One researcher who has followed the saga maintained that a retraction was long overdue. “This article is still being built into guidelines. And most people don’t know its fraudulent,” said David Healy, a former psychiatry professor at Bangor University in Wales, who runs RxISK.org, a website that gathers information about the side effects of medicines. “Editors are the point people in all this. If they don’t respond to physician input, and in this case they didn’t, we have a wild west.” Healy was also a member of a team of researchers who a decade ago reanalyzed the study and found Paxil was not safe or effective in adolescents. Their findings, which were published in The BMJ, broke with scientific custom and signaled a new era in scientific publishing, because different journals published different interpretations of the same study. “This study was fraudulent. It was ghostwritten and was a negative trial spun as safe and effective, which led to thousands of kids put” on the medicine, Healy said. “And the trials in this age group show no benefit with an excess of harms. And the black box [label] warnings [were added] seemingly to no effect. … And all the time, [the journal] may be actively complicit in this, rather than innocents duped by GSK (Glasko-Smith-Kline).” Meanwhile, a 2022 version of the Paxil document that describes the properties and indications of a drug — that GSK released in Canada, noted “controlled clinical studies in depression failed to demonstrate efficacy and do not support the use” in treating children under 18 with depression. It also mentions a higher incidence of adverse events related to emotional changes, “including self-harm.”

The opinion of the author of this specific article: Unfortunately, the bias of the current system is towards overmedicalization, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment. The implementation of universal screening is likely to worsen these problems. In the past, some physicians gave annual chest X-rays to smokers. This was a form of universal screening in response to concerns about lung cancer. At first blush, this sounds reasonable. The problem? False-positive results. Studies showed that annual X-rays did not prevent mortality. They did cause anxiety in patients. And incidental findings were common, causing unnecessary biopsies, procedures, and interventions. Current screening guidelines now target high-risk individuals. This is an example where the medical establishment carefully weighed the risks and benefits of universal screening and concluded that it was not in the interests of patients, and with a well-defined disease in mind, lung cancer. Mental health diagnosis is not like cancer. It is a fuzzy, subjective enterprise. We don’t have blood tests or brain scans; we have flawed checklists and clinical judgment. And obviously, being improperly identified as having a mental disorder comes with a real cost for the child. Screening every single child makes it inevitable that some healthy children will be thrust into the mental health pipeline. Even assuming that the questionnaires work reasonably well, a 15% false-positive rate is likely. Combine this false-positive rate with twice-a-year universal screening from grades 3-12, and your child will have 20 separate chances to be wrongly identified as having a mental health problem…at which point the government ostensibly gets involved in the mental health of your child. It’s easy to imagine the catastrophic results. A child’s mental health screen inaccurately identifies a mental health problem; the busy therapist confirms a diagnosis; there’s eventually a referral to a psychiatrist, who prescribes psychotropic medication. Out of 20 screenings, this only has to happen once to alter your child’s life forever.

A new study shows that exposure to ADHD misinformation on TikTok significantly lowers students’ ability to accurately understand the disorder. As one of the world’s fastest-growing social media platforms, TikTok holds particular influence among young adults. In the U.S. alone, more than 136 million users are over the age of 18, and about 45 million of them fall within the college-age range. For many students, the platform has become more than a place for viral entertainment—it’s also a go-to source for information. In fact, nearly 40% of Americans now use TikTok as a search engine. Although TikTok can provide helpful tips and instructional content, it also carries risks. When it comes to topics like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), users should approach content with caution, since health-related misinformation can spread quickly and undermine accurate understanding.