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(CBS News) Do antidepressants work? Since the introduction of Prozac in the 1980s, prescriptions for antidepressants have soared 400 percent, with 17 million Americans currently taking some form of the drug. But how much good is the medication itself doing? "The difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people," says Harvard scientist Irving Kirsch. Will Kirsch's research, and the work of others, change the $11.3 billion antidepressant industry? Lesley Stahl investigates.

MISSION — The recent suicide of an illegal immigrant fanned the flames of a controversial measure to legalize certain students who were sneaked into the country as children, prompting, among other things, a Friday morning ceremony in Los Angeles and a proclamation on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. But in the 11 pages of suicide notes that Hidalgo County investigators released to the family of Joaquin Luna on Friday, there is not a single mention of immigration or of the failed Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, as was mistakenly reported by various news...

Saturday, November 19, 2011 More on the demographics of mental health In the previous post, we looked at the likelihood to have received treatment for a mental health problem by political orientation based on GSS data. It turns out that self-described political liberals are twice as likely to have been treated for mental health issues as conservatives are, with moderates falling in between*. This spurred several intriguing comments that I'll turn to the GSS again to address. In the previous post, we looked at the likelihood to have received treatment for a mental health problem by political orientation based on...

HERAKLION, Greece—The first time he despaired of his debts, Vaggelis Petrakis drank a poisonous brew of beer and gasoline. A note he left didn't mention the financial woes of his fruit and vegetable business, of which his family was well aware. Instead, he left instructions for his children on how to look after his animals. "Put mother rabbit in a different place from the little rabbits," the note began. Then he had second thoughts and called his son, Stelios, who took him to a hospital. Mr. Petrakis survived that suicide attempt. But Greece's collapsing economy and the ruin of his...

Canadians with mental illnesses denied U.S. entry Data entered into national police database accessible to American authorities: WikiLeaks More than a dozen Canadians have told the Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office in Toronto within the past year that they were blocked from entering the United States after their records of mental illness were shared with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Lois Kamenitz, 65, of Toronto contacted the office last fall, after U.S. customs officials at Pearson International Airport prevented her from boarding a flight to Los Angeles on the basis of her suicide attempt four years earlier

Women who have abortions are at risk of severe mental health problems, new research has found. The study showed that those who undergo abortion face nearly double the risk of mental health difficulties compared with others and that one in ten of all mental health problems was a result of an abortion. The findings come as Tory MP Nadine Dorries, backed by Labour’s Frank Field, has put down an amendment to a Health Bill which requires women seeking abortion to see an independent counsellor first. Currently organisations which provide abortions offer counselling, but critics say the advice given can often...

A report from Australia’s Climate Institute which links global warming with mental illness is already drawing eyerolls from a central academic in the global climate-change debate. In its report, the anti-carbon emissions organization argues that a spike in severe weather events in Australia coincides with increased rates of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse. Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish professor and environmental statistician, and a cautious believer in global warming — but also an advocate for sound and rational decisions about how to fix it — told The Daily Caller the study is “problematic.” Cutting carbon emissions to slow a...

The organisation, which calls itself B4U-Act, is lobbying for changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, the guideline of standards on mental health that is put together by the American Psychiatric Association, FOXNews.com said. The group says its mission is to help paedophiles before they create a crisis, and to do so by offering a less critical view of the disorder. "Stigmatising and stereotyping minor-attracted people inflames the fears of minor-attracted people, mental health professionals and the public, without contributing to an understanding of minor-attracted people or the issue of child sexual abuse," reads the...

BOSTON — Last November, Yvette Chappell found herself increasingly anxious that her 27-year-old son, Deshawn James Chappell, was spiraling downward into deep psychosis. He was exhibiting intense paranoia and calling late at night to complain about deafening voices in his head.

Lawyers for the suspect in the Tucson shooting rampage say prison officials have resumed forcibly medicating their client with a psychotropic drug. Jared Lee Loughner's attorneys in filings Thursday questioned whether the forced medication violates an earlier order by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that forbid them from involuntarily medicating Loughner as the court mulls an appeal on his behalf. The filings say officials at the federal prison facility in Missouri resumed the forced medication on an emergency basis because Loughner had become an immediate threat to himself. Loughner's attorneys say their client has been on 24-hour suicide watch,...

