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Northwestern research finds drugs aim at wrong target CHICAGO --- More than half the people who take antidepressants for depression never get relief. Why? Because the cause of depression has been oversimplified and drugs designed to treat it aim at the wrong target, according to new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The medications are like arrows shot at the outer rings of a bull's eye instead of the center. A study from the laboratory of long-time depression researcher Eva Redei, presented at the Neuroscience 2009 conference in Chicago this week, appears to topple two strongly held...

WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday. About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Use of antidepressant drugs in the United States doubled between 1996 and 2005, probably because of a mix of factors, researchers reported on Monday. About 6 percent of people were prescribed an antidepressant in 1996 -- 13 million people. This rose to more than 10 percent or 27 million people by 2005, the researchers found. "Significant increases in antidepressant use were evident across all sociodemographic groups examined, except African Americans," Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University in New York and Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia wrote in the Archives of General Psychiatry. "Not...

Recently, I was watching a TV commercial for a self-proclaimed breakthrough drug I was encouraged to “ask my doctor about.” As I was watching the ad all I could think about was how difficult it must be to produce an appealing promotion for a product that has so many devastating side effects. You’d have to be a marketing genius to peddle some of these drugs. One “pharmaceutical therapy” that aims to help people with insomnia sleep better at night, for example, comes with a laundry list of possible side effects, including but not limited to hives, difficulty breathing, swelling of...

A few months ago I read a blog post by Heather Anderson AKA Dooce. Heather is considered an expert on post partum depression and motherhood. She is also a liberal ex-mormon – sort of the anti-Jenny Hatch. She regularly stands against just about everything that is important to me. I found that she was an articulate, smutty, sometimes funny but mean spirited blogger. And that those who tended to comment on her blog also used tons of profanity and were hostile to my LDS religion. I was intrigued by the amount of conversation going on about Antidepressants. (Links and Videos...

Such sexual symptoms have long been known side effects of the popular Prozac class of antidepressants, but a growing body of research suggests that they are far more common than previously thought, perhaps affecting half or more of patients. And a handful of recent medical and psychological journal articles document a small number of cases in which sexual problems remain even after a patient goes off the drugs. "This is such an upsetting issue," said Aline Zoldbrod, a Lexington psychologist and sex therapist. "There are people for whom SSRIs are really life-saving, I think, but the idea that someone would...

Viagra helps women taking antidepressants overcome the sexual dysfunction that can be a side effect of taking the medication, new research says. Researchers from the University of New Mexico School of Medicine found that women who took the erectile dysfunction drug sildenafil, a.k.a Viagra, had an improvement in sexual function in contrast to women who took a placebo. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers said this is the first randomized controlled trial showing that there is a treatment for the sexual dysfunction that women experience as a result of taking antidepressants. According...

Coroner officials released an autopsy report Friday suggesting that a slain Roosevelt High School sophomore who attacked a campus police officer was not taking proper dosages of drugs prescribed to control his mental illness. Dr. David Hadden, Fresno County coroner, said it's clear that Jesus "Jesse" Carrizales, 17, had a high dose of the antidepressant Lexapro in his blood that could have caused him to be paranoid. But the teen's blood also revealed he was not taking antipsychotic drugs. Carrizales' family has said he was taking Lexapro and Geodon, an antipsychotic medication, for depression. Hadden said it's far too early...

“I’ve grown up on medication,” my patient Julie told me recently. “I don’t have a sense of who I really am without it.” At 31, she had been on one antidepressant or another nearly continuously since she was 14. There was little question that she had very serious depression and had survived several suicide attempts. In fact, she credited the medication with saving her life. But now she was raising an equally fundamental question: how the drugs might have affected her psychological development and core identity. It was not an issue I had seriously considered before. Most of my patients,...

The Medicated Americans: Antidepressant Prescriptions on the Rise Close to 10 percent of men and women in America are now taking drugs to combat depression. How did a once rare condition become so common? I am thinking of the Medicated Americans, those 11 percent of women and 5 percent of men who are taking antidepressants. It is Sunday night. The Medicated American—let’s call her Julie, and let’s place her in Winterset, Iowa—is getting ready for bed. Monday morning and its attendant pressures—the rush to get out of the house, the long commute, the bustle of the office—loom. She opens the...

