Furious Seasons

December 15, 2009

WebMD Depression Screening Test, Brought To You By Eli Lilly

Some of you have likely seen a depression screening ad that WebMD is running on TV. Designed to push you to the website, it features a woman complaining of being left by her husband one year before and how she can't cope and a voiceover declares that WebMD's depression screening test is just the place. When you head on over to said test, you find that it's "brought to you by Lilly" and there's the Lilly logo in the top right corner. Lilly of course makes Prozac and Cymbalta (and Zyprexa and Strattera).

Well at least they are being honest, but at some point I think we all get more than a little tired of seeing these kinds of hand-in-glove relationships. Not that WebMD is a paragon of journalistic independence. Back in the early years of this decade, I was a reporter in Portland, Ore., where WebMD happened to have an editorial office at the time. I once had drinks with someone who worked there who admitted to me that the website had been started in the late-90s principally to take advantage of all the DTC ads that pharma would inevitably push onto websites with health information. Read into that whatever you want.

WebMD does claim on the screening page that it controls the content, which I'm sure they do. But not once in the history of the site have I seen it say a tough thing about a psych med or fail to spin negative news as insignificant, as it did yesterday with the anti-depressants linked to strokes in older women study. On a page stressing the physical symptoms of depression--gee, sound like Lilly much?--and pushing people to the screening test.

It's all a big happy circle of independence.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at December 15, 2009 12:03 AM

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Comments

Another problem here is that feeling horrible after your husband leaves you is called NORMAL grief, not depression.

Posted by: Miranda at December 15, 2009 04:39 AM

I know there was a push for screening for teens a while earlier. Here's a very well researched article by journalist Evelyn Pringle on truthout.org, "US Kids Represent Psychiatric Drug Goldmine." (http://www.truthout.org/1213091)

Some might enjoy her "Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex" from counterpunch.org of April of this year. (http://www.counterpunch.org/pringle04072009.html)

I really like her work.

(Evelyn Pringle is an investigative journalist focused on exposing corruption in government and corporate America. She won multiple awards for her investigative reporting from the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology.)

Posted by: tulipmania at December 15, 2009 05:39 AM

I just knew it, I just knew, I just knew it, when I saw those ads popping up on TV for depression screening from WebMd.

Thanks for doing the verification footwork for me Phil.

Also, thanks to the gal above for the compliments on my latest article.

Posted by: Evelyn Pringle at December 15, 2009 03:45 PM

The lady's husband left her. Likely, she has a lot more challanges in daily life solo than when she had a partner. Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a decent counselor and a support group, and a margarita with an old girlfriend every now and then. Maybe a ritual burning of some old photos and gifts.

But what in her scenario would suggest she need to take a brain drug? She has a biologically based brain disorder that happens to get triggered by a broken heart or a betrayal?

I have a couple allergies. I eat the wrong thing, and I get hives. This is a biologically based disorder inside me that gets triggered by a specific experience. How does that match up with this lady's troubles?

Posted by: medsvstherapy at December 18, 2009 06:40 AM