WhatFinger


Patrick D Hahn

Patrick D Hahn is the author of Prescription for Sorrow: Antidepressants, Suicide, and Violence (Samizdat Health Writer's Cooperative) and Madness and Genetic Determinism: Is Mental Illness in Our Genes? (Palgrave MacMillan). Dr. Hahn is an Affiliate Professor of Biology at Loyola University Maryland.

Most Recent Articles by Patrick D Hahn:

Feasting on the dead

“Hammerhead sharks feasting on the dead make a unique sound.” So says William, a disabled Navy veteran and survivor of a horrifying incident that occurred in the Persian Gulf. At the age of twenty, William enlisted in the Navy and served for six years, working on radar and weapons systems. On 18 November 2001, he was part of a team from the destroyer USS Peterson that boarded the Samra, a suspected oil smuggler sailing under the UAE flag. The Samra capsized on the port side, and William spent the night clinging to debris, waiting to be rescued, and listening to the sounds of sharks devouring those who hadn’t made it.
- Monday, October 3, 2016

20 suicides a day

On 3 August of this year the US Department of Veterans Affairs released its long-awaited report, Suicide Among Veterans and Other Americans 2001-2014. This report was the most comprehensive analysis of veteran suicide in our nation's history, examining more than 55 million veteran records from 1979 through 2014, from all 50 states as well as four territories.
- Monday, October 3, 2016

A devastation beyond belief

The bipolar boom continues. Once upon a time, children were taught religious parables and national myths that placed their lives in a larger context of meaning, as well as stories that taught the value of hard work (The Little Red Hen), foresight (The Three Little Pigs) and perseverance (The Little Engine That Could). They learned about the young Teddy Roosevelt overcoming his childhood asthma through strenuous exercise, and the young Abe Lincoln reading by the firelight and then walking miles to return books he had borrowed. Today tomes such as Brandon and the Bipolar Bear, Turbo Max, and My Bipolar Roller Coaster Feelings Book teach the little ones the importance of psychotropic medication compliance.
- Tuesday, August 2, 2016

A tale of two psychiatrists

In the field of juvenile bipolar disorder research, one name towers above all others--Joseph Biederman.
- Monday, August 1, 2016


Rebecca Riley

The short, unhappy life of Rebecca Riley is a parable for our times. Her diagnosis with bipolar disorder at the age of 28 months was followed by a downward spiral which parents, doctors, nurses, teachers, social workers, and everybody else around her seemed powerless to halt.
- Saturday, July 30, 2016

Major therapeutic advances

Between 1994 and 2003, the rate of outpatient visits for juvenile bipolar disorder rose a staggering forty-fold. Meanwhile, the experts continued to maintain that treating children with antidepressants and stimulants was not causing bipolar disorder, but was merely revealing a pre-existing condition. A 2004 paper in the Journal of Affective Disorders suggested " In children genetically determined to develop bipolar disorder, the use of antidepressants and stimulants may advance the onset of bipolar disorder even before puberty."
- Friday, July 29, 2016

A healthy productive life

In December 1999, Demitri Papolos, M.D., and Janice Papolos published The Bipolar Child, the book that convinced Anne that her son William was bipolar. In the preface, the authors lay it on the line for us: "Many of these children were initially diagnosed as having attention-deficit disorder with hyperactivity and put on stimulant medications; or they were first seen in the throes of depression with little or no consideration of the opposite pole of a mood disorder.
- Thursday, July 28, 2016

Accident prone

A paper published in the April 1976 issue of the Journal of Diseases in Childhood described five cases of childhood mania. All the children described came from obviously troubled families. In three of the five cases the authors explicitly state that the mania did not develop until after the children had begun taking stimulants or antidepressants.
- Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Periodic and circular insanity

An epidemic is sweeping the nation, a crippling, perhaps lifelong, sometimes fatal condition known as juvenile bipolar disorder.
- Tuesday, July 26, 2016

“He was a beautiful child”

