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No shit Sherlock: Adderall and psychosis
They found those who had taken Adderall were 2.68 times more likely to have been hospitalized with psychosis or mania compared to those who were not -- and this increased to 5.28 times more likely at higher doses of 40 milligrams and above.
Put another way, 81 percent of psychosis or mania cases may have been prevented if they were not on the high dose, the paper said.
Drug Makers Are Advocacy Group’s Biggest Donors - The New York Times
Slides from a presentation delivered by the salesmen show that the company urged the alliance to resist state efforts to limit access to mental health drugs.
“Solutions: Play Hard Ball,” one slide was titled. “Hold policy makers accountable for their decisions in media and in election,” it continued.
The alliance’s own slides concluded by saying, “We appreciate AstraZeneca’s strong support of NAMI.”
Drug Makers Are Advocacy Group’s Biggest Donors - The New York Times
But according to investigators in Mr. Grassley’s office and documents obtained by The New York Times, drug makers from 2006 to 2008 contributed nearly $23 million to the alliance, about three-quarters of its donations.
Even the group’s executive director, Michael Fitzpatrick, said in an interview that the drug companies’ donations were excessive and that things would change.
“For at least the years of ’07, ’08 and ’09, the percentage of money from pharma has been higher than we have wanted it to be,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said.
Should I Leave My Husband? The Lure of Divorce
To cope with the stress, I asked my psychiatrist to increase the dosage of the antidepressant I’d been on for years. Sometime around then, I started talking too fast and drinking a lot.
o explore multi-day rhythms in healthy human behavior our analysis includes over 300 million smartphone touchscreen interactions logging up to 2 years of day-to-day activities (N401 subjects).
At the level of each individual, we find a complex expression of multi-day rhythms where the rhythms occur scattered across diverse smartphone behaviors. With non-negative matrix factorization, we extract the scattered rhythms to reveal periods ranging from 7 to 52 days – cutting across age and gender.
The rhythms are likely free-running – instead of being ubiquitously driven by the moon – as they did not show broad population-level synchronization even though the sampled population lived in northern Europe.
Exercise Is Even More Effective Than Counselling or Medication for Depression - Neuroscience News
When comparing the size of the benefits of exercise to other common treatments for mental health conditions from previous systematic reviews, our findings suggest exercise is around 1.5 times more effective than either medication or cognitive behaviour therapy.
Adderall Risks: Much More Than You Wanted To Know | Slate Star Codex
I didn’t realize how much of a psychiatrist’s time was spent gatekeeping Adderall.
By the mid-1950s, Lazarsfeld’s group had extended their argument into medicine, through a study contracted by Pfizer about the factors that influenced doctors in the USA to adopt a new drug. In this landmark study5, the authors asked the fundamental question that continues to drive every pharmaceutical marketing operation to this day: “What were the social processes that intervened between the initial trials of the drug by a few local innovators and its final use by virtually the whole medical community?” The simple answer: the implementation of a new drug is all about promoting and expanding “the effectiveness of interpersonal relations at each stage of the diffusion process”.
Overdiagnosis: it’s official | The BMJ
“The labeling of a person with a disease or abnormal condition that would not have caused the person harm if left undiscovered, creating new diagnoses by medicalizing ordinary life experiences, or expanding existing diagnoses by lowering thresholds or widening criteria without evidence of improved outcomes. Individuals derive no clinical benefit from overdiagnosis, although they may experience physical, psychological, or financial harm.”
The True Foucault | Dissent Magazine
His pronouncements on politics were made in a similar vein. He is commonly associated with a bleak assessment of modern society, in which power, far from being confined to the state and economics, is disseminated through a network of disciplinary institutions—schools, hospitals, social services, asylums, and prisons, among others. Many are familiar with Foucault’s claim that the authority wielded by such entities is derived from their claims to specialized knowledge, which he succinctly dubbed “power-knowledge.” But, to Foucault, this argument was just one part of a broader framework. He relentlessly insisted that, even if power is a pervasive force in our collective lives, it always manifests itself in concrete struggles. He wanted us to see practices such as the military regimentation of bodies or the relationship between therapists and patients as akin to hand-to-hand combat—judo matches, rather than Orwellian thought control. Power is always an effort to control someone’s conduct: finding the right hold, identifying vulnerabilities, creating incentives for compliance.
