Low doses of psychedelic drugs, including lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), ketamine, and psilocybin, may reduce clinical symptoms in patients with depression, anxiety, obsession-compulsive disorders (OCDs), and chronic pain, without inducing depersonalization or hallucinations, according to a new Perspectives article published online August 18 in Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
At least a dozen major drug and device makers are under investigation by federal prosecutors and securities regulators in a broadening bribery inquiry into whether the companies made illegal payments to doctors and health officials in foreign countries. In previous investigations, federal officials have charged that some companies made these kinds of payments to encourage doctors abroad to order or prescribe their products.
The suicide rate among military veterans has ballooned in recent years, in part because of overmedication of service members and a lack of support for veterans, advocates for treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder said Thursday. Psychiatrists sometimes prescribe drugs as a cure without an actual understanding of what the drugs do, said Dr. Peter R. Breggin, a psychiatrist and author from Ithaca, N.Y.
Sixteen months after 7-year-old Gabriel Myers committed suicide while taking psychotropic drugs, the state of Florida has banned allowing any children in the state’s custody from participating in clinical drug trials.
Patient advocates filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday charging that New Jersey psychiatric hospitals routinely medicate patients against their will without a review by an outside arbiter, a practice that is banned in most other states.