Posts Tagged 'Prozac'

Research may aid treatment of depression

According to a Reuters story, scientists have identified biological markers in the blood that may eventually help doctors match patients to the best type of treatment for depression.

The story says major depression affects around 20 percent of people at some point in their lives, and the World Health Organization predicts it will soon rival heart disease as the health disorder with the highest global disease burden.

But up to now, treatment ...

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Study: Antidepressants raise accident risk

According to a story in the Daily Mail, a study from the University of Taiwan finds that taking common antidepressants increases the risk of automobile accidents.

Researchers found those taking a common group of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors were 72 percent more at risk.

This isn’t the first time that a study has identified a safety risk associated with taking SSRI antidepressants. A number of studies have linked SSRI ...

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Alternatives exist to antidepressants

In a column for the Chicago Daily Herald, Patrick B. Massey, M.D., Ph.D, explores the question of how effective antidepressants are, and what alternatives are available.

Antidepressants are now the most commonly prescribed class of medication in the United States. About 1 in 10 Americans is taking one or more antidepressants – a figure that has doubled over the last 20 years.

Recently published research has indicated that prescription antidepressants work best ...

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Article questions psychiatry’s reliance on drugs

In an article for the New York Review of Books, Marcia Angell examines the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, as well as several recent books by mental health professionals that take a critical look at modern psychiatry’s over-reliance on pharmaceuticals.

She writes that the books “document the ‘frenzy’ of diagnosis, the overuse of drugs with sometimes devastating side effects, and widespread conflicts ...

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Book takes critical look at antidepressant marketing

Scientific American recently reviewed the book “The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth,” which takes a critical look at antidepressants, and at the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture and market them.

According to the review, Kirsch took a thorough look at all the data from experiments with antidepressants several years ago. He came to the conclusion that antidepressants such as Prozac and Zoloft work about as well as sugar pills given ...

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Authors explore mental illness ‘epidemic’

An article in the New York Review of Books takes a look at three recent titles exploring a current American phenomenon that writer Marcia Angell terms a “rampaging epidemic of mental illness.”

The three titles are: The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth
by Irving Kirsch; Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker; and Unhinged: The Trouble ...

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