Before psychiatrists start vying for more $ to drug troops ask: Was Fort Hood, Texas shooter part of our medicated army?

Data contained in the Army’s fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope. Nearly 40% of Army suicide victims in 2006 and 2007 took psychotropic drugs — overwhelmingly, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft.

Say what? Psychiatrist Charles Nemeroff who failed to report $1.2 mil in Pharma deals lands psych chairmanship at University

Last year Nemeroff, as chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Emory University, was the intense focus of an investigation by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who said he was concerned about the money the psychiatrist received from drug companies while conducting supposedly unbiased research for the National Institutes of Health on drugs made by the companies he was receiving money from.

New study confirms the obvious: Babies of women taking antidepressants while pregnant have more health problems

Dr. Tessa Ververs of the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands and her colleagues found that of the children whose mothers had used antidepressants throughout pregnancy, three had to have a major heart procedure performed in their first year of life. That made them six times more likely than children whose mothers had never used antidepressants to need a heart procedure.

$112 million settlement: charged with kickbacks from drug company & recommending docs prescribe antipsychotic drug Risperdal

The U.S. Justice Department said that Johnson & Johnson’s kickbacks to Omnicare, the largest U.S. provider of pharmacy services to nursing homes, took multiple forms, including rebates that were conditioned on Omnicare engaging in an ‘Active Intervention Program’ for Risperdal and payments disguised as data purchase fees, educational grants, and fees to attend Omnicare meetings.