Psychiatry, It's A Killing.: Psych Headline News Links 7-27-2015

Monday, July 27, 2015

Psych Headline News Links 7-27-2015

U.S. Spends Big on Mental Illness Treatments That “May Not Even Work”

July 23, 2015

U.S. News reports that "Given the stakes, we should be immensely troubled by recent research which tells we don't really understand what treatments actually work ... many antidepressants are 'only marginally better than placebos' for most people. The official diagnostic manual that guides the use of psychoactive drugs has been called 'a product of unscrupulous politics and bureaucracy.' Nonetheless, antidepressants are a huge business, 'the most consumed class of medication in the U.S.'"

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Risk of Fetal Death 2X Higher in Antipsychotic-Exposed Pregnancies

July 20, 2015

Researchers at Aarhus University, in a study of 1,005,319 pregnancies from the nationwide Danish registries, found that any prescription of antipsychotic medications redeemed by pregnant women from 1997 to 2008 was associated with a 2X greater risk of stillbirth.

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Chemical Restraints and Seclusion “Everyday” Practices in Ontario Psychiatric Hospitals

July 15, 2015

Almost one in four patients in psychiatric hospitals in Ontario, Canada between 2006 and 2010 were subjected to "control interventions" such as chairs that prevent rising, wrist restraints, seclusion rooms, or "acute control medications," reported a study published in Healthcare Management Forum.More →

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FDA: Antidepressant Trials Have Not Adequately Reported Sexual Dysfunction Side Effects

July 14, 2015

A group of US Food and Drug Administration scientists held a forum to discuss how to better evaluate side effects of sexual dysfunction associated with antidepressant drugs during clinical trials, and published their report in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.More →

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Non-drug Approaches and Classroom Adaptations Can Help Children With ADHD

July 13, 2015

Non-drug approaches and adaptations in classrooms can help children diagnosed with ADHD to succeed, according to a systematic review of studies published in Health Technology Assessment. However, it is not yet clear how much these approaches help, or which types of techniques are most effective or cost-effective.More →

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REM Sleep Critical for Children’s Learning — Medications Can Disrupt

July 12, 2015

Disrupting REM sleep in infant cats also disrupted the development of crucial brain and sensory functions affecting learning, according to a study in Science Advances. In a press release, a co-author said that the study had important implications for treating children and youth with psychiatric drugs that can disrupt REM sleep.More →

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Researcher: Antidepressants Protect Against Brain Shrinkage, Despite Our Findings

July 11, 2015

People who have long-term, recurrent depression eventually develop smaller hippocampi in their brains, according to research published in Molecular Psychiatry. And University of Sydney psychiatrist Ian Hickie, a co-author of the study, told The Guardian that there exists "a good bit of evidence" that antidepressants provide a neuroprotective effect against such hippocampal shrinkage. Hickie apparently did not clarify to The Guardian, however, that the particular study he'd just co-authored had actually found the exact opposite -- that antidepressants were associated with greater hippocampal shrinkage.More →

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How Could Taking Placebos Apparently Cause More Tics than Taking Psychostimulants?

July 10, 2015

Reporting on a meta-analysis of studies in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychiatric News stated that, despite safety warnings about it from the FDA, "Psychostimulant use does not appear to be associated with an onset or worsening of tics in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder." Some potentially important information, however, was not mentioned in the article or study.More →

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Caregivers And Patients See Psychiatric Hospital Admission Procedures Very Differently

July 9, 2015

Patients and their family members perceive the relative levels of coercion and procedural justice occurring at psychiatric hospitals very differently, according to a study inPsychiatry Research.More →

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Many Physicians Don’t Understand Key Facts about Prescription Opioid Addictions

July 9, 2015

A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health survey of 1000 US primary care physicians found that many do not understand important facts about the addictive nature of the opioids they are prescribing or about how people become addicted to them. The study was published in The Clinical Journal of Pain.More →

