I'll be out of town for a few days. Back to posting on Jan. 31.
OK, so you all know about what's gone on with James Frey and his book, "A Million Little Pieces." He made up or embellished events and facts in a bestseller that was marketed as non-ficton/memoir. Yesterday, Oprah, who'd earlier endorsed his book, called him a liar on TV. In my opion, Oprah was off-base to drag him on her show. This was all about covering her ass, not making Frey confess. Second, Frey is something of a victim of the publishing business. When he intially shopped the book a few years back, he presented it to potential publishers as a novel, meaning fiction. The book was rejected by one and all. When he swtiched it to memoir all of sudden he got a book deal, apparently because it's easier to sell books that can be marketed as True Life Drama. Whatever. I think that is at the root of what happened with Frey as much as anything involving his fictional non-ficiton.
I recently predicted that the "pot causes schizophrenia" hype would hit these shores soon and that the American media would bite hard. It took only a few days. Now, that the Boston Globe has bitten, I expect the New York Times, Washington Post and, maybe, the AP to do folos within the next month or so. I will make sure to inform the 50 to 75 million Americans who've smoked pot that they need to start dosing on antipsychotics pronto.
I have a hunch this storyline will be the gift that keeps on giving.
A friend of mine was recently at a new psychiatrist's office, being put through an extensive intake process by a therapist. This was a prelude to seeing the real M.D. a week or so later. My friend, a bipolar, asked about being on a mood stabilizer. She'd been misdiagnosed as depressive (not such an unusual situation), been diagnosed bipolar a few years ago by a doctor who stuffed her so full of Seroquel that day to-day functioning was dicey and, at time, damn near impossible. Seroquel has been trumpted by some docs in recent years as "the new mood stabilizer" for bipolar disorder. Not that they've made that case with science, mind you. Regular readers know my thoughts on Seroquel and the emerging practice of using atypical antipsychotics as a monotherapy to replace Lithium, Depakote, Lamictal, etc. (I have less problem with using APs as adjunctive treatments.) The therapist said to my friend, "Seroquel is a mood stabilizer" before my friend could get out of her mouth how rotten the med had been for her.
When are "caregivers" in the mental health world going to let patients--especially those who have been in the game many years and have been on many different flawed meds--tell the caregivers what's up before touting the latest "it" drug?
As usual I can't cop a full copy of the article, but here's reference to a study by Harvard researchers claiming that low-income people have more depression than the wealthy. That's one of the biggest "Duhs" in the world. It took a study to determine this? Things must be slow in Cambridge these days--or they are just trying to find another way to restate Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. You tell me.
Every so often, I'll run into a psych researcher who says things I've been trying to put into words for years--that there's something about way we live our American lives these days that is bound up in depression. That's both the problem and the key to a solution. So here's an account of research by Steve Ilardi, a psych researcher at Kansas University. The short story is that of 26 patients with major depression 81 percent of them saw 50 percent improvement in their symptoms--a far higher percentage than the approximately 50 percent who see 50 percent symptom reduction in clinical studies using meds. The sample size is far too small to reach broad conclusions. Still it's encouraging, especially since the therapy goes after core human functioning and uses it to fight depression. In the study, patients exercised, were exposed to sunlight, got proper sleep (I've long contended that this is huge), took Omega-3 pills (aka, fish oil), engaged in socialization and were taught how to not dwell on negative thoughts. The researcher contends that rates of depression have gone up ten-fold since WWII (I'm not sure I buy the magnitude of that given different measures used, but I buy the essential shift), largely due to Americans being shifted into more sedentary lifestyles and social isolation. That's a nice way of putting it. Put more bluntly, it's because of our society's shift to a service economy where everyone knows how to keyboard but couldn't fix a flat tire to save their lives. It's because we live in big cities and immense suburbs now where social isolation is the norm.
So I think Ilardi is onto something and his research is continuing. I somehow have a hunch that Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca won't be sponsoring the studies. Also, what he's doing with patients also seems to dovetail with the social rhythm therapy that's shown decent results with bipolars. I look forward to seeing further results from these kinds of studies, because anything that can work with little or no meds should be pushed hard. I know I'm not the only American whose body would prefer fewer psych meds in order to keep a job.
We'll talk about mental illness and modern American life another day when I am feeling more articulate.
