Tag: mental health

The Information War Over Antidepressants

Stat News hit the ethical and scientific bottom two weeks ago when they published an article by Stephen B. Soumerai, professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Christine Y. Lu, professor at the Sydney Pharmacy School of the University of Sydney.1

I have rarely seen so much disinformation in so few words, only 1,220. I reproduce the article in its entirety, in italics, with my comments. 

I do not consider Stat News a reliable news source. It has corporate ties, and despite its name, it has nothing to do with statistics, which I thought for ten years till I looked it up. Stat is short for Statim, which means immediate in Latin. 

The two professors have forgotten that professors have an obligation towards society to be honest conveyors of science. Their article is propaganda of the worst kind, which is apparent already in its title and subtitle: 

RFK Jr.’s war on antidepressants is coming – and it will cost lives. Kennedy’s rhetoric is not only based on bad science, it fuels distrust in mental health treatments.

It is primitive and a no-go for scientists to raise their voice by using war rhetoric but they continue with this in the first sentence of the article: 

While his war on vaccines may be getting more attention, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is coming for another important medical tool: antidepressants. In November, he posted on X that the CDC is “finally confronting the long-taboo question of whether SSRIs and other psychoactive drugs contribute to mass violence.” We fear that in 2026, he may turn his rhetoric into action.

Kennedy has not started a war on vaccines.2-6 As health secretary, he has taken rational, much needed, and evidence-based initiatives. He fired the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because it rubber-stamped all proposals that came to them and because some members had conflicts of interest in relation to vaccine manufacturers and other drug companies; dropped the much too broad recommendations for the Covid vaccine; cut funding for mRNA vaccines; stopped recommending the hepatitis B vaccine for all newborns; and reduced the huge childhood vaccine schedule that made the US an outlier compared to Europe. 

Moreover, it is well documented that SSRIs and other psychoactive drugs can cause violence.7-11 For antidepressants, the violence is dose-related,11 and it is highly relevant to study their role in mass shootings. Unfortunately, the authorities routinely refuse to release information about what drugs the mass murderers were on. It has become taboo to mention that psychiatric drugs kill people, indeed to such an extent that they are the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer (much because elderly people may lose balance, break their hip, and die).12 

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UK Asylum Seekers to Be Given Taxpayer-Funded Personal Therapists: Report

The British government will reportedly provide taxpayer-funded therapists for alleged asylum seekers who entered the country illegally.

The Home Office has commandeered the Cameron Barracks in Inverness, Scotland, to accommodate around 300 male asylum seekers as it seeks to transition away from the practice of block-booking hotels throughout the country to house illegals.

However, the Cameron Barracks plans have also sparked controversy after The Telegraph reported this week that the illegals set to be housed at the site will have their own dedicated therapists provided to them at taxpayer expense.

Highland councillors were told this week that having therapists provided at the site would mean that the illegals would not have to access local NHS services.

“Primary health care will be available on-site, including mental health support. Funding for these services will be provided by the Home Office to minimise impact on local GP surgeries and NHS resources,” they were told.

However, some have noted that this would effectively mean that illegal migrants would be given preferential treatment, given that people in the area often wait around five months before being able to see an NHS therapist.

Thomas Kerr, a spokesman for Reform UK, said: “The Cameron Barracks is simply the wrong location for a facility like this. Local people are rightly angry and demanding their voices be heard.

“To now learn that taxpayers will also be paying for mental health support for people who have come to this country illegally is a massive slap in the face.”

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AI Shows Symptoms of Anxiety, Trauma, PTSD – And It’s Ruining Your Mental Health Too

Grok, Gemini and ChatGPT exhibit symptoms of poor mental health according to a new study that put various AI models through weeks of therapy-style questioning. Some are now curious about “AI mental health”, but the real warning here is about how unstable these systems – which are already being used by one in three UK adults for mental health support – become in emotionally charged conversations. Millions of people are turning to AI as replacement therapists, and in the last year alone we’ve seen a spike in lawsuits connecting chatbot interactions with self-harm and suicide cases in vulnerable users.

The emerging picture is not that machines are suffering or mentally unwell, but that a product being used for mental-health support is fundamentally misleading, escalating, and reinforcing dangerous thoughts. 