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Antipsychotics Too Often Used to Dampen Aggression in Kids, Not Treat Psychosis

July 8, 2015

Antipsychotics appear to be too often prescribed to curb aggressive impulses in children and youth, rather than to treat psychosis or any other clinically indicated conditions, according to research published in JAMA Psychiatry. A National Institute of Health press release about the NIH-funded study advised that antipsychotics "should be prescribed with care" because they can "adversely affect both physical and neurological function and some of their adverse effects can persist even after the medication is stopped.”More →

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Another Study Finds Gun Violence Not Linked to Mental Illnesses

July 7, 2015

Yet another study -- this one published in Psychiatric Services (in Advance) -- has found that risk of gun violence is not linked to mental illnesses. Instead, once again, substance use and history of violence were found to be better predictors of violence.More →

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Climate Change Already Having Significant Effects on Psyches

July 6, 2015

An international, interdisciplinary team of researchers has published a 53-page report in The Lancet on the spreading health and mental health impacts of climate change.More →

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How Might Sitting Relate To Anxiety Levels?

July 6, 2015

Amount of time spent sitting seems to have a moderate link to people's anxiety levels, according to a systematic review of studies in BMC Public Health.More →

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Longer Working Hours Associated With Increases In Suicidal Feelings

July 5, 2015

People who are working over 60 hours a week are more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and feelings than people working 52 hours a week or less, according to a study inPLoS One, based on data from Korea.More →

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Antidepressants Worsen Rapid Cycling in Bipolar Depression

July 4, 2015

SSRI antidepressant medications contribute to a significant worsening of emotional "rapid cycling" in patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder, according to a study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The authors described the study as the first-ever randomized clinical trial to test whether the finding from previous observational studies was true, and stated that the study clarified the "lack of safety" of antidepressants for some people with bipolar.More →

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Common Risk Factors For Violence in People With Schizophrenia and in General Population

July 3, 2015

People diagnosed with schizophrenia are more likely to commit violent crimes than the general population, and their rate of committing violent crimes has been increasing in recent decades, according to a study in The Lancet Psychiatry. An accompanying commentary clarified, however, that the data showed that the dominant risk factors for committing violence did not actually include diagnoses of schizophrenia, and were similar in both people with schizophrenia and in the general population.More →

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Major Canadian Health Institute Calls For More Psychotherapy Instead of Drugs

July 2, 2015

A new report by the Institut National d’Excellence en Santé et en Services Sociaux (INESSS), an independent health research organization created to advise the Quebec provincial government on best-evidence guidelines, has called for psychotherapy to become the "front-line treatment choice in the mental-health system," reported The Globe and Mail.More →

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US House Committee Votes to Defund Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality

July 2, 2015

The primary agency responsible for investigating and reporting on the quality of health care delivery in the US is a step closer to being completely shut down, reported MedPage Today. The news "will not trend on Twitter, nor is it likely to make the front page of USA Today," lamented Paul Wallace on Health Affairs Blog. "If this bomb goes off undetected, the nation will lose its greatest source for funding research on health-care quality, effectiveness, and patient safety," wrote Jeffrey Lerner on Philly.com.More →

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Slew of New Studies Spot Links Between Psychiatric Medications and Bone Loss, Fractures

July 1, 2015

Four different studies conducted in different ways examining different groups have linked use of certain psychiatric drugs, particularly SSRI antidepressants and antipsychotics but also benzodiazepines, to bone fracture risks and negative impacts on human bone development.More →

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Antidepressant-linked Suicide Data Doctored In Seminal Study

June 30, 2015

An influential 2007 US National Institute of Mental Health-led study included a statistical manipulation that disguised the fact that youth taking antidepressants were actually over four times as likely to experience suicidal events as those taking placebo, according to a study in the International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine. This new published analysis has appeared several years after the revelations were first publicly discussed.More →