Despite recent bad publicity over withheld studies showing marginal results, the resume of America's arsenal of antidepressants is enviable: consort to celebrities, subject of best-selling books and tabloid headlines. They may be the most celebrated pills since Valium. Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa and Lexapro, among others, have become both household words and medicine-cabinet staples. Known collectively as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, these antidepressants are prescribed for anxiety, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and numerous conditions besides depression. SSRIs are now the most commonly prescribed of all medications in this country. The rate at which physicians prescribed SSRIs more than...

Antidepressants Under Scrutiny Over Efficacy Sweeping Overview Suggests Suppression of Negative Data Has Distorted View of Drugs By DAVID ARMSTRONG and KEITH J. WINSTEIN January 17, 2008; Page D1 The effectiveness of a dozen popular antidepressants has been exaggerated by selective publication of favorable results, according to a review of unpublished data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration. ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE As a result, doctors and patients are getting a distorted view of how well blockbuster antidepressants like Wyeth's Effexor and Pfizer Inc.'s Zoloft really work, researchers asserted in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. Since the overwhelming...

Numerous unpublished studies submitted to the Food and Drug Administration by pharmaceutical companies have found that many popular antidepressants have little or no effect on patients, according to a new review of the previously hidden findings. A total of 74 studies involving a dozen anti-depressants and 12,564 patients were registered with the FDA from 1987 through 2004. The FDA deemed 38 of the studies to be positive. All but one of those studies was published, the researchers said. The other 36 were found to have negative or questionable results by the FDA. Most of those studies -- 22 out of...

OMAHA, Neb. -- The shooter at Westroads Mall was identified as Robert A. Hawkins of Bellevue, according to the Sarpy County Sheriff's Department, and a suicide note said he was going to be famous. Hawkins, 19, had been arrested on a couple of misdemeanors in November and was due in court this month. One charge included minor in possession of alcohol. He was arrested on Nov. 24. He was due in court for an arraignment on Dec. 19. Sarpy County deputies said they are getting a warrant to search Hawkins' home in the Quail Creek neighborhood in Bellevue. The woman...

A Columbine-type massacre tragically went down at a school in Finland the other day, leaving eight dead plus the shooter. According to AHRP, there's evidence that the young shooter was on SSRIs and that they made him "aggressive," a well-documented but often overlooked problem with these drugs. AHRP reports that, although Finnish press accounts include the SSRI information, the possible SSRI connection was stripped from British and American press accounts of the shooting. Now, if the shooter had been drunk or stoned or diagnosed with schizophrenia, they would have included that information, so why would they trim out mentions of...

Last week, leading psychiatric researchers linked a 2004 increase in the suicide rate for children and adolescents to a warning by the Food and Drug Administration about the use of antidepressants in minors. The F.D.A. warning, the researchers suggested, might have resulted in severely depressed teenagers going without needed treatment. But the data in the study, which was published in The American Journal of Psychiatry and received widespread publicity, do not support that explanation, outside experts say. While suicide rates for Americans ages 19 and under rose 14 percent in 2004, the number of prescriptions for antidepressants in that group...

Two large new studies in The American Journal of Psychiatry suggest that treatment of depression, either with psychotherapy or drugs, reduces the risk of suicide attempts in all age groups, especially during the first months of treatment. The findings raise further questions about possible links between antidepressant drugs and suicide. In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration, faced with evidence from controlled studies, mandated a “black box” notification on all antidepressant drugs, warning that their use in children and adolescents could increase the risk of suicide. In May, after reviewing controlled data from all age groups, the F.D.A. required an...

Imagine that you are depressed and see a psychiatrist who explains that you have clinical depression and would benefit from an antidepressant. So far, so good. But then the doctor tells you there is a 60 percent chance that you’ll feel better with this antidepressant and that it could take as long as four to six weeks to find out, during which time you’ll probably have some side effects from the drug. I have just described the state-of-the-art pharmacologic treatment of major depression in 2007. Don’t get me wrong; we have very effective and safe treatments for a broad array...

The number of prescriptions for anti-depressants has hit an all-time high, a mental health charity has said. More than 31 million were written last year - up 6% on the year before, according to Mind. Statistics show that within this figure, prescriptions for SSRIs (Serotonin Specific Reuptake Inhibitors) including Prozac have risen by 10% from 14.7 million to 16.2 million in England. It comes as the charity released research showing that country walks can help reduce depression and raise self-esteem. This has led to calls for "ecotherapy" to become a recognised treatment for people with mental health problems. Ecotherapy: the...