Sometimes, I just laugh my ass off about how the media responds to studies of mental illness. Here's a great example: "Single People Face Higher Risk of Mental Illness." Now, go to a press release for the study. It doesn't assert that singles are at risk for mental illness, merely that more singles than marrieds were admitted to psych units in Ireland. But that's how the media works with medical studies. Casual association becomes risk becomes proof becomes screaming headline. Remember: Always blame the editors!
America has always had a dicey relationship with marijuana. So has the rest of the Western world. It's either the evil weed, the cause of reefer madness and of no medical benefit or it's a great recreational drug with actual medical properties. Take your pick.
Lately, the reefer madness business has been trotted out again in the media. There was study released in Australia showing a link between pot and schizophrenia. And, as always happens, the old Scandinavian army studies make a reappearance. In them, a link is also claimed between weed and schizophrenia. My basic problem with these assertions is that they are links, not proof. But that hasn't stopped the Drug Czar's office from claiming they are proof, as they did in an interview with me last year. The army studies were very broad population-based studies in thousands of conscripts. With studies like those, you can never really factor out background noise the way you can in controlled studies. So the schizophrenia could be driven by any number of factors--weed, watching cartoons, being yelled at by your parents and so on. In the Australian study, researchers claim that pot can be linked to schizophrenia in a small percentage of cases. I don't distrust their science. But I'll remain unconvinced until the study is replicated a few times. I've just seen too many cases of Researcher X claiming marijuana does/causes Y and a big hew and cry erupting in the media, only to have subsequent research not prove earlier claims.
This time out, the media is confused. There are tons of article out there, so Google away. A favorite of mine is this from a conservative commentator who doesn't understand mental illness very well (dude, it's not all about genetics--at best schizophrenia is half-explained by genetics). And here's the British government saying weed use isn't a big deal in regards to schizophrenia. Of course, Harvard psych prof emeritus Lester Grinspoon has made a career out of arguing for weed to be used in treatment.
I do not think either side has a slam dunk case. Once again, I simply think everyone ought to grow up, be honest and acknowledge that pot does have some positive benefits medically (fights nausea in cancer and AIDS patients, helps with chronic pain patients and works as a short-term treatment for depression) but also has some potential drawbacks (um, schizophrenia). Once everyone gets done being honest, we ought to then actually study pot in controlled trials to examine what its effects are on depression and in more detail on what its possible relationship to schizophrenia might be. I've posted about that need before and it's time for the feds to set politics and morality aside and fund real studies. It's also time for them to let MAPS grow their own weed and get on with their studies of pot and treating mental illness.
I know that all the nanny statists and social commentators will froth at the mouth over that idea. But there's plenty of alcohol-induced psychosis among homeless Americans. I don't hear any of them calling for a halt to "Budweiser madness." Besides, when it comes to treating mental illness, I am in the "whatever works" camp. It's not like expensive patented psych meds are doing such a great job of treating mental illness. If pot has a role to play, then we should out what it is and go from there. And, for God's sake, would the feds call off their DEA dogs who keep going after medical marijuana users in California? Ever heard of states' rights guys?
I've recently noted how screwed up this Medicaid/Medicare switch is getting, especially for people with mental illness. Here's an excerpt from a recent Dubya Q&A, wherein Bonzo II tries to explain benefits indexing to an audience member. If the President is this confused about his own creation, then it's no wonder this affair has gotten so fouled up. Take it away, Dubya:
Woman: "I don't really understand. How is the new plan going to fix the problem?"President Bush: "Because the--all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those--changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be--or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the--like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate--the benefits will rise based upon inflation, supposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those--if that growth is affected, it will help on the red."
Doesn't this guy have an MBA from Harvard?
One of the biggest problems with mental health care is that many patients don't stick with treatment. They fly off their meds altogether or take them intermittently. Neither approach is good. As much as I bitch about meds like Seroquel, it's up to patients to find something that works even if it only works for a time. It beats the hell out of winding up dead or in a psych unit.
I've had docs estimate that on the order of 50 percent of their patients with bipolar disorder, for example, don't stick with treatment. I understand why they don't--many meds make them feel like shit, wreak havoc on their bodies (which in turn makes them social outcasts in an America obsessed with skininess) or the meds just don't work at all. Here's a report that states that treatment noncompliance--a term I hate--runs from 35 percent to 42 percent in clinical studies, which is to say in the best possible, controlled academic environment. In the real clinical world, it's worse. And, again, that is because meds sure can suck.
