ADD Drugs: No Surprises Here

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, news that there are now questions of heart safety attached to ADD drugs like Ritalin would get patients thinking twice about taking the meds. Here's an account of what's up out there in psych land. Isn't it funny though that the ever so studious New York Times only asks questions about psych meds like these and anti-depressants but has never even poked at issues patients run into with atypicals nor examined globally why psych meds work about 50 percent of the time?

If there's good news in this it's that docs are being pushed to screen their patients very hard for things like heart murmurs before starting them on ADD drugs. That should've been happening long ago, in my view, and it should be happening just as aggressively with other psych meds. But then insurance companies don't pay docs to do proper screenings in advance of handing out psych meds--hell, any meds--and that's just dumb. I wonder: If docs had screened some patients against known indicators of diabetic shock would the two dozens or so patients who died from taking Zyprexa still be alive?