That’s how Anne, a nurse by trade, remembers her eldest son, William. “He laughed a lot,” she recalls. “He liked to have fun. He played the piano beautifully.” He was fascinated by fire engines, and Anne used to take the boy to the local fire house for visits. The fire captain told Anne “Your son can roll up the fire hose better than some of my firemen.”
- Monday, July 25, 2016



Rages that make no sense at all

The headline proclaimed "Anti-smoking drug Champix does not raise risk of suicide or depression." This was a reference to a study published last September by Daniel Kotz and his colleagues in Lancet Respiratory Medicine, which compared the cardiovascular and neuropsychiatric risks of Chantix with two other stop smoking drugs: bupropion (trade name Zyban) and nicotine replacement therapy, or NRT.
- Friday, December 11, 2015

Unnecessary public alarm

In July of 2011, the FDA issued a warning linking Chantix to an increase in the rate of heart attacks in patients with stable cardiovascular disease. That same month a meta-analysis published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal by Doctor Sonal Singh and his colleagues revealed that in smokers without a history of cardiovascular disease, Chantix was associated with a 72% increase in the relative risk of serious cardiovascular events, including ischemia, arrhythmia, congestive heart failure, sudden death, and cardiovascular-related death. Cardiovascular disease is an important cause of morbidity and mortality among smokers, and quitting smoking is widely supposed to reduce this risk, but in this case the data were going the other way.
- Thursday, December 10, 2015

Is suicide an expected event?

Chantix was approved by the FDA on 11 May 2006. A study published by Thomas Moore and his colleagues at the non-profit Institute for Safe Medication Practices found that by the fourth quarter of 2007, Chantix surpassed all other drugs for serious events reported to the FDA, including but not limited to hostility, aggression, paranoia, hallucinations, psychosis, heart arrhythmias, heart attacks, visual disturbances, seizures, falls, traffic accidents, homicidal ideation, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts, along with 28 actual suicides.
- Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Quitting can be different this time

In May of 2009, 34-year-old Sean Wain of Economy, Pennsylvania, murdered his wife of fourteen years with a shotgun blast before turning the gun on himself, leaving their four small children orphaned. Neighbors and the family pastor said they had seen no sign of any marital discord prior to the shootings.
- Tuesday, December 8, 2015

A fantastic individual

Lawrence Krystynak still remembers the night his wife Nora went missing. Mr. Krystynak and Nora had been married for twenty years. They lived with their son Alexei in Cleveland, Ohio, and Mr. Krystynak’s elderly father had recently come to stay with them as well. Nora worked as a nurse, and in her spare time she enjoyed quilting and knitting. “She was spectacular,” Mr. Krystynak reminisces. “Made all kinds of stuff for her friends, and her friends’ babies. She was just a great kid. A great person. A fantastic individual.”
- Monday, December 7, 2015

“It’s shameful”

Peter Doshi is an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research at the University of Maryland, an Associate Editor at BMJ, and a leading advocate for clinical trial transparency. On 13 June 2013, a paper authored by Peter Doshi, David Healy, and several others appeared in BMJ. The authors noted that they had obtained access to 178,000 ages of previously confidential drug company documents pertaining to clinical trials which had either never been published in the scientific literature, or which had been misreported. They called upon the sponsors of these trials to publish the unpublished studies, and to formally correct or retract the misreported ones. They further stated that if the sponsors failed to do so, the data would be considered “public access data” that others would be allowed to publish.
- Friday, October 9, 2015

The ghost writer

On 29 January 2007, the BBC news program Panorama aired the documentary, "Secrets of the drug trials." This episode, presented by BBC reporter Shelley Jofre, detailed the behind-the-scenes attempts to spin the results of SmithKline Beecham's Study 329 of Paxil, which was published in 2001 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. (In 2000, SmithKline Beecham merged with Glaxo Wellcome to form GlaxoSmithKline, at the time the biggest drug company in the world.) This was the fourth documentary about Paxil produced by Panorama, which had never before repeated a subject.
- Thursday, October 8, 2015

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