This study, however, is authored by an official at the NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse. As you might expect, the author makes the case that booze and drugs are to blame for noncompliance. Of course, his job and continued funding requires that he say so. While I have no problem with him saying so, I am a little tired of docs blaming patients. It's a natural by-product of meds that work about 50 percent of the time that patients are going to drink and smoke weed and so on. It's also the result of a society where socializing amongst the normies is going to involve partying. The trick is in keeping it from getting out of hand. Moderation, people, moderation.
I am also tired of these reports that skirt the real issue: meds don't work well, and for patients it is a tough slog to find something that does work for them. Even where meds do work, symptom remission is rarely complete. That's just as important to our system of mental health care as people drinking or taking bong hits.
One of these days, we will hear consistent acknowledgement of this problem from the alleged "thought leaders" in the mental health field. We'll get studies and reports that have actual compassion for patients' situations instead of always blaming patients for doing something that the tee-totalling docs don't like. When that happens, docs can then go after booze and the like all they want. But, I predict, we will never get that kind of honesty from them because, at core, medical science is about controlling external factors and not about understanding the dynamic of peoples' minds and souls. We let that mindset control mental health care at patients' peril. As things stand now, their mindset and treatment paradigm isn't working well enough for the majority of patients.
It went well. Back to normal, as soon as I am normal.
My site is going through an upgrade later tomorrow. No posts until it's all over. Be well.
You all likely know that the feds forced low-income Medicaid patients to shift to Medicare-Part D plans three weeks ago. Under Medicaid, patients had their medication costs picked up by the state. But with the shift, patients are now covered by private insurerers and have to meet small co-pays. I've been hearing with growing alarm that this has turned into a disaster. Patients with physical and mental ailments put in their paperwork like good kids, but around the country many of these private insurance companies have so botched things that patients go to their pharmacist only to be told "Sorry, we have no records of you, come back soon." Patients with chronic conditions walk away empty handed. I haven't yet heard of some poor unfortunate keeling over from a heart attack as a result, but there are growing accounts like this of people ending up crashing and burning and being admitted to psych hospitals. Sooner or later, I'm sure we'll hear of a suicide as well. This whole business was imposed on the country by President Bush, allegedly to cut insurance costs for the feds and to provide better access to medications of any kind for seniors. These goals are not being met. It is time for the feds to step in and either fix this mess or go back to the old system, which didn't work so well either but it was a far cry better than this bullshit.
In 1998, a British pharma company removed the atypical antipsychotic Serdolect (sertindole) from European markets after reports of sudden cardiac deaths in patients. But, now, the drug is back on the market in the EU. It was just introduced in Estonia and the company plans to roll it out in Scandinavia and Germany very soon. The drug was only approved for schizophrenia. So how is it that a drug that killed people in the 1990s is suddenly back a decade later? Beats the hell out of me. Sadly, I cannot find a single European press account explaining the paradox. Research articles aren't much help either. Here's one wherein some jackass researcher alleges that deaths connected to the drug were over-reported simply because they were reported at all. If a tree falls in the forest.... I won't even attempt to understand that kind of logic. But I will keep poking around because something funny is going on here.
For example, this from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in reference to the drug (and other atypicals, presumably):
"Mortality from causes other than suicide is higher than expected in schizophrenia. Cardiovascular causes are most common, accounting for the majority of the 5% of sudden and unexpected deaths. Most cases have no clear explanation on post-mortem examination (‘sudden unexplained deaths’) and are thought to result from fatal arrhythmias."
And, this from a British medical journal:
"Because of the cardiac problems, even evident within poorly reported studies, at present sertindole should, if possible, be avoided. If sertindole is to be reintroduced, gold-standard evidence of its clinical benefits will need to far outweigh its real risks."
I can find no bronze-standard evidence of its clinical benefits anywhere, so I wonder what the EU was thinking.
As far as I can tell, the drug was never approved for use in the US, and there are no moves on the horizon to land a license here. But, then, we're talking Big Pharma here, so nothing would surprise me. Bipolars and schizophrenics be on guard.
You know, the thing these pharma companies and doctors have got to realize is that there's this little thing out there now called Google Scholar and a lot of patients frustrated by these kinds of meds.