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Dystopian Horror: ONE IN FOUR British Teens Turn To AI ‘Therapy’ Bots For Mental Health

One in four British teenagers have resorted to AI chatbots for mental health support over the past year, exposing the chilling reality of a society where machines replace human connection amid crumbling government services. 

The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) surveyed 11,000 kids aged 13 to 16 in England and Wales, revealing that over half sought some form of mental health aid, with a quarter leaning on AI. 

Victims or perpetrators of violence were even more likely to confide in these digital voids. As The Independent reported, “The YEF said AI chatbots could appeal to struggling young people who feel it is safer and easier to speak to an AI chatbot anonymously at any time of day rather than speaking to a professional.”

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A Few ‘Laughing Gas’ Breaths May Rapidly Lift Depression, Major Study Finds

Nitrous oxide is emerging as a surprisingly fast-acting option for people with major or treatment-resistant depression.

New research shows that even a single inhaled dose can ease symptoms within a day, while repeated sessions may create longer-lasting improvements.

Nitrous Oxide Shows Potential for Fast Depression Relief

Patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder, including many who have not improved with first-line antidepressants, may benefit from short-term treatment with nitrous oxide. This conclusion comes from a large meta-analysis led by the University of Birmingham.

A new paper published in eBioMedicine on November 30 reviewed the most reliable clinical data available to examine how medically administered nitrous oxide (N2O) may offer rapid relief from depressive symptoms in adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) and treatment-resistant depression (TRD).

Understanding TRD and Why New Options Are Needed

TRD refers to depression that remains insufficiently controlled after a person has tried two different antidepressants. According to a previous study* by the same research team, about 48% of UK patients see limited benefit from current treatments, making the search for alternative approaches increasingly important.

To explore this further, researchers from the University of Birmingham, University of Oxford, and Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust examined seven clinical trials and four protocol papers produced by scientists around the world. These studies focused on how nitrous oxide, a gas commonly used as pain relief in medical settings, might help treat depressive disorders such as MDD, TRD, and bipolar depression.

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The No‑Exit Mental Health System: The Federal Government Puts You on Psychiatric Drugs and Never Lets You Off

The Federal Government is the largest funder of mental health services and psychiatric drugs, yet these same federal agencies that provide mental health services do not provide any information for safely getting off the drugs. AbleChild believes that as the largest supplier of psychiatric drugs, the federal government should also provide an “Exit plan” for deprescribing psychiatric drugs.

Medicaid and Medicare Part D treat psychiatric drugs as “must-cover” commodities: federal rules require drug plans to cover all or nearly all antidepressants and antipsychotics as protected classes, ensuring easy access and steady revenue for manufacturers. With Medicaid alone, antipsychotics generated more than 73 million prescription claims and  more than 6 billion dollars in one year, accounting for roughly 9% of all Medicaid drug spending and 10% of prescriptions.

This federal psychiatric drug infrastructure is one-way: it is built to initiate and maintain long-term drug exposure. There is no parallel requirement that any prescriber, clinic, or health plan design a personalized Exit plan before starting any psychiatric medications, and no federal benefit category that funds slow, labor-intensive taper support the way it funds prescription refills.

Regulators acknowledge serious risks associated with too many of the psychiatric drugs. For example, the Food and Drug Administration’s, (FDA) black-box warnings on antidepressants note increased suicidality risk in children, teens, and young adults, and require close monitoring when treatment is started or doses are changed. Large reviews of antidepressant withdrawal find that discontinuation symptoms are common—An alarming body of meta-analyses and large-scale surveys consistently demonstrates that between one-third and nearly one-half of patients prescribed psychiatric drugs experience withdrawal effects, with a significant portion enduring severe and drawn-out symptoms. For many, these reactions are far more than discomfort—they include incapacitating dizziness, unrelenting nausea, jarring electric-shock sensations, agitation, and relentless insomnia, often rivaling or overwhelming the original condition that led to treatment.

Beyond these physical and psychological torments, the risks escalate further. Withdrawal can trigger waves of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, with evidence linking severe discontinuation—particularly of antidepressants and opioids—to suicide attempts and completed suicides. Research documents the strong association between withdrawal and heightened aggression or violence, whether due to direct drug effects, physical desperation, or drug-seeking behavior fueled by protracted suffering. These dangers are not rare complications—they are consequences faced by a non-trivial share of those attempting to discontinue psychiatric drugs, and their impact on patient safety, public health, and the justice system is profound and underacknowledged.

