The FDA today approved the atypical antipsychotic Abilify for the treatment of irritability associated with autism in pediatric patients aged 6 to 17 years old. I'll leave it at that....
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 20, 2009 04:22 PM
Late yesterday I got a copy of the JAMA study detailing how kids and teens on atypical antipsychotics are putting on lots of weight very quickly and suffering detriments on just about every metabolic measure researchers looked at (my initial...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 28, 2009 12:03 AM
A study to be published in JAMA tomorrow finds staggering weight gain in kids given antipsychotics. According to the AP: "Children on widely used psychiatric drugs can quickly gain an alarming amount of weight; many pack on nearly 20 pounds...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 27, 2009 11:51 AM
In writing up BMS's third-quarter financials yesterday, two reporters at ordinarily-hyper-accurate Bloomberg described BMS's Abilify as a "mood stabilizer" twice in one article. Um, the drug is an antipsychotic and absolutely no one calls it a mood stabilizer, least of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 23, 2009 12:05 AM
This is one of the oddest studies I've seen in a while. It was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry earlier this month and it's literally an example of trying to pull the wool over the public's eyes concerning...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 22, 2009 12:03 AM
Second quarter financial results are out today for Bristol-Myers Squibb and the results for its atypical antipsychotic Abilify are astounding: worldwide sales of the drug reached $643 million in the quarter, an increase of 22 percent over the previous year....
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 23, 2009 11:20 AM
Many of you know that an FDA advisory panel yesterday recommended that the agency approve Zyprexa, Seroquel and Geodon--atypical antipsychotics all--for use in teens 13 to 17 with schizophrenia and kids 10 to 17 with alleged pediatric bipolar disorder. I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 11, 2009 12:03 AM
This isn't really news per se, but I've noticed a huge uptick in appearances of the Abilify for depression TV ads--the one where people go from being depressed to being at a party or taking out the mail (and who...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 9, 2009 11:32 AM
There's been a lot of criticism of ex-Abilify spokespatient/"Electroboy" author Andy Behrman in the wake of last week's front page Wall Street Journal article about his split with Bristol-Myers Squibb. The company had paid him a reported $400,000 to speak...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 19, 2009 12:01 AM
A good number of you are aware that Andy Behrman, author of "Electroboy," was a spokespatient for Bristol-Myers Squibb's Abilify for a time and, according to yesterday's Wall Street Journal piece on him and his broken relationship with BMS, he...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 15, 2009 12:01 AM
Regular readers are well aware of the tale of Andy Behrman, author of "Electroboy," who became a spokespatient in 2004 and 2005 for Bristol-Myers Squibb's atypical antipsyhcotic Abilify. But by 2006, he'd experienced such nasty side effects on the drug--jerking...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 14, 2009 12:01 AM
I just about fell over when I read this article in Time last week because here we have one of the most mainstream publications possible noting that Americans had grown enamored of the idea of taking a pill to stave...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 13, 2009 10:15 AM
CL Psych had a wonderful post the other day harping on Abilify's propensity to cause akathisia in some patients taking it for depression and other disorders. What CL Psych did was uncover a recent study in the Journal of Clinical...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 12, 2009 11:42 AM
There was a well-written, yet somehow problematic essay in the New York Times Sunday Magazine yesterday. It concerns the chronic, treatment resistant, suicidal depression of its author, Daphne Merkin, and her three-week hospitalization in 2008 at the New York State...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 11, 2009 12:01 AM
The FDA yesterday approved Fanapt (iloperidone), an atypical antipsychotic made by Vanda Pharmaceuticals, for use in the treatment of schizophrenia in adults. I don't know a lot about this drug--it's the first antipsychotic given its initial FDA approval in years--but...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 7, 2009 12:05 AM
Most of you are aware that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to the National Alliance on Mental Illness last month, asking for the organization, which lobbies Congress, to reveal how much it gets from what pharma companies. NAMI...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 6, 2009 12:05 AM
The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (known as Psych Rights) yesterday sent letters to several members of Congress, including Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), alleging that since the 1990s Medicaid has been paying for psych meds used in kids off-label and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 6, 2009 12:03 AM
Yesterday, I posted on the fact that 10 percent of people being treated for depression in the US are now being prescribed antipsychotics (Abilify, Seroquel, Risperdal, Zyprexa) and one reader had some thoughts on a Seroquel-related incident. Q is Seroquel...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 30, 2009 12:01 AM
A recent conference call with financial analysts by executives with Bristol-Myers Squibb, makers of Abilify--the antipsychotic that will cure your non-psychotic issues--is revealing. Over 10 percent of Americans now take an atypical antipsychotic for depression, according to the company. Much...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 29, 2009 12:03 AM
One well-known quality of anti-depressants is their tendency to induce akathisia in a large number of patients, causing the kind of internal racing or restlessness that makes the meds impossible for some to take and, in some cases, can drive...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 22, 2009 12:01 AM
I've been holding off writing much about the efficacy and safety data that emerged in connection with last week's FDA psychopharmacology advisory committee hearing as to whether the committee would recommend to the FDA approval of Seroquel XR for a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 15, 2009 12:01 AM
The Los Angeles Times had an interesting package of articles yesterday on the wide use of atypical antipsychotics in the US (one of which I've already addressed). In one, the paper reported about the lack of efficacy in Abilify used...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 14, 2009 12:03 AM
I'm sure most of you know that Abilify is an atypical antipsychotic that's been repurposed as an add-on treatment for depression. As I noted earlier this year, since that FDA approval Abilify's sales exploded by 30 percent in 2008. The...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 13, 2009 11:38 AM
Certainly, I've been seeing all kinds of anxiety and depression here in Seattle in recent months, but according to this New York Times article it's a growing national trend (the paper loves nothing as much as it loves "trend" stories)....
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 9, 2009 12:01 AM
Yesterday, Bnet.com reported that 14 pharma companies had gotten warning letters from the FDA, which noted that the companies were misrepresenting their drugs' indications and were hiding side effect and risk information in various text ads that popped up during...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 8, 2009 12:03 AM
Late last week, Jim Edwards at BNET.com had a fine piece detailing some of the sex-for-Seroquel-studies emails which I first reported on last month. It appears, as I reported back then, that Wayne Macfadden, AstraZeneca's former US Seroquel medical director,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 16, 2009 11:54 AM
So John McManamy has gone and done it--gone and called my writing "dumb antipsychiatry." Seriously, you can check out that humdinger right here. McManamy is the author of "Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder," but one wonders how well...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 20, 2009 12:01 AM
After putting up the original post, I went back and slightly changed the portion where I discuss RS's handling of patient accounts in the article. I had overstated something and wanted to correct it. PD Two weeks ago, I noted...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 12, 2009 12:01 AM
The FDA announced yesterday that it is reviewing the safety of a bunch of drugs, including Abilify and several anti-depressants