The voice in your head
“When you are active in psychiatry you don’t see the people without complaints, and you don’t seem to think about them,” he said. Later that year, Romme held a first congress for people who hear voices. Hage was one of the speakers, and 360 people showed up, including psychiatric patients, psychics, spiritual healers and religious devotees who frequently heard the voice of God.
Scientists find neurochemicals have unexpectedly profound roles in the human brain: Dopamine, serotonin involved in sub-second perception, cognition -- ScienceDaily
"An enormous number of people throughout the world are taking pharmaceutical compounds to perturb the dopamine and serotonin transmitter systems to change their behavior and mental health," said P. Read Montague, senior author of the study and a professor and director of the Center for Human Neuroscience Research and the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion. "For the first time, moment-to-moment activity in these systems has been measured and determined to be involved in perception and cognitive capacities. These neurotransmitters are simultaneously acting and integrating activity across vastly different time and space scales than anyone expected."
Better understanding of the underlying actions of dopamine and serotonin during perception and decision-making could deliver important insight into psychiatric and neurological disorders, the researchers said.
"Every choice that someone executes involves taking in information, interpreting that information, and making decisions about what they perceived," said Kenneth Kishida, a corresponding author of the study and an assistant professor of physiology and pharmacology, and neurosurgery, at Wake Forest School of Medicine. "There's a whole host of psychiatric conditions and neurological disorders where that process is altered in the patients, and dopamine and serotonin are prime suspects."
INHN: Daniel Kanofsky’s comment on Edward Tobe’s comment
"The emphasis on prescribing drugs as the major psychiatric contributor to treatment without knowing the patient has become an unfortunate consequence of insurance industry control of medical care initially through the formation of HMOs. Today, psychiatrists perform a 'med check' that may range from 10 minutes to 30 minutes during which a patient, often not in remission, is psychiatrically evaluated to determine medical and psychological changes and current mental status, response to pharmaceuticals, changes in their life, compliance, and ability to function vocationally and avocationally. The psychiatrist writes prescriptions for drugs with minimal knowledge of the patient. Drug sales benefit."
Richard Smith: Psychiatry in crisis? - The BMJ
Dutch psychiatrists, it was explained to me, are feeling vulnerable because there are too many of them. They have two treatments to offer–drugs and psychotherapy. But the Netherlands has many clinical psychologists, and they have taken over the psychotherapy. Psychiatrists are left with drugs and anxiety about their future.
The Most Dangerous Thing You Will Ever Do - Mad In America
Going to a psychiatrist is the most dangerous thing most people will ever routinely do. And as a psychiatrist, I advise against it, unless you have proof positive that the psychiatrist will talk with you instead of drugging or shocking you—which is highly unlikely.
James Baldwin, debating Buckley
The Mississippi, or the Alabama, sheriff, who really does believe when he's facing a Negro, a boy or a girl, that this woman, this man, this child, must be insane to attack the system to which he owes his entire identity. Of course, for such a person, the proposition of which, which we are trying to discuss here to night, does not exist. […] I am stating very seriously, and this is not an overstatement, that I picked the cotton, and I carried it to market, and I built the railroads, under someone else's whip, for nothing. For nothing.
Texas Psychiatrist Karen Wagner Under Scrutiny - AHRPAHRP
co-authored the notorious, ghostwritten Paxil pediatric study #329, whose lead author, Martin Keller, MD, was replaced last month as chairman of psychiatry at Brown University. The Glaxo-paid authors of study #329 helped the company promote the myth that Paxil was "safe and effective" for use in children as early as 1998: in a poster presentation, Dr. Wagner claimed "The results of this study demonstrate the safety ofparoxetine in the treatment of adolescent depression. Side effects were modest with paroxetine." [2] But internal Glaxo emails show the data from pediatric Paxil trials were negative.
Psychiatrist Engaged in Research Misconduct, Says Gov't Watchdog
"I acknowledge there were regulatory issues raised, which I don't deny, but they were all unintentional," he told Medscape Medical News. "I regret the decisions that were noted, but, again, I acted with my best intentions, meaning I wanted to advance science, and therefore it's particularly sad and devastating for me personally, because I never intended to do anything wrong or act against any regulations or anything."
Delay Discounting as a Transdiagnostic Process in Psychiatric Disorders: A Meta-analysis | Psychiatry | JAMA Psychiatry | JAMA Network
In this meta-analysis of 57 effect sizes from 43 studies across 8 diagnostic categories, robust differences in delay discounting were observed between people with psychiatric disorders and controls. Most individuals with disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, bulimia nervosa, and binge-eating disorder) exhibited steeper discounting compared with controls, whereas those with anorexia nervosa exhibited shallower discounting compared with controls.