(AP/WLTX) - Young adults beginning treatment with antidepressants should be warned about an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior, federal officials said Wednesday. The Food and Drug Administration proposed labeling changes that would expand a warning now on all antidepressants. The current language applies only to children and adolescents. The expanded warning would apply to adults 18-24 during the first month or two of treatment with the drugs, the FDA said. The proposed labeling changes also would note that studies have not shown this increased risk in adults older than 24, and that adults 65 and older taking antidepressants...

Parents of clinically depressed children often find themselves in a troubling quandary, forced to weigh the mood-lifting benefits of antidepressants against the small but very real risk of suicidal behavior that may occur in young people who take these drugs. The Food and Drug Administration requires a black box warning on antidepressants (including Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft) concerning the possibility of suicidal thoughts, attempts, and behaviors in anyone under 25 who takes the drugs. But a new study, published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, indicates that the drugs' benefits outweigh the risks. Researchers examined 27 clinical...

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- The suspected gunman in the Virginia Tech shooting rampage, Cho Seung-Hui, was a troubled 23-year-old senior from South Korea who investigators believe left an invective-filled note in his dorm room, sources say. The note included a rambling list of grievances and ended with the words "Ismail Ax" in red ink on the inside of one of his arms.

The death of Libby Zion, an 18-year-old college student, in a New York hospital on March 5, 1984, led to a highly publicized court battle and created a cause célèbre over the lack of supervision of inexperienced and overworked young doctors. But only much later did experts zero in on the preventable disorder that apparently led to Ms. Zion’s death: a form of drug poisoning called serotonin syndrome. --snip-- In its classic form, serotonin syndrome involves three categories of symptoms: ¶Cognitive-behavioral symptoms like confusion, disorientation, agitation, irritability, unresponsiveness and anxiety. --snip-- Perhaps adding to the diagnostic challenge is the fact...

In a long-awaited analysis, health officials reported yesterday that antidepressant medications appeared to increase significantly the risk of suicide attempts and related behaviors in adults under 25, while reducing such risks in older people. The analysis, the most comprehensive and rigorous to date, found that suicidal behavior of any kind was rare, and that people taking the medications were no more likely to kill themselves than those taking placebo pills. But adults under 25 taking the drugs were more than twice as likely as those on placebos to report a suicide attempt, or to prepare for one by, say, writing...

Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Suicide rates among the youngest and oldest Americans have steadily declined since the late 1980s, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday in a finding that contradicts popular conceptions that rates were rising. The study suggests that new antidepressant drugs may not raise the risk of suicide after all, the researchers said, but they acknowledge they are mystified by what might be causing the decline, because it is not affecting people aged 25 to 64. "For 40 years adolescent suicide rates rose," said Dr. Robert McKeown, a professor at the University of South Carolina's school...

The results of two new studies may signal a substantial shift in the way psychiatrists and researchers think about treatment for severely depressed patients. --snip-- In the other, psychiatrists in New York found evidence that antidepressant drugs significantly increased the risk that some children and adolescents would attempt or commit suicide. Doctors have debated this risk for years, but the authors of the study were skeptical of it, and their report may sway others. --snip-- The study of suicide risk, led by Dr. Mark Olfson of Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, was based on an analysis...

"This post is dedicated to Rusty Yates, husband of Andrea, and all of the family members of those who have taken Anti-Depressants and had horrific consequences."

If the pursuit of happiness was once an ideal in American life, the entitlement to happiness may now have replaced it. Since the late 1980s, when psychotropic drugs first came on the market, grateful Americans have been lining up at the counter. Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Wellbutrin and a host of other antidepressants have been embraced as practical solutions to everyday unhappiness. More than 15% of Americans now use one of the above. Needless to say, they are not all clinically depressed. Whereas Sigmund Freud once described the goal of psychotherapy as "transforming hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness," many doctors now...

One of the most widely used treatments for the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, the antidepressant Prozac, works no better than dummy pills in preventing recurrence in young women who have recovered from it, researchers are reporting today. The study, the most rigorous to date to test the use of medication for anorexia, should alter treatment for an illness that is often devastatingly chronic and that has a higher mortality than any other psychiatric disorder, experts said. Fewer than a third of the study's participants, who also received regular psychotherapy, remained healthy for a year or more, whether they received drug...

Failure to screen U.S. troops for mental health problems may be the cause of an increasing suicide rate among soldiers serving in Iraq, a report says. According to an investigation by the Hartford (Conn.) Courant, fewer than one in 300 service members see a mental health professional before shipping out, despite a congressional order that all deploying troops by screened, the newspaper reported Sunday. The report uncovered evidence of soldiers suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome being sent back to the war zone and unstable troops being kept on the front lines while taking potent anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs. In addition, the...