Had a story come out in our paper yesterday that's generated the kind of reader resposne that is humbling. So, um, that's where I have been. Back soon.
Two days ago British advocacy groups released reports that poor modern diets were at the root of increased rates of mental illness. In particular, they linked obesity and mental illness. Now comes news from a study claiming that leptin--a fat producing protein--helps alleviate depression. The study was done in rats and uses stress as a proxy for depression, so it doesn't necessarily correlate with what might be expected in humans. Still, it is interesting. And proof, once again, what a topsy-turvy world is mental health research.
The Geoff Gallop story continues to get much attention in Australia. Good. Although here's an example I just don't know what to do with.
A couple of reports just came out in England linking increased rates of mental illness to diets in modern societies. Um, whatever. Here's a press report. What drives me wild about such assertions isn't that eating well and eating regularly is a good adjunctive treatment for depression and bipolar disorder, for example. That's a big duh. But what makes me deeply suspicious of these kinds of assertions is that they are generally made by special-interest groups (as both of these are), that they are wildly sweeping in their conclusions and that the media swallows their claims. One of the reports claims, in essence, that much mental illness is caused by people eating junk food as opposed to nuts and plants. It is another public health "linking" study. It'd be nice if they could actually back that up with an actual research study that actually proves the case instead of relying on social analysis that proves little but is used to raise alarm for the food freaks' attack on "the obesity epidemic." I'm convinced that at the heart of such thinking is a desire to take society down the road to vegetarianism. Last time I checked, schizophrenia still occurred in India.
The proposition is an interesting one. There is decent research out there that establishes some kind of connection between Omega-3 depletion and depression. But the evidence the advocates possess simply does not support sweeping declarations like:
"Mental health has been completely neglected by those working on food policy. If we don't address it and change the way we farm and fish, we may lose the means to prevent much diet-related ill health."
I know what's behind this thinking: another angle for food activists to take on the evil of food served children. I only wish I were making that up:
"We need mentally healthy school meals, and mentally healthy hospital foods."
I have no doubt that the food freaks over here will soon adopt a similar line. I also bet that the American media will bite.
NOTE: I am not at all opposed to vegetarian and vegan diets. I have tried both. What I am opposed to is having their basal ideologies used as a basis to attack traditional diets in this and other countries, since I remain unconvinced of the alleged health benefits of veganism, for example. I am also deeply opposed to efforts by food freaks in this country to regulate diet with the force of law.
Over the last couple of years, I have noticed a trickle of doctors openly touting ECT for treating depression, especially depression coupled with psychosis. Here's another example, published in the respected The Lancet medical journal. (Here's another account.) Doctors call ECT the most effective treatment for depression, especially used in conjunction with anti-depressants. In addition, the article calls unwarranted and not backed by research moves by the FDA and British health authorities to place warning labels on anti-depressants about increased risk of suicidality connected with the drugs. I don't even know where to start with this arrogant horseshit, but I'll say this: any doctor who uses ECT should be required to undergo treatment with it themselves, so they can understand why patients do or don't like it. What's more, ECT should only be used where a patient is in a positon to give consent. It should never be forced on patients. As for the claims about anti-depressants, the doctors who wrote this paper are wrong. There is good data out there establishing the suicidality link. Some of it comes from the pharma companies themselves. And there are many patients who will say the same thing. But, of course, the media only pays attention to allegedly important researchers.
OK, this is simply too sad. Geoff Gallop, Western Australia's two-term premier and an MP, just resigned from office due to depression. Here's a brief news account of the situation. I know how difficult it is to walk away from something you love due to mental illness. I wish him well. So should you.
Everyone take a deep breath. Australian scientists recently announced what is being termed "the bipolar gene." Press account here. Abstract of the paper here. What's amusing to me is that this announcement hasn't been picked up on by the mainstream media, which makes me wonder about our America-centric media. What's impressive about the evidence pointing to this gene is it was established using completely different patient populations, family studies and even was found to be present in animal studies. Ok, so this is a really big clue, if you are inclined to believe that bipolar is genetically based. I think something on the order of 80 percent of bipolar disorder can be explained by genetics. The trouble is that, historically, such assertions of this or that gene being at the root of the disorder have not been replicated, which means they were bunk in terms of explaining the mechanism of bipolar. In this case, confirmation from four populations is impressive. Two cautionary notes: the researchers have stated that it may explain only 10 percent of the cases of the disorder and, two, even if the protein coding going on with the FAT gene does explain 10 percent of bipolar cases, it will be 10 to 15 years before a new compound or med or gene therapy is developed that will address the proteins being given off. There is evidence from the mouse population that Lithium does tend to affect the expression of the FAT gene. Maybe this explains, to engage in speculation, why Lithium does have a robust response for a good chunk of the bipolar crowd. Still, no one should go out and buy champagne yet.