Study casts doubt on evidence for 'gold standard' psychological treatments -- ScienceDaily
"One of the things that becomes really obvious when you look at the literature is researchers are collecting and analyzing their data in ways that are extremely flexible," Sakaluk said. "If you don't follow certain rules of statistical inference, you can inadvertently trick yourself into claiming effects that aren't really there. For EST research, it may become important to define in advance what researchers are going to do -- like how they'll analyze data -- and go on record in a way that restricts what they're going to do. This would coincide with a movement to encourage researchers to propose what they'd like to do and get reviewers and journal editors to weigh in before -- not after -- scientists do research, and to publish it irrespective of what they find."
Study finds psychiatric diagnosis to be 'scientifically meaningless' - Neuroscience News
“Although diagnostic labels create the illusion of an explanation they are scientifically meaningless and can create stigma and prejudice. I hope these findings will encourage mental health professionals to think beyond diagnoses and consider other explanations of mental distress, such as trauma and other adverse life experiences.”
Exercise: Psych patients' new primary prescription -- ScienceDaily
Tomasi, in collaboration with UVMMC's Sheri Gates and Emily Reyns, built a gym exclusively for roughly 100 patients in the medical center's inpatient psychiatry unit, and led and introduced 60-minute structured exercise and nutrition education programs into their treatment plans. The psychotherapists surveyed patients on their mood, self-esteem and self-image both before and after the exercise sessions to gauge the effects of exercise on psychiatric symptoms.
Patients reported lower levels of anger, anxiety and depression, higher self-esteem, and overall improved moods. Tomasi, Gates and Reyns found an average of 95 percent of patients reported that their moods improved after doing the structured exercises, while 63 percent of the patients reported being happy or very happy, as opposed to neutral, sad or very sad, after the exercises. An average of 91.8 of patients also reported that they were pleased with the way their bodies felt after doing the structured exercises.
Study suggests overdiagnosis of schizophrenia: Reported symptoms of anxiety and hearing voices most common reasons for misdiagnosis by non-specialty physicians -- ScienceDaily
In speculating about other reasons why there might be so many misdiagnoses, the researchers say that it could be due to overly simplified application of criteria listed in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a standard guide to the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders.
"Electronic medical record systems, which often use pull-down diagnostic menus, increase the likelihood of this type of error," says Margolis, who refers to the problem as "checklist psychiatry."
"The big take-home message from our study is that careful consultative services by experts are important and likely underutilized in psychiatry," says Margolis. "Just as a primary care clinician would refer a patient with possible cancer to an oncologist or a patient with possible heart disease to a cardiologist, it's important for general mental health practitioners to get a second opinion from a psychiatry specialty clinic like ours for patients with confusing, complicated or severe conditions. This may minimize the possibility that a symptom will be missed or overinterpreted."
More Evidence Links Marijuana Use And Psychosis : Shots - Health News : NPR
The study found that those who used pot daily were three times more likely to have a psychotic episode compared to someone who never used the drug.
Those who started using cannabis at the age of 15 or less had a slightly more elevated risk than those who started using in later years.
Use of high potency weed almost doubled the odds of having psychosis compared to someone who had never smoked weed, explains Di Forti.
And for those who used high potency pot on a daily basis, the risk of psychosis was even greater — four times greater than those who had never used.
ADHD drug Ritalin has no effect on primate prefrontal cortex -- ScienceDaily
Julio Martinez-Trujillo and colleagues refute their hypothesis the caudal prefrontal cortex -- a brain region critical for attention -- is Ritalin's main site of action in the brain. To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers recorded large populations of neurons in this brain region as two male macaque monkeys performed a demanding visual attention task. The team did not observe any differences in neuronal activity after administration of the drug compared to a placebo, even at doses that improved the monkeys' performance on the task.
Are Emotional Disorders Really Disorders of Love? - Mad In America
As family members, therapists or doctors, what if we never again promoted or prescribed drugs as a “treatment” because they ultimately impair our frontal lobes and hence our ability to love? Could we jettison all our ugly, cookie cutter, unloving diagnoses—ADHD, conduct disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and PTSD? Could we instead help others to discover where their loving engagement with life was discouraged or lost and how to revive it or even to experience it for the first time?
