The authors of a two-year inquiry, backed by the Mental Health Foundation and the Camelot Foundation, have called on the UK Government to launch a national initiative to develop better and more appropriate responses to young people who self-harm, starting with an awareness campaign targeted at professionals, parents and young people.
The BBC’s Radio 4 Saturday morning reported on NHS plans for a pilot project in Staffordshire which would allow patients engaging in self-harm to continue to do so under medical supervision. With the radio interviewers seemingly intent on ferreting out whatever controversy they could discover, it seemed to me that important points were missed about the role of self-harming as a coping mechanism.
It’s official: an FDA science advisory committee has voted to recommend the most serious type of ‘black box’ warning labels for Ritalin and other stimulants used in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
According to Dr. Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the FDA’s Office of New Drugs, the agency will issue a public health advisory within days in response to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that links use of drugs like Paxil, Prozac, and Zoloft late in pregnancy with a condition that can endanger infants’ lives.
With 42 million sleeping pill prescriptions filled last year — up some 60 percent since 2000 — experts are warning that the drugs are being overused and may be encouraging doctors to overlook other causes of sleeplessness, such as depression. Behind the increased use of sleeping pills are advertising campaigns costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
We comply with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.
