a. Antidepressants Get 'Black Box' Warning
FDA
Links Antidepressants, Youth Suicide Risk
PART
OF 2004's YEAR IN REVIEW
Shankar Vedantam
(The
Washington Post, Feb.
3, 2004)
"Federal
regulators said for the first time [Monday] that clinical trials of
popular antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft show a greater
risk of suicide among children taking the drugs compared with those
taking dummy pills. Although only one of these drugs has been approved
for the treatment of children with depression, doctors are prescribing
them to hundreds of thousands of American children every year. The new
Food and Drug Administration analysis of the trials is starkly at odds
with repeated assurances by the U.S. psychiatric establishment that
the drugs are very safe."
Free registration required.
Child
Antidepressant Warning Is Urged
PART
OF 2004's YEAR IN REVIEW
Shankar Vedantam
(The
Washington Post, Sept.
15, 2004)
"Families
and doctors should be cautioned that children taking antidepressant
drugs may be at an increased risk for suicidal behavior and thinking,
and the government should require a prominent 'black box' warning label
on the medications, an expert panel concluded [Tuesday]."
Free
registration required.
b.
Mental Health in Japan
In
Japan, Psychiatric Care Still Mired in Dark Ages
PART OF 2001's YEAR IN REVIEW
Hiroshi Matsubara
(The Japan Times, Two-day series, Sept. 12, 2001)
"Statistics paint a dreary picture of the state of Japan's mental
health. Japan has the highest number of hospital patients with mental
illness in the world. The average stay at mental institutions is also
the longest in the world...It is only in recent years that the Japanese
government has started to place emphasis on the treatment of mental
patients."
Programs
for Mentally Ill Out of Hospitals Fall Short (Sept. 13, 2001)
c. Patient Neglect
Fatal
Errors, Secret Deaths
PART OF 2001's YEAR IN REVIEW
Dave Alimari and Beth Hamilton
(The Hartford Courant, Two-day series, Dec. 2-3, 2001)
"Despite a history of official insistence that untimely deaths
are virtually nonexistent in Connecticut's 774 group homes for the mentally
retarded, a Courant investigation found evidence of neglect,
staff error, and other questionable circumstances in one out of every
10 deaths over the past decade."
Invisible
Deaths:
The Fatal Neglect of D.C.'s Retarded
Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service
Katherine Boo
(The Washington Post, December 5, 1999)
"After searching its files for seven months, the D.C. Department
of Human Services was able to document that 69 of approximately 1,190
retarded individuals in its care died betwen January 1993 and September
1999. A Post investigation identified 47 additional ward who died during
that time. The Post also found evidence of delayed treatment, neglect,
falsification of circumstances, and other lapses in 34 cases."
Broken
Promises:
Deinstitutionalization in Wisconsin
Meg Kissinger, Dave Umhoefer, and David Joles
(Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Four-part series, August 26, September
2, 9, 16, 2000)
"In 1975, Wisconsin led the way in a nationwide movement to reform
the system of mental health care in America. It had an unwieldly name--deinstitutionalization--but
it was simple in concept: Instead of housing the mentally ill in the
stark hospital fortresses of the era, all but the most dangerous or
self-destructive would be released to what advocates hoped would be
caring communities across the land. That, sadly, is not how things turned
out."
d. Violence and the Mentally Ill
Mentally
Ill No More Likely to Be Violent
Anita Srikameswaran, Sally Kalson, and Barbara White Shack
(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 7, 2000)
"Only rarely are violent acts committed by people who are mentally
ill. It's a message that has been emphasized for years--but each time
there is a deadly shooting spree many people are inherently skeptical
of that assertion."
Mentall
Illness Tough to Prove in Court
Social
Isolation Makes Mental Illness Hard to Control