Marketers of these drugs gloss over their products' risks.
Many psychotropic medications can cause the neurological disorders Tardive Dyskinesia, or cause akithisia.
TD can cause permanent physical disability (search for Jen's Story and TD). Akithisia may be a brain manifestation of TD.
Worth it? Quite apart from the high price of the meds, I don't think so.

Elliott Siga and the rest of the marketeers at BMS, along with their KOL enablers, will get their comeuppance when the wave of cases of tardive dyskinesia due to Abilify in nonpsychotic depression crashes onshore. It's just a matter of time.

Normally I don't take an AGENTs word for much, but The Last Psychiatrist announced antipsychotics for depression a while ago.
I remember a different blog post of his that was more black and white, but these following blog posts are O.K.
"The Charade is Revealed-- We Are Doomed" November 3, 2006
"Farewell, Depression" April 4, 2007
"Yet Another Study On Antidepressants, And No One Notices The Timing" February 26, 2008

"First Anniversary Of The Death Of Antidepressants" April 14, 2008
"If you're new to the game, it will be hard for you to believe that in 2001 Depakote was everywhere. If you dared to start a "bipolar" on anything other than an antiepileptic, you were actually reprimanded by other doctors. "What the hell is this nut doing over there?" Back then if you said you were going to use Seroquel for... anything, they caned you.

Now it's the top selling psych drug"

I did some searching and found the old one of Furious Seasons.
http://www.furiousseasons.com/archives/2008/02/meet_the_new_antidepressants_worse_than_the_old_antidepressants_1.html

P.d."Yes, indeed, say hello to the new anti-depressants. Much scarier than the old anti-depressants, which can already be plenty bad. Why do I say that?..."

LINK

How else would people cope with the economy and wars?

Abilify caused me to have akathesia at every dose I tried, 30mg, 20mg, 15mg, 10mg, 5mg, 2mg, 1.5mg, 1mg, and .5mg. God help this depressed "market share."

Antipsychotics seemed to be used more often in adolescents and teenagers. I know a lot who were on antipsychotics as teenagers and adolescents, but don't know anyone who was on it as an adult. For some reason they are given out more frequently to kids, teenagers and adolescents but not adults. Probably because adults are fine giving these antipsychotics to their kids and admitting their kids have problems, but are less likely to take it themselves. Teenagers are frequently put on antipsychotics as a result of their parents reacting to adolescence instead of actual mental problems. Everyone I know who has been on antipsychotics started them as a teenager or adolescent, antipsychotics seems to be a teenage thing, wheras adults use antidepressants. Usually, when you're put on antipsychotics as a teenager, you are never, ever told that it's an antipsychotic. You're told it's an anxiety pill or something along those lines.

Personally, I have struggled (and continue to struggle) with depression. However, I don't necessarily think that drugs are the answer. It seems that there should be some sort of other alternative out there, doesn't it? After all, a "quick fix" via some pill is only a temporary solution- it doesn't actually solve the core problem...

Do these patients even read the warning labels for the antipsychotic their doctor is pushing on them? I'd much rather suffer from depression than take on the side effects of these drugs. Plus, if the doctors get the patient hooked on taking the meds for life, then there's a good chance of developing tardive dyskinesia, a disabling, often permanent condition that would drive a lot of people into wanting to stay in their house the rest of their lives if they ever developed it.

Also, if 2/3 of patients taking antidepressants don't even get relief from a drug specifically manufactured to treat depression, then how good can another drug indicated for psychosis be at it? Thinking about another issue this raises: does the doc. keep the patient on the regular antidepressant along with the antipsychotic even though the AD wasn't working? That doesn't make sense. I bet the doc. will make the argument that the antipsychotic will somehow magically "make" the AD work and thus keep the patient on two drugs.

A drug like lexapro costs what? 250 or 300 a month? Add that to the ridiculous price of say, abilify, and you're at $1000 or more a month just for two meds, one of which isn't working for depression and the other which isn't even designed to work for it. If the patient doesn't have insurance, then that's 12,000 a year, which, even without all of today's job losses, is pretty freaking massive.

Preying on vulnerable people just for the sake of increasing market share is f'ing sickening. It's probably at the point where drug companies are trying to convince doctors just to skip the AD altogether and hit 'em with the AP right off the bat. If the drug companies shifted money from their marketing campaigns to their research and development, then maybe we'd have better AD's. I don't see this happening anytime soon. We all lose.

why antipsychotics for teens?
best of both worlds: the doc gets to rx whatever will win him or her the hawaii trip, and negative feedback is insignificant: when the teen complains, it merely seems like the adolescent rebellion the parent is trying to quash anyway.

--same deal as the suicidality with SSRIs: when the pt experiences suicidality, blame the negative feedback on the "disease," not the meds.

Sad.

