 29). You can view an outline of his speech, The Case for Selective Use of Antipsychotics here. He spoke about the fact that for people who have been assigned a “diagnosis” of “schizophrenia,” long-term outcomes… Continue Reading