The Zyprexa Chronicles: Mother Believes Her Bipolar Son Was Killed By Zyprexa

The New York Times is back with another article on the use of Zyprexa and its consequences for patients. In this case, the article is about a mother in Georgia who believes her son died from heart disease as a result of gaining 80 pounds on Zyprexa. Her son was bipolar, the story is sad, so I'll let you read it for yourselves. In it, Alex Berenson aptly sums up the dynamic around Zyprexa:

"For many patients, the side effects of Zyprexa are severe. Connecting them to specific deaths can be difficult, because people with mental illness develop diabetes and heart disease more frequently than other adults. But in 2002, a statistical analysis conducted for Eli Lilly found that compared with an older antipsychotic drug, Haldol, patients taking Zyprexa would be significantly more likely to develop heart disease, based on the results of a clinical trial comparing the two drugs. Exactly how many people have died as a result of Zyprexa’s side effects, and whether Lilly adequately disclosed those risks, are central issues in the thousands of product-liability lawsuits pending against the company, and in state and federal investigations."

As the article also notes, some in the psych world say Lilly downplayed the weight gain caused by its star drug as well as the consequent risks around weight gain, especially explosive weight gain. Let's face facts: some people who've taken Zyprexa have ballooned and rapidly. I've heard reports of 100 pounds in one year.

I am reviewing the documents in the Zyprexa case, which were made available to me, but I have yet to draw any firm conclusions. That will happen after I go do something all the schmancy Web 2.0 propagandists and bloggers seem to have problems grasping the mechanics of--reporting. I can assure readers that I have lots of questions based upon my reading of the documents to date. I will do what I can to get answers. Now that "the Other Project" is out of my life for a couple of weeks that may happen rather soon.

I appreciate the Times' attention to this story and the fact that Berenson's editors are letting him have a good run at it. Now, for some nitpicking.

Berenson's article states:

"No one would say Mr. Kauffman had an easy life. Like millions of other Americans, he suffered from bipolar disorder, a mental illness characterized by periods of depression and mania that can end with psychotic hallucinations and delusions."

I am so sick and tired of that being the thumb nail sketch of bipolar disorder. It's accurate, but only in the sense that it brackets the range of symptoms of bipolar. There is a whole lot of other shit going on inside those brackets. After a good year or so of going through various data on bipolar disorder, I am convinced that the hallucinations and delusions on the manic side of things happen far less often than researchers argue and are of fairly short duration when they do. If you buy the claim that 10 million or so Americans are bipolar, then you've got to break down what is meant by bipolar. Is it BP1, BP2, cyclothymia, BP NOS, bipolar spectrum disorder? The bad voodoo of mania--I am talking about the full-blown hallucinations and delusions, not the far tamer symptoms of hypomania that a lot of researchers call "manic" but which don't even cross the bridge into psychosis--probably only applies to one-third of what's considered bipolar disorder these days. About 3 million people. The classic 1 percenter situation. All the rest will likely never experience true psychosis, even though many like to kid themselves that they have in a kind of machismo boasting about bad times. So that leaves maybe 2 percent to 3 percent of the populace who is called bipolar but isn't really bipolar in the classic manic-depressive sense.

There are different kinds of mania or near-mania and that's what most bipolars have got. If the media is really interested in this disorder, in how it is treated and over-treated, then they ought to pay attention to the many bipolars who wouldn't know a hallucination if they took a hit of blotter. End of rant.