Today is World Mental Health Day...Thanks AstraZeneca!

So today--that'd be Oct. 10--is World Mental Health Day, proclaimed as such by the World Federation for Mental Health. Like every other advocacy group under the sun, they are banging the drum for education and awareness and all that necessary noise.

And the nice folks at AstraZeneca want to help! AZ makes Seroquel, one of the most-prescribed atypical antipsychotics both for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. In my opinion, Seroquel is problematic stuff--effective, sure, but also with a host of lovely side effects including a foggy head and other fun stuff. Anyway, the PR people at AZ just pushed out a press release on the PR Newswire (cuz' you know PR is News!) in order to release what's apparently a survey co-sponsored by AZ and WFMH on bipolar disorder. So here we have another fine example of an advocacy group working cock-in-hand with Big Pharma. I'd be a bit more impressed if the survey--drawing from a very small sample size of 687 patients in seven countries--actually revealed something interesting. It didn't. Read it for yourself.

What I truly love, however, is that AZ quoted itself in the press release and set itself up as our advocates:

"The public has to understand more about mental disorders such as bipolar disorder. People with bipolar disorder deserve the best possible treatment allowing them to enjoy life to the fullest," said Dr Jamie Mullen, MD, Senior Director Clinical Research, AstraZeneca.

Somewhere I hear a cash register ringing. Where these bastards get off trying to speak for me escapes me. But commerce and arrogance have always gone well together.

What I'd really like to hear is Mullen and other Pharma folks admit the truth: psych meds work well perhaps 50 percent of the time, the side effects of Seroquel make the med intolerable over time, the CATIE study establishes that Seroquel and the other atypicals aren't such hot shit, the price of atypicals are immorally high compared to their real-world performance. When Mullen and the others can get honest like that--and CUT THE PRICES of their meds--then I know we'll be getting somewhere.