My wife and I have also taken note of this particular commercial. It's almost as if the depression that Cymbalta can cure is the most painful kind of depression.

I once took this stuff. After 5 hits of the lowest dose, I, for the first time in my life, knew what suicidal ideation was. I never even called my pdoc, I just stopped taking it or I would've ended up hospitalized. Anecdotally, I've heard of some people having success with it, not me though. Scary stuff.

Cymbalta...when I hear this word, all I remember are the stories re: how the drug company recruits the Indiana U college kids for money to test drugs, and how one young woman w/out any symtoms entered the study for Cymbalta and killed herself by hanging while in the study and I believe on their campus. She was 19. Depression does hurt, I hate commercials.

http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/02/12.php
Thu, 12 Feb 2004

The Associated Press reports that nearly a fifth of the volunteers testing Eli Lilly's antidepressant drug, duloxetine, dropped out after Traci Johnson, a 19-year old student committed suicide at a company laboratory.

........(more)

Pull the campaign !!! That stupid Cymbalta music is going to drive us all to "thoughts of suicide" -- get a new one -- it's over -- I rush to find the "mute" button when I hear the first note -- STOP IT !!!!!

I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHO THE ACTOR IS THAT IS SHOWN AT THE BEGINING THE MIDDLE AND AT THE VERY END. DOES ANY ONE HAVE ANY INFO?

I really have nothing wrong with the commercial, the music or the actress. I think it was all done very acurately and tastefully. I am glad that there is one more option for people to try that need to be medicated.

"why doesn't Lilly shut the fuck up and start making anti-depressants that end depression for the majority of people who take them--I'd settle for 70 percent!--without any side effects as opposed to the usual 30 percent getting full relief complete with nasty side effects?"

Philip--perhaps it hasn't occurred to you that that is an impossible goal? Why do you think that "depression" is a simple disease amenable to a single treatment? Given the genetic and biochemical complexity of our brains, and individual variability, drugs that work well in 30% of people with a vaguely diagnosable condition is actually pretty damn good. Sure, the pharma companies can do better (and they are certainly looking hard on the R&D side), and the advertising hype probably hurts them as much as it helps, but you are way overreacting and over simplifying. Apart from myself, I personally know a dozen or more folks whose lives were dramatically changed for the better when the current generation of RI drugs became available. And at least one of them owed her life to Prozac. Now we've all been through multiple drugs to find the best one, not to mention fiddling with doses, timing, combos and paying attention to emotional hygiene, physical exercise, and all the other things that go into successful mood management, but it's a big improvement over even 10 years ago. I for one, am pretty thankful.