Yet despite clear evidence that stopping psychiatric drugs can be medically complex and dangerous, U.S. law does not guarantee access to slow tapers, compounding, or close follow-up, when patients want to come off the drugs. A few specialty guidelines now outline careful benzodiazepine tapers and warn against abrupt cessation, but they are advisory documents, not enforceable rights. In practice, patients are routinely placed on medications with known withdrawal syndromes, while being left to navigate the exit alone or with minimal support when they try to stop.

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TikTok Zombie Brain Rot Confirmed By Major Study

A bombshell Griffith University study has validated a long suspected reality: short-form videos (SFVs) like TikToks and Instagram Reels are frying brains, slashing attention spans, and crippling cognitive endurance.

Such content is turning a generation into scatterbrained zombies unable to tackle real-world complexities amid algorithmic dopamine traps.

The meta-analysis, reviewing 71 studies and data from 98,299 participants, uncovered a “consistent pattern” of harm from heavy SFV consumption. 

Such content is turning a generation into scatterbrained zombies unable to tackle real-world complexities amid algorithmic dopamine traps.

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Trial shows promise for treating anxiety with LSD

At Dr. David Feifel’s Kadima Neuropsychiatry Institute clinic in La Jolla, patients come in with depression, anxiety, PTSD, OCD and eating disorders.

But what sets this office apart is how these diagnoses are treated.

“I just felt that I wanted to create a center that focused on these advanced treatments that have expertise in these treatments and that also would be involved in developing the next generation of treatments,” Dr. Feifel said.

He opened his clinic in 2017 and is excited for this new era in psychedelic research.

“We’re picking up where we left off 30-40 years ago, and they are just looking very, very promising,” Dr. Feifel said.

One of the fastest-growing conditions his clinic sees is generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD.

“We see it especially growing among the youth and young females especially,” Dr. Feifel said.

One of those patients is Lucas Hoffman, who’s battled GAD for years, trying treatment after treatment for several years, with no major benefits.

As part of Dr. Feifel’s clinic, Hoffman joined a clinical trial for a new investigational drug called MM-120, a pharmaceutically optimized version of LSD.

“I came in that morning, I was a little late for the dosing session because I was dragging at home,” Hoffman said. “I was pretty, pretty nervous,”

In a controlled environment, patients receive a single monitored dose.

“I really personally, and this cannot represent the expectation for any of you on the trial, I really did, feel a sense of freedom,” Hoffman said. “I felt a breakthrough of some of the anxiety that was holding on so tightly to me.”

Early results are encouraging.

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Simple Hair-Test Identifies Children At Highest Risk For Depression And Anxiety

Measuring stress levels through hair samples could provide important clues about mental health risks in children living with chronic physical illnesses, research suggests.

“Hair cortisol offers a non-invasive, easy-to-collect biomarker that could one day be used to screen children and track whether treatments or support programs are helping to reduce stress,” study co-author Mark Ferro, a professor in the University of Waterloo’s School of Public Health Sciences, said in a press statement.

An estimated 40 percent of children in Canada live with chronic physical illnesses (CPI)—a number that has been increasing over the past decades.

As George Citroner details below for The Epoch Times, those with higher cortisol levels are more likely to develop mental health problems at rates ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent, significantly higher than the prevalence in healthy children, researchers noted.

These conditions can lead to lower quality of life, suicidal thoughts, and greater use of health care services.

Chronic Illness Linked to Mental Health Difficulties

Published this year in Stress and Health, the study tracked 244 Canadian children with chronic physical illnesses over four years. Researchers used hair cortisol, a biological marker that reflects stress over time, to measure stress levels.

The results showed that more than two-thirds of the children had consistently high cortisol levels.

When comparing these stress patterns to reports of emotional and behavioral difficulties, scientists saw that children whose cortisol levels declined showed fewer symptoms of anxiety, depression, and behavior problems than those whose levels remained high.

Why Hair Testing Matters

Unlike current screening methods that rely on behavioral assessments after problems emerge, hair cortisol testing could identify at-risk children years earlier. The hormone cortisol accumulates in hair over months, providing a long-term picture of stress levels that blood or saliva tests cannot capture.

