Scientists at the University of Liverpool argue that anti-obesity drugs fail to provide lasting benefits for health and well-being because they tackle the biological consequences of obesity, and not the important psychological causes of over-consumption and weight gain. ...

Conventional antidepressant treatments generally require three to four weeks to become effective, thus the discovery of treatments with a more rapid onset is a major goal of biological psychiatry. The first drug found to produce rapid improvement in mood was the NMDA glutamate receptor antagonist, ketamine. In a new issue of Biological Psychiatry, published by Elsevier, researchers from the National Institu ...

Scientists have long pondered the seeming contradiction that taking broad-spectrum antibiotics over a long period of time can lead to severe secondary bacterial infections. Now researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine may have figured out why. The investigators show that "good" bacteria in the gut keep the immune system primed to more effectively fight infection from invading patho ...

Antidepressant medication has taken a beating in recent published scientific literature that examines its efficacy to treat depression. Now for some good news on antidepressant medication. Patients who received the antidepressant escitalopram following a stroke appeared to recover more of their thinking, learning, and memory skills than those taking placebo or participating in problem-solving therapy, accor ...

A new study from researchers at Columbia University Medical Center shows that an excess of one type of serotonin receptor in the center of the brain may explain why antidepressants fail to relieve symptoms of depression for 50 percent of patients. The study in a mouse model is the first to find a causal link between receptor number and antidepressant treatment and may lead to more personalized treatment for ...

Emerging research suggests that anti-depressants may only help those with severe depression as previously discussed in Antidepressant Medications May Benefit Only Persons With Severe Depression and Anti-Depressant Medication & The Placebo Effect. Readers may be interested in a well-written article by Moncrieff & Cohen (2006) that discusses questionable theoretical paradigms and research that contributed to ...

BMED Report detailed the effectiveness of anti-depressant medication with only the most severely depressed in 2008 in "Anti-Depressant Medication & The Placebo Effect". A new analysis of randomized trials indicates that compared with placebo, the magnitude of benefit of antidepressant medications varies with the severity of depressive symptoms, and may provide little benefit for patients with mild or modera ...

Overall, only about half of Americans diagnosed with major depression in a given year receive treatment for it, and even fewer - about one fifth - receive treatment consistent with current practice guidelines, according to data from nationally representative surveys supported by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Among the ethnic/racial groups surveyed, African Americans and Mexican Americans had t ...

I came across an interesting article in the SF Gate (San Francisco Chronicle) entitled, "Parents fight use of new psych meds for kids." Public newspaper articles are seldom featured on this website, but I think this an important topic that needs to be discussed more. I am personally troubled with current trends in psychiatry to prescribe serious psychotropic medications with potentially devastating side eff ...

A recent meta-analysis* revealed that smokers who use a pharmacotherapy to aid in smoking cessation were twice as likely, on average, to maintain complete abstinence from cigarettes. Researchers analyzed 70 randomized controlled trials comprising 32,908 participants. Seven approved pharmacotherapies at 6 and 12 months of use were evaluated, including gum, inhaler, nasal spray, patch, and tablet nicotine the ...