I was poking around this afternoon and ran into this. It's an Eli Lilly website, a neuroscience resource center called Tools for the Fight. Wow, I so love that tone: Eli Lilly is talking like an advocacy group. If you go through the site, you will see NAMI's name all over it, and the group's exectuive director is listed a being on the advisory board. WTF? NAMI national--as opposed to local affiliates--has long been accused of being in bed with pharma companies and getting a large percentage of its funding from them. This is true. Lately, NAMI has claimed that it isn't as dependent on pharma funding as it once was. I've never seen them make public their funding in such a way that anyone could tell either way. Whatever. But this kind of conflict of interest where Eli Lilly is essentially branding NAMI as the go-to group on mental illness is unacceptable. Also, NAMI's ED being as closely linked to the "campaign" as she is is totally unacceptable. If NAMI national wants patients, for whom they claim to speak, to believe that they aren't cuddling with Eli Lilly and the like, then they need to distance themselves from these companies in ways large and small. I don't trust pharma companies--Eli Lilly I distrust most of all--and right now I don't trust NAMI.
I'm back after a week spent hacking some prose for the bosses. Many posts forthcoming.
On another front, in the last month I have had my yahoo account hacked and, then, deleted by yahoo's morons. I'd had the account for 11 years. And, right around New Year's, a bunch of fools started hassling people on one of the myspace.com bipolar groups. I fought back a bit...and was pursued by these clowns for two weeks. They ripped off my profile and created several fake Philips. At one point, I was turned into a Chinese woman. They even went so far as to create a "tribute" group in my honor. They seem to finally be off my back, the group's gone and so on. Once you point out to someone the legal standard of libel and that they are meeting it, they tend to scatter. Interesting. But it sure is creepy to have people track your every move that way and toss such malice around, even if it is just on a computer.
A couple of days ago, I noted a new study outlining the prevalance of psych med prescriptions in teen males. One of its surprising findings was that 10 percent of male teens wind up with an Rx for a psych med during doctors' visits. Here's what uber-Xtian group Focus on the Family thinks. Yep, God will chase that mental illness away. It's in the Bible, right?
I continue to be amazed at the lack of effectiveness of some psych meds in achieving their main goals, one of which is suicide prevention. Here's a new bit of evidence (abstract-only) from a major NIMH-funded study of bipolar disorder. I'll just quote from the abstract:
"The presence of suicidal ideation was similar between patients who were taking any lithium and those who were not (22.2 percent and 25.8 percent, respectively) and between those who were taking any divalproex and those who were not (20.3 percent and 21.5 percent). Suicidal ideation was significantly more prevalent among patients who were taking a second-generation antipsychotic than those who were not (26 percent and 17 percent) and those who were taking an antidepressant and those who were not (25 percent and 14 percent)."
What jumps out at me is the authors' claim that Lithium is most-commonly used in patients with the severest ideation problems (a little-advertised fact is that studies establish that good old Lithium has many suicide preventing qualities, and outperforms antidepressants) and that atypical antipsychotics and anti-depressants don't work better than Lithium and Depakote (divalproex) at preventing suicidality in bipolar disorder. So why do so many doctors insist on slapping bipolars with atypicals, when there are huge side effects problems with the very expensive drugs and there is plenty of emerging evidence that they don't work well (cf. CATIE study)? You can ask the same question about anti-depressants as well. When is the psych world going to burst into honesty about these meds, which are taken by millions of Americans each year?
What also jumps out at me is that one of this study's principal authors is Joseph Calabrese. In recent weeks, Calabrese has been quoted in several press accounts about just how wonderful Seroquel (America' most-prescribed atypical!) is at preventing suicide and suicidality. Here's a typical example. But the above study was released in December, roughly the same time as he was touting Seroquel. I won't even guess at the reasons for this inconsistency.