According to researchers, this discovery could help guide prevention and treatment strategies to better support children’s well-being.

“Our findings suggest that chronically high stress, measured through hair samples, could help identify children with CPI at the highest risk for developing mental health problems. This opens the door to earlier and more targeted support,” lead study author Emma Littler, a University of Waterloo doctoral candidate in public health sciences, said in the press statement.

As hair develops, cortisol from the bloodstream and from secretions of sweat and sebaceous glands becomes embedded within the hair shaft.

Human scalp hair typically grows at a fairly consistent rate of about 1 centimeter per month, which allows a 1 centimeter segment of hair to serve as a reliable indicator of the average stress level during that month.

To create a historical record of cortisol exposure, hair is often sectioned into segments; for instance, a 3-centimeter sample can be divided into three 1-centimeter segments, each representing a separate month. In laboratory analysis, the hair sample undergoes washing to eliminate external contaminants, followed by pulverization and incubation in a solvent such as methanol to extract the cortisol.

The extracted hormone is then measured using highly sensitive techniques such as enzyme-linked immunoassay or liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. The resulting measurement is expressed as the amount of cortisol per milligram of hair, typically in picograms per milligram.

Dr. Molly McVoy, an associate professor of psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, noted that anxiety and mood disorders such as depression are most commonly associated with chronic medical conditions. She pointed out that in these conditions, changes in cortisol are signs that a child is more at risk for an anxiety or mood disorder.

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‘Massive legal siege’ against social media companies looms

Thousands of plaintiffs’ complaints, millions of pages of internal documents and transcripts of countless hours of depositions are about to land in U.S. courtrooms, threatening the future of the biggest social media companies.

The blizzard of paperwork is a byproduct of two consolidated lawsuits accusing Snap Inc.’s Snapchat; Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook and Instagram; ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok; and Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube of knowingly designing their platforms to addict users — allegedly resulting in youth depression, anxiety, insomnia, eating disorders, self-harm and even suicide.

The litigation, brewing for more than three years, has had to overcome numerous hurdles, including the liability shield that has protected social media platforms from facing user-harm lawsuits. The social media companies have filed multiple motions to dismiss the cases on the grounds that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act prevents them from being held accountable for content posted on their sites.

Those motions have been largely unsuccessful, and courtrooms across the country are poised to open their doors for the first time to the alleged victims of social media. The vast majority of cases have been folded into two multijurisdictional proceedings, one in state and the other in federal court, to streamline the pretrial discovery process.

The first bellwether trial is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles Superior Court in late January. It involves a 19-year-old woman from Chico, California, who says she’s been addicted to social media for more than a decade and that her nonstop use of the platforms has caused anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia. Two other trials will follow soon after, with thousands more waiting in the wings. If successful, these cases could result in multibillion-dollar settlements — akin to tobacco and opioid litigation — and change the way minors interact with social media.

“This is going to be one of the most impactful litigations of our lifetime,” said Joseph VanZandt, an attorney at Beasley Allen Law Firm in Montgomery, Alabama, and co-lead plaintiffs’ attorney for the coordinated state cases. “This is about large corporations targeting vulnerable populations — children — for profit. That’s what we saw with the tobacco companies; they were also targeting adolescents and trying to get them addicted while they were young.”

Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle, makes a similar comparison to tobacco litigation in the Bloomberg documentary Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media. “In the case of Facebook, you have internal documents saying ‘tweens are herd animals,’ ‘kids have an addict’s narrative’ and ‘our products make girls feel worse about themselves.’ You have the same kind of corporate misconduct,” Bergman says in the film, which will be available to view on Bloomberg’s platforms on October 30.

Bergman’s firm was the first to file user-harm cases against social media companies, in 2022, after Frances Haugen, a former Meta product manager-turned-whistleblower, released a trove of internal documents showing the company knew social media was negatively impacting youth mental health. The first case, which is part of the consolidated federal litigation, alleged that an 11-year-old Connecticut girl killed herself after suffering from extreme social media addiction and sexual exploitation by online predators.

What set that case apart was how it got around Section 230’s immunity blanket. Bergman argued that his case wasn’t about third-party content, which the federal law protects. Instead, he said it hinged on the way social media companies were intentionally designing their products to prioritize engagement and profit over safety.

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