Not enough is known about the potential dangers associated with antidepressant medications, according to the UK’s Mental Health Foundation. The group has responded to the controversy about the GlaxoSmithKline Seroxat case covered in an expose by the Panorama programme.

The first skin patch to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children will be sold under the name Daytrana. Designed to be worn for 9 hours, the ADHD patch contains methylphenidate, the same stimulant as that in Ritalin.

Schizophrenics struggle with such symptoms as hallucinations, delusions, social withdrawal, and other mental impairments that interfere with a normal lifestyle. Now a new federally-funded study has provided a head-to-head comparison of drugs that are most effective for treating schizophrenia. Another analysis of results for 300 patients provided more insight into the best medications for schizophrenia.

In the largest ‘real world’ trial ever conducted, a $35 million US government study has concluded that antidepressants cure (or fail to cure) the symptoms of major depression in half of all sufferers, even when individuals are receiving the best possible care. The drugs used in the study, including Celexa, Wellbutrin, Zoloft and Effexor, work in very different ways yet had roughly equal effectiveness when it came to treating depression.

Timothy Wilens, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says most doctors who prescribe ADHD drugs are already aware that they can trigger psychosis, a rare side effect. Now an advisory panel will discuss whether the Food and Drug Administration should ask makers of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder drugs to add labelling information about the possible risk of psychosis or mania, especially in children.

Following elderly individuals with depression for periods of up to two years, a University of Pittsburgh trial found that individuals were less likely to have recurrent depression if they received two years of maintenance therapy with the anti-depressant paroxetine. So-called ‘maintenance psychotherapy’ offered once a month for 45 minutes did not prevent recurrent depression.

Federal regulators in the US have approved the world’s first antidepressant skin patch, the selegiline transdermal patch, to be marketed under the name ‘Emsam’. The drug, first approved in the 1980s to help treat Parkinson’s disease, belongs to a category of less frequently used antidepressants prone to interactions with a substance called tyramine. The antidepressant patch will carry a ‘black box’ warning from the FDA.