Calabrese is also one of the leading advocates for Seroquel's use as the new mood stabilizer. I am not impressed.
Ten percent of all visits by teen males to a doctor wind up with said teen males going home with a prescription for a psych med. So says a study by Brandeis University professor Cindy Parks Thomas, who tracks prescription drug trends. That so many youngsters are running around with juju in their brains is something I've long argued. Nice to see some data to go with my hunch. The percentage is teen males lines up with Andrew Solomon's claim in The Noonday Demon that 10 percent of Americans take an anti-depressant, and claims by researchers that about 30 percent of doctor's visits by women result in discussions of psych meds, and, almost as often, a prescription.
These kinds of numbers support my basic contention that 15 to 20 percent of the country is on a psych med of some kind. Given the overall half-performance of these same meds, that's like saying as much as 10 percent of the public is being ripped off. Why aren't more people fundamentally bothered by this? Or are we all scared to ask the necessary questions?
In a careful way, Thomas asks the implied question: "The dramatic increase in prescribing of psychotropic medications is of considerable concern, particularly because these medications are not without risks." Nice to have an academic echo my thoughts.
Also, Thomas asserts in the study that all that prescribing amounted to a 250 percent increase in psych meds for teens between 1994 and 2001. What's more, the largest portion of that increase occurred after the FDA, in 1999, allowed pharma companies to advertise directly to consumers. Meanwhile, other prescriptions for teen males--antibiotics, etc.--went down over the same time period, principally because of public health warnings cautioning against over-reliance on antibiotics and the like. Hmmm. I don't believe black helicopters can fly, but I hear one warming up right now.
From available accounts of the study (halted in my tracks once again by pay-to-read academic journals!), Thomas doesn't get into whether these were anti-depressants, antipsychotics, ADD meds or mood stabilizers. It'd be nice to see which meds drove this trend among teens. My hunch is it was anti-depressants initially and, when those tapered off, ADD meds and atypical antipsychotics. Thomas claims that a diagnosis of ADHD resulted from one-third of the office visits. Most striking is that as many as 26 percent of the office visits that led to a psych med being prescribed did not have an associated mental health diagnosis.
So these kids are getting prescribed all these drugs for what reasons? They are getting what results?
Looks like the Veterans Administration wants to limit benefits to soldiers suffering from PTSD. Oh goodie. The Washington Post has this account.
I am distressed by the big push that "outpatient commitment" is getting around the country. It is a rotten idea, except for very extreme cases, but that will never stop the folks at NAMI National, the alleged "nation's voice on mental illness." Here's an update on what's up in New York State. Chilling stuff. I will delve into this another day, however. For now, let me just remind you that I am neither a Mind Freedom type or a Scientologist. Honest.
Two new studies on anti-depressants were released today. One, conducted by Group Health right here in Seattle, asserts that anti-depressants do not lead to an increased rate of suicide. That runs counter to evidence given to the FDA, which led to the agency slapping black box warnings on suicidality and suicide on the SSRIs. But the Group Health data comes from a review of a huge data set on patients who've been through the HMO's system since the early 90s. I trust the researcher who led the study. So, now, I am officially going "Hmmmm" over this.
The second study, actually intermediate results from the STAR-D NIMH-funded study, claims that SSRIs studied "cured" depression over a 12-week period in about one-third of the patients. ("Cured" was the claim in the press rewrite of the study announcement. Cured is a bullshit term with a lifelong illness that is prone to remission. It spreads false hope. Arg.) Also, the study says that symtoms of depression ere remitted by 50 percent in another 10 to 15 percent of patients.
Translation: Anti-depressants studied work about half the time. That's further confirmation of NIMH's own assertion that psych meds achieve 50 percent or greater remission about half the time and full symptom remission less than half the time.
Does anyone really think that half-performance is a good deal? Does anyone think that half performance means that the psychopharmacological revolution is much of a revolution? Or is it more like yet another iteration in patients' quest for relief? I'll take the latter.
The good folks at Health Day News think otherwise, headlining their article "Antidepressants Work and Don't Boost Suicide Risk: Studies." That's a claim that just isn't supported. If I only half-worked at work, then I'd be fired. So why does the media cut psych meds such a break on half-performance? They must be on pharma's payroll. Lovely.
I had the craziest end to 2005. And 2006 has already kicked in with the same spirit. You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Really.