When stopping antidepressants, a slow taper is the way to go — Psychiatrists have been telling us for years that withdrawal from our most common antidepressants is uncommon, mild, and usually resolves without treatment in a week or two. But critics of the widespread use of antidepressants have rallied around the counterclaim that most people will suffer from withdrawal if they try…

The association between ADHD and paranoia can teach us about paranoia — Paranoia strikes deep Into your life it will creep It starts when you’re always afraid.. Buffalo Springfield’s iconic 1960s song, For What It’s Worth, certainly resonates today. Fears of stolen elections, vigilantes arming for a race war, apocalyptic global warming, and intrusions from the surveillance state permeate the country. It…

When will psychedelics become mainstream psychiatric treatment? — Move over medical marijuana. Psychedelics are the hot drugs of the moment, with articles and podcasts hyping their potential to treat drug abuse, depression, and PTSD. In particular, interest in psilocybin has mushroomed. Recent headlines tout psilocybin’s success in treating alcohol use disorder and treatment-resistant depression. The mainstream media creates…

What to Do When You’re Feeling Stuck — All of us occasionally feel frozen, locked into states that we don’t want to be in. I’m not talking about pro-choice activists caught in red states or Trump supporters living in blue ones. I’m referring to the rather common problem of becoming stuck in a highly unpleasant or disruptive mental…

Reviewing Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary — For the last few decades, the popular interpretation of research on human cerebral hemisphere lateralization has cast the left brain as Mr. Spock: logical, rational, adept at math and language, with Captain Kirk embodying the right brain: impulsive, intuitive, emotional, creative. You can take tests that purport to show which…

Fixing failures to communicate — Autism spectrum conditions (ASD) and ADHD are our two most common neurodevelopment disorders, with the majority of individuals continuing to be affected into adulthood. Awareness of both conditions has increased astronomically over the last generation. But along with this improved recognition, I’ve encountered befuddlement regarding the defining features of the…

Deciphering the Hype Around Auvelity — To great fanfare, Axsome Pharmaceutical announced in August (2022) that the FDA had approved their new drug, Auvelity, as the first rapidly-acting oral antidepressant. …

What Makes Jornay PM Special? — Why would anyone want to take a stimulant medication at bedtime? Wouldn’t that just rev you up and ruin your sleep? I can think of two good reasons for people with ADHD to take an evening dose of their stimulant, and one of those would be Jornay PM, the slow-release…

Where does refuting a strawman lead us? — Psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff at University College, London, along with her colleagues, generated a storm of publicity for a recent analysis that failed to find evidence supporting the theory that deficits in serotonin cause depression. Dispelling a common misconception provides a valuable public service. But extrapolating from this project to claim…