"When vets seek therapy, they want a professional who can relate to soldiers in combat, and that usually means a therapist who has military experience. Without such empathy, therapy often is doomed, vets say. Because most psychologists and mental health care professionals don't have a military background, there's a void in the safety net for vets. Some veterans' organizations have stepped up, training members to help their peers, and the Soldiers Project provides free counseling from licensed professionals and veterans by phone to newly returned vets."

WASHINGTON, DC – This morning at a hearing of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, U.S. Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) heard testimony and demanded answers from government officials about lackluster and delayed mental health care treatment from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA).

Government Senator Marc Bean recently called for a debate on the merits of decriminalising drugs in the wake of a report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy. A distinguished panel that wrote the report said the war on drugs had failed and recommended partial legalization as a solution to the blight of the illegal drugs trade on communities around the world. Not so fast, warn medics. Side effects of marijuana can include a heightened risk of psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia, depression, damage to memory and judgement and heart problems. Neurologist Dr Keith Chiappa said: “The use of marijuana, especially...

Epidemiologists showed decades ago that people raised in cities are more prone to mental disorders than those raised in the countryside. But neuroscientists have avoided studying the connection, preferring to leave the disorderly realm of the social environment to social scientists. A paper in this issue of Nature represents a pioneering foray across that divide. Using functional brain imaging, a group led by Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the University of Heidelberg's Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim, Germany, showed that specific brain structures in people from the city and the countryside respond differently to social stress (see pages 452 and...

A new military survey obtained by USA Today shows that U.S. troops fighting in Afghanistan are reporting record levels of acute stress and low morale. The problem is most severe in servicemen and women who have been deployed multiple times. A third of them reported depression, anxiety or another serious mental health problem. Meanwhile, those reporting medium to very high morale dropped to 46.5 percent from 65.7 percent in 2005. Seventeen percent reported acute stress, compared to 6 percent in 2005. The survey also painted a bleak picture of the intense combat troops in Afghanistan engage in. More than 75...

Today the White House is hosting the first-ever meeting to focus specifically on transgender issues. The Office of Public Engagement (OPE) will meet with transgender activists and leaders to discuss federal policy on trans issues. Topics to be discussed include employment policy, access to health care, military policy, and immigration detention standards. Some activists have expressed concern in the past week that the meeting was to be held behind closed doors and without any press invited to cover the event, though OPE pointed out that most stakeholder meetings are off the record. Still, advocates are happy to be able to...

NEW YORK, April 29, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Teens who self-identify as homosexual are five times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to attempt suicide, according to a study released last week. The study, published in the journal Pediatrics online on April 18, was conducted in order to determine whether living in a gay friendly social environment affected the risk of a teen identifying as homosexual committing suicide. It found that teens in “unsupportive” social environments were 20 percent more at risk of attempting suicide than those in “supportive” environments. “This study documents an association between an objective measure of the...

(SALT LAKE CITY)-A new study implies some of the happiest states in the union also have the highest suicide rates and Utah is no exception. According to the study, Utah is the number one state in terms of residents’ well-being although it scored ninth in overall suicide rate as three other states also had top 10 rankings in both categories, including Colorado, Nevada and Wyoming. Researchers for this study, suggesting that living around people who are satisfied with their lives can result in misery for their neighbors, are cautioning against the assertion that misery really loves company. According to the...

After supporting husband Michael Douglas through his battle with throat cancer, Catherine Zeta-Jones needed medical care for herself. After “the stress of the past year,” her representative said in a statement, the movie star “made the decision to check into a mental health facility for a brief stay to treat her bipolar II disorder,” a condition similar to bipolar I disorder, characterized by mood swings from high to low. Zeta-Jones has been hit with a series of devastating events: In 2010, her stepson, Cameron Douglas, was sentenced to five years in prison on drug charges, and four months later, her...

It hardly seems necessary to catalog all of the current events that are fraying the nerves of the most sturdy among us. Unless, of course, you’re talking to the president, who is eerily unaffected by it all. The rate of joblessness and foreclosures in this country are enough to keep anyone up at night. That’s assuming you can remain entirely impervious to the massive disaster in Japan and the fact that the Middle East is in a state of dangerous upheaval. It’s not really possible to overstate the seriousness of the Mid East crisis, and not only because rising oil...