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Protesters March On Job Center Over Forced Mental Health Therapy

June 29, 2015

"Mental health workers and their clients marched on a jobcentre in south-west London in protest at a scheme they say frames unemployment as a psychological disorder," reported The Guardian.More →

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Clozapine-induced Stuttering Affects 1% Of Patients

June 29, 2015

A team of psychiatrists from Ireland has found that nearly 1% of patients who take the antipsychotic clozapine experience clozapine-induced stuttering. In Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology, they also described how to eliminate the problem.More →

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More Kids are Being Diagnosed With ADHD, But More Kids are Not Experiencing Symptoms of It

June 28, 2015

The prevalence of ADHD in children and youth has been increasing immensely in recent decades; however, according to a study in the Journal of Attention Disorders, that's because clinicians are more likely to diagnose it, not because more children and youth are having symptoms of ADHD.More →

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Limitations Of Observational Studies Often Not Mentioned

June 27, 2015

A study described in a JAMA Internal Medicine letter showed that mentions of the limitations of observational studies are often buried deep in the discussion sections of papers, and then the frequency of mentions of the limitations drops steadily thereafter in abstracts, press releases and news stories. The study won praise from HealthNewsReview.org.More →

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Antipsychotic Dose Reduction Linked To Long-term Improvements In First-Episode Schizophrenia Patients

June 27, 2015

Careful reductions in dosage levels of antipsychotic medications over time improved long-term rates of recovery and functional remission in patients diagnosed with a first-episode psychosis, according to a study led by Lex Wunderink reported in a Supplement of European Psychiatry.More →

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Psychological Programs Designed To Forcibly “Modify” Unemployed People

June 26, 2015

In order to receive social security benefits, people in the UK are increasingly being forced to undergo psychology assessments and continual attitude-modification training, according to research published in BMJ Open. The British Psychological Society expressed concern that such programs be done "ethically."More →

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More Evidence That Physical Activity May Help Children With ADHD Concentrate

June 25, 2015

Children and teenagers who've been diagnosed with ADHD tend to perform more accurately on attention-demanding tasks when their bodies are moving rather than still, according to a study in Child Neuropsychology. The study reinforces other studies that have suggested that children with ADHD may be "using" physical movement in some way to help focus their attention.More →

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No Treatments Have “Clinically Meaningful” Impacts On Negative Symptoms of Schizophrenia

June 25, 2015

While most treatments have had "statistically significant" success in clinical trials, no common psychiatric or psychological treatments improve what are termed "negative" symptoms of schizophrenia at levels that are "clinically meaningful," according to a meta-analysis in Schizophrenia Bulletin.More →

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Researchers Suggest Anxiety Is Caused By Too Much Serotonin

June 24, 2015

In what a press release from Sweden's Uppsala University called a "major leap forward" in understanding of mental disorders, a study in JAMA Psychiatry reported that, "Individuals with social phobia make too much serotonin. The more serotonin they produce, the more anxious they are in social situations."More →

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Psychotic Delusions Rarely Precede Acts of Violence By People With Mental Illnesses

June 24, 2015

A very small minority of "high-risk" individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses perform acts of violence repeatedly, and their acts of violence are rarely preceded by psychotic experiences, according to a study in Clinical Psychological Science. The findings contradict assertions of advocates for involuntary treatment like E. Fuller Torrey, wrote the authors.More →

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Should Scotland’s Mental Health Laws Apply to People With Learning Disabilities?

June 23, 2015

With Scottish legislators in the midst of debating a new Mental Health Bill, a proposed amendment to the bill would subject certain provisions of Scotland's use of forced mental health treatment to review, according to The Herald Scotland. Currently, not only people diagnosed with mental disorders but also people with learning disabilities and autism can be forcibly treated under Scottish mental health law, and proponents of the amendment are trying to rally public support for a review of those provisions.More →

Monday, July 27, 2015

Psych Headline News Links 7-27-2015

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