I just love it when Pharma greed gets to the point where we now see drug companies trashing entire classes of "miracle" drugs -- like SSRI's. As Phillip so aptly points out, it is a farce that the entire marketing campaign for Abilify is based on the apparent failure of SSRI's to alleviate depression in the first place! I wonder what the folks at Pfizer, Lily, SKB, et. al. are thinking now.

There's a certain hospital here in SE Connecticut (not many to chose between, so don't strain yourselves trying to sort it out...) that literally uses a shovel to dispense Q to its in-patients. I thought it rather odd until I saw the AZ clock on the wall and numerous other pharma paraphernalia about the nurse's station.

I had a chance discussion with a young man who flipped out due to unplanned Q withdrawal. He had been unable to refill a prescription - 800 mg/day!!!! - became highly agitated and later corralled by 5oh. Basically, all he wanted was a refill, but he was kept under observation for quite some time and in the end was given a short supply and released. I often think of this young man and wonder what sort of life he can expect. What he really needed and wanted was dependable shelter and a job. Too bad none of the staff managed to capture this in his chart.

I've really come to hate the field of mental health. I'm so fucking sick of the way fellow human beings are treated as chattel. It's shameful and embarrassing.

I was put on anti-psychotics to deal with my depression over ten years ago, so this is not a new phenomenon. It turns out that there was nothing chemically or physically wrong with me. Environmentally though I was a mess. This was only compounded by the feeling I had been incorrectly dubbed as a psychotic. Out of sheer desperation, I went to a life coach, that helped me see things differently. My depression cam back last year so, but she had moved. Thankfully she had a website, jblifecoach, and in less than six weeks I was feeling myself again. The drugs be damned!

Kurt,
Welcome to the Club of the Misdiagnosed. Membership grows daily.
{;>)

What I want to know is what is it going to take, as far as side effects and totaly PATHETIC effectiveness of all these "psych meds" before people start thinking:
"jeeze, that addiction I had to crack cocaine/herion/booze/meth/xanax/painkillers/pot/whatever, was more effective at making me feel better about my life and really it's "side effects" (the effects of addiction on my life) were only slightly worse than/or the same as the: TD, needing 18 hours of sleep a day, not being able to keep a job because I'm so doped up I can't function, No longer caring about anything cause I am on Seroquel XR or whatever, and now having diabieties, pancreatitis and being 250 pounds overwieght.... Maybe I'd rather be a crackhead/junkie/drunk/whatever than be paying 3x's as much for a "medication" that has almost as many side effects and is seemingly just as hard to get off of as was the crack/whatever I got off of because of the promise that this "medication" would make me feel well enough to function in the world without "self medicating".

I'm only partly joking here, and that is sad.

Come on Phrma, why can't you make just ONE good psych drug that actually is highly effective and low on the side effect profile. ? it's ridiculous. You know where you could get a bigger market share? By making a drug that actually works as well as street drugs do to make people feel better but that also has fewer side effects and is either less physicaly addicting or comes with a PROGRAM to keep people from getting off the hook using it. You'd have every junkie in america lining up to pay you big bucks to LEGALY make them feel better. As it is you loose a BIG part of your market share to drug dealers on the street that can offer something that actually works, so at least if you're going to f*ck up your life due to putting a chemical in your body, you'll actually feel good while that chemical is in your body. Unlike with psych meds where you just continually feel like shit until they kill you.

So, for the patients who try to score seroquel from their psychiatrists...what drug does the shrink forcibly treat them with? Clearly they lack insight, sort of a reverse 'anosognosia' if you will. And the go-to drugs for anosognosia have always been a big old dose of some sort of mind numbing antipsychotic, preferably done under extreme coercion or threats of force. Hmm...quite a dilemma really.

I read your blog on atypical medications and was yes appalled at the number of people with depression on an atypical med, but was surprised to why.
I fough taking an atypical med, Invega (new), for over a year. I have bipolar and was no longer in reality, when I was finally hospitalized for almost 3 months, I finally started to take the invega. When I would hide it under my tongue in my gum, within days, I would be feeling very strange and displaced again. I'm 26 by the way. I take lithium, but I fought hard not to take an atypical med. Fought until I was almost dead.
My first onset was 13, but no one helped me then, because I was too young, those painful years will haunt me forever, not to say I needed an antipsychotic, I didn't, but I needed help. Scars are left. Time was stolen.
Final note, the last thing I want is a psychiatry's nuclear weapon, in fact I'd rather not have an illness. But check out my blog, I think you'll find it entertaining, and different.
Great website, thanks for informing us, even though we may disagree on a bit written here or there.

I'd rather not take psychiatry's nuclear weapon, and I'd rather not have bipolar. Seriously.

I do wonder why children are being prescribed antipsychotics for depression? Strange.

I know I fought kicking and screaming not to take an atypical drug. My reality or lack of one force me to though.

Informative blog, for a different slant in the blog world, check out my post, guarentee you'll enjoy something, maybe even laugh!

Thanks!