After analyzing data from clinical trials, GlaxoSmithKline has sent letters to doctors warning that its antidepressant drug Paxil appears to increase the risk of suicide attempts in some young adults. The company said it had changed the labeling on the drug to reflect the finding of the study, which analyzed clinical trial data involving some 15,000 people. The study found that reported suicide attempts were rare but significantly more common in adults who took the drug for depression than in those who received placebo pills. The Glaxo researchers reported only one suicide in the trials, a number so small it...

Antidepressants work better than psychotherapy in preventing relapses in elderly men and women who have recovered from depression, a new study suggests. The government-financed study, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that a combination of drugs and therapy was the best way to restore well-being in seriously depressed patients 70 and older. Once the patients had recovered, however, drug treatment was more effective over the next two years than once-a-month psychotherapy. Experts said the results underscored the challenges of treating depression in people past retirement age who are buffeted by anxieties — about dying, losing friends,...

NEW YORK, March 2 (UPI) -- Forest Laboratories said Thursday its patent on anti-depressant Lexapro has been extended for nearly two and a half years. The company said it received a notice from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that its patent covering Lexapro's composition of matter has been extended for 828 days. That means the Lexapro patent is now in effect until Sept. 14, 2011, and until March 14, 2012, with inclusion of six months' market exclusivity the drug maker was granted for completing pediatric studies of Lexapro. Lexapro is currently approved to treat major depressive disorder and generalized...

ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK -- New research has linked the use of Prozac and other similar antidepressants during pregnancy to yet another complication in newborns: an uncommon but life-threatening lung problem. Infants whose mothers took the antidepressants in the second half of pregnancy had six times the expected risk of developing the lung disorder, the researchers reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. The antidepressants implicated are called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, a class of drugs that includes Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. "This is the latest in a series of troubling reports of possible adverse effects of...

Pregnant women who take selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants such as Celexa, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft could boost the risk of withdrawal symptoms for their newborns, a new study suggests. However, the Israeli researchers add that these symptoms are usually gone within 48 hours and appear to pose no long-term threat to the infant's health. Another expert noted that stopping antidepressant therapy during pregnancy poses its own risk to the health of a mother and her child. "At present, probably the effect of not treating the women's clinical depression is a much bigger issue for mothers and their infants,"...

Can antidepressants lead people to become violent? The question has been raised frequently in recent years, often by lawyers representing murder defendants who had been taking drugs, such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. It surfaced in Charlotte with the stabbing deaths Jan. 20 of 5-year-old twin girls. Their father, David Crespi, who was taking antidepressants and sleeping pills, was charged with murder. Without details of Crespi's treatment, experts say speculation is dangerous. Even when specifics are known, answers aren't always clear. "Sometimes it is hard to accept (that) we don't know why for sure," said Dr. Ranga Krishnan, chairman of...

In the 60's to 1989 research into tryptophan grew rapidly, millions used it for depression. In 1989, a contaminated batch forced the FDA to pull tryptophan off the US market, never to return. This destroyed all research into this critical amino acid and cleared the way for pharmaceutical drugs and billions of profits for them. I am asking the question, why do so many drugs work on the tryptophan oxygenase (pyrrolase) pathway? We have antidepressants (all classes). Related articles; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=7126996 And here; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1826617 Then we have alcohol; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=10721064&query_hl=9 Then we have asprin; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=7082905&query_hl=15 Nicotine, morphine, phenobarbitone http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=989&query_hl=17 then we have...

Ever since his coruscating book Mad in America was published in 2002, American Robert Whitaker has been a poster boy for the anti-psychiatry movement. In Mad in America (Perseus Books), he argued that the assumption of a physical cause for schizophrenia had given rise to many wrongheaded treatments, from ice-water immersion to today's antipsychotic drugs. These days, the Pulitzer Prize finalist makes a similar case against psychiatry over its approach to the treatment of depression. No one knows for sure whether serotonin has a role in depression, let alone exactly what that role might be. But many doctors pretend they're...

Bitter Pills They're prescribed to millions, but do the new antidepressants work? And are they worth the risk?

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 (UPI) -- The most commonly prescribed anti-depressants may be effective, but drug ads are misleading about how the drugs work, a new study suggests. The study, published in the December issue of the Public Library of Science Medicine, focuses on manufacturers that market the cutting-edge class of anti-depressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. The study results add to the criticism of drug companies for allegedly filling the airwaves with slick but deceptive advertising on various medications. SSRIs can help relieve depression, but the medical evidence that they do so by correcting low levels of serotonin in...

"There is only one problem. "Not a single peer-reviewed article ... support[s] claims of serotonin deficiency in any mental disorder," scientists write in the December issue of the journal PLoS Medicine. Indeed, a steady drip of studies have challenged the "serotonin did it" hypothesis."

"In the United States, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants are advertised directly to consumers [1]. These highly successful direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) campaigns have largely revolved around the claim that SSRIs correct a chemical imbalance caused by a lack of serotonin."

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandated a new warning label be added to antidepressants more than a year ago, cautioning physicians to pay close attention to patients taking the drugs for signs of suicidal behavior. Now the agency issued its second (much stronger) warning, urging the monitoring of adults who use antidepressants for signs of suicidal thoughts and deepening depression.FDA's New AdvisoryThe new warning, which is applicable to children and adults, was in the wake of recent studies that linked suicidal behavior in adults to their use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), the most commonly prescribed class of...

Efficacy of antidepressants in adults BMJ  2005;331:155-157 (16 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7509.155Joanna Moncrieff, senior lecturer in social and community psychiatry1, Irving Kirsch, professor of psychology2  1 Department of Mental Health Sciences, University College London, London W1N 8AA, 2 School of Health and Social work, University of Plymouth, PlymouthCorrespondence to: J Moncrieff j.moncrieff@ucl.ac.uk Most people with depression are initially treated with antidepressants. But how well do the data support their use, and should we reconsider our strategy?     Introduction TopIntroductionEfficacySeverity of depressionMethodological issues in...Effect of antidepressantsConclusionsReferences   The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently recommended that antidepressants, in particular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors,...

The yearlong debate over whether antidepressant drugs increase the risk of suicide in some children may soon widen to include adults, as English and Canadian scientists are reporting findings from three new analyses of suicide risk in people over age 18 who have taken the medications. The new findings are mixed, and apparently contradictory, and likely to encourage both patient advocates who believe that antidepressants like Prozac have hidden dangers, and manufacturers who insist that the medications are safe, experts said. One of the reports, an analysis of data on antidepressants from previous studies, found that adults taking the drugs...

THE NATION Numbers have declined since a 1980s peak when such drugs came into use, a study finds. A skeptic says gun laws might be the cause. The U.S. suicide rate has fallen steadily since Prozac and related antidepressants came into use in the late 1980s, according to an analysis by researchers worried that evidence linking the drugs to suicide in children could reduce their use. The suicide rate, which reached a peak in 1988 of nearly 13 deaths per 100,000 people, fell steadily to about 10.5 in 2002. Most suicides are the result of untreated depression, not adverse reactions...

In the wake of a yearlong debate over the risks of antidepressants to minors, a new analysis of World Health Organization medical records has found that infants whose mothers take the drugs while pregnant may suffer withdrawal symptoms shortly after they are born. The study challenges the assurances that many doctors have long given pregnant women with depression that taking the drugs would not affect their babies. But experts said that the study, appearing today in the journal Lancet, was not definitive, and must be weighed against the benefits of drug treatment. Untreated maternal depression can also harm a developing...

Sharp Decrease Seen After Reports of Risks The number of American children taking antidepressant drugs fell sharply last year, after months of controversy over evidence that the medications increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior among some children. The steep decline among children is a dramatic reversal of a decade-long trend of soaring prescription rates for drugs such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft, and the pattern of the data suggests the numbers could fall even further. Activists who had urged the Food and Drug Administration to require a black-box warning about the risks of the drugs said the drop...

I heard from two different sources in two days that there have been some reports that the army reservists working at Abu Graib were being prescribed anti-depressants because of the high stress of their jobs. Now I am not saying this is true, but I am asking if anyone here at FR has any contacts to find this kind of info out. I know in the case of those kids at Columbine, it took over a year for the info that those kids were on similar drugs to come out. It was all quashed because of doctor/patient confidentiality. I think...

CASES As a psychopharmacologist, I know that every patient responds slightly differently to medication. But it wasn't until I met Susan that I understood just how differently. She'd come to see me because she was depressed, and I'd successfully treated her with a course of Zoloft, a popular antidepressant. But as often happens, Susan's desire for sex had vanished along with her depressed mood. "I kind of miss it, but I feel really bad for my husband, who's getting very frustrated," she said. The sexual side effects of antidepressants like Zoloft and Prozac - the class of drugs known as...