antipsychotic drugs

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Man Who Said J&J Drug Made Him Grow Breasts Awarded $8B

Punitive damages awarded over Risperdal,

(Newser) - Johnson & Johnson is facing lawsuits from more than 13,000 people over the antipsychotic drug Risperdal, and now one of those complaints has spurred an enormous payout. The AP and New York Times report that a Philly jury has come in with an $8 billion award in punitive damages...

20K Crib-Age Kids Given Antipsychotic Medication

Experts baffled by high numbers

(Newser) - Your child under the age of 2 is behaving oddly—is antipsychotic medication the answer? Many apparently think so: Nearly 20,000 prescriptions for anti-psychotics were given to US children that age in 2014 for withdrawn or violent behavior, up from 13,000 the year before, despite zero published research...

Schizophrenia Treatment Sees a Simple Breakthrough

Early intervention has caught on in Australia and the UK

(Newser) - When Glenn, a smart high school student with a knack for building robots, began experiencing episodes of psychosis, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and given a grim prognosis. He was prescribed medications and saw therapists, "But the common message from virtually everybody who worked with Glenn was that his...

Behavioral Drugs May Triple Kids' Risk of Diabetes
Behavioral Drugs May Triple Kids' Risk of Diabetes
STUDY SAYS
Aug 22, 2013 8:58 AM CDT

Behavioral Drugs May Triple Kids' Risk of Diabetes

Anti-psychotics cause weight gain, increased insulin resistance: study

(Newser) - Anti-psychotic drugs, used to treat behavioral disorders in children, may actually be tripling their risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Those who took Abilify, Risperdal, Seroquel, and Zyprexa were three times more at risk than those who took other drugs for the same issues, USA Today reports, via a 12-year...

In One Fight With Bipolar Disorder, a Loss of Self

A patient learns that mental-health experts ignore identity

(Newser) - Bipolar disorder sent Linda Logan on a terrifying journey in her thirties. A budding writer and mother of three, she was hospitalized several times with the illness and found herself losing all sense of identity. "I was stripped of my identity as wife, mother, teacher, and writer and transformed...

Court: Loughner Can Refuse Meds

No forced medication for Tucson suspect while appeal is pending

(Newser) - Jared Lee Loughner's right to refuse antipsychotic medication trumps the federal government's interest in making him sane enough to stand trial for the Tucson shootings in which Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was injured, an appeals court has decided. The court ruled that its injunction against forcibly medicating Loughner should...

Jared Loughner Appeals Judge's Order That He Be Forced to Take Antipsychotic Drugs
 Loughner Appeals Forced Meds 
Jul 2, 2011 7:46 AM CDT

Loughner Appeals Forced Meds

Drugs will attempt to make him competent to stand trial

(Newser) - Attorneys for Jared Lee Loughner yesterday appealed a federal judge's ruling that he can be forced to continue taking anti-psychotic drugs. Loughner's attorneys appealed to the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco in a one-paragraph filing. They say Loughner, accused in the Tucson shooting rampage...

Judge Rules Jared Loughner Can Be Forcibly Medicated

'I didn't go to medical school,' says judge

(Newser) - A judge ruled yesterday that accused Tucson gunman Jared Loughner can be forced to take antipsychotic drugs in an attempt to make him mentally fit to stand trial, reports the LA Times . Defense attorneys for the schizophrenic Loughner had tried to block him from being medicated without his consent , but...

Defense: Prison Will Force Drugs on Loughner

Attorneys file emergency motion to stop forced medication

(Newser) - Prison officials will force Tucson shooting suspect Jared Loughner to take anti-psychotic drugs after finding earlier this month that he is a danger to himself, his lawyers say. The attorneys have filed an emergency motion asking the judge to put a stop to it, but US District Judge Larry Burns...

Nursing Homes Overmedicating Seniors With Dementia: Health Department Report
Nursing Homes, Big Pharma Overmedicating Seniors
federal report
May 10, 2011 4:38 PM CDT

Nursing Homes, Big Pharma Overmedicating Seniors

Residents with dementia get antipsychotics, boosting death risk: US report

(Newser) - Nursing homes are treating dementia sufferers with powerful antipsychotics despite FDA advice to the contrary, according to a Health and Human Services report spotted by Pro Publica . The FDA began requiring antipsychotics to carry warning labels in 2005 stating the increased death risk they pose for dementia patients. But 88%...

More and More Toddlers Prescribed Antipsychotics

Do 18-month-olds need extreme psychiatric medicine?

(Newser) - Kyle Warren was given his first dose of antipsychotic drugs to deal with his temper tantrums at 18 months. By age three, he’d been diagnosed with autism, bipolar disorder, hyperactivity, insomnia, and oppositional defiant disorder, and was taking a fistful of psychiatric medicine each day. He was, his parents...

Medicaid Kids Given Antipsychotics 4X More

Seen as most effective treatment; counseling often goes by wayside

(Newser) - Kids on Medicaid rolls are prescribed antipsychotic drugs at an eye-popping rate four times that of kids with private insurance, federal data show, underlining how pills rather than counseling are often seen as the most efficient way to deal with underprivileged children. And not only are Medicaid kids receiving more...

Insane Asylums Weren't So Bad: Oliver Sacks

(Newser) - Mental health experts have lost touch with the benefits of old-fashioned insane asylums, where patients once enjoyed a sense of community and jobs like cleaning and farming, Oliver Sacks writes in the New York Review of Books. Touching on a new book of Christopher Payne photographs called Asylum—which offers...

Antipsychotic Drugs Triple Health Risks in Elderly

Dementia research finds even brief use is dangerous

(Newser) - Elderly dementia patients given antipsychotic drugs, even briefly, are three times as likely to end up hospitalized or dead within a month, new research has found. The study looked at 40,000 elderly Canadians, half of them in nursing homes, and found that the drugs increased the risk of...

US Drugging Foreigners for Deportation

More than 'last resort,' practice violates international standards

(Newser) - The US government injects hundreds of illegal immigrants with dangerous psychotropic drugs to keep them sedated while being deported, the Washington Post reports. The so-called "pre-flight cocktail" often leaves detainees so incapacitated they need a wheelchair to get onto the plane. Used far more often than the "last...

Lynne Spears: Manager Drugged, Abused Britney

Pal Sam Lufti 'claims to control everything'

(Newser) - Britney Spears' manager has been drugging and verbally attacking the singer, her mom said in papers filed to support her application for a restraining order against Sam Lutfi. Lynne Spears says in a document dated Jan. 31 that Lutfi "claims to control everything"—he cut her daughter's phone...

Nursing Homes Fight Drug Addiction
Nursing Homes Fight Drug Addiction
Dec 20, 2007 1:30 PM CST

Nursing Homes Fight Drug Addiction

Use of anti-psychotics for dementia soars; alternatives sought

(Newser) - Despite known dangers—including an increased risk of death—the use of anti-psychotic drugs to control elderly dementia patients has surged, to an estimated 30% of all nursing home residents. Under pressure to cut back, some homes are experimenting with alternatives, like letting distraught patients do what they want to...

Nursing Homes Misuse Meds to Control Patients

'Off label' antipsychotic use drives up costs, sparks concern

(Newser) - Understaffed US nursing homes are increasingly turning to antipsychotic drugs to control elderly residents, even though most display symptoms of dementia rather than the psychotic disorders the drugs are intended to treat, the Wall Street Journal reports. Such “off-label” usage defies FDA warnings that elderly patients using the drugs...

Schizophrenia Drug Offers New Hope
Schizophrenia Drug Offers
New Hope
Sep 3, 2007 3:58 AM CDT

Schizophrenia Drug Offers New Hope

Works on different brain chemical than its predecessors

(Newser) - The first human trial of a new medication to treat schizophrenia that works fundamentally differently from its predecessors has shown promising results, according to this month's Nature Medicine. The drug targets glutamate rather than dopamine, as do other drugs. Scientists have long known glutamate is involved in schizophrenia.

Psych Drugs Drove Kid Crazy
Psych Drugs Drove Kid Crazy
May 18, 2007 9:44 PM CDT

Psych Drugs Drove Kid Crazy

Careless prescriptions turned shy chess nerd into into belligerent hulk

(Newser) - The careless prescription of anti-psychotic drugs, often by psychiatrists who draw pay checks from the companies who make them, has drawn attention in the New York Times recently. Now Ann Bauer, writing in Salon, draws an intimate portrait of the effects of such carelessness on one autistic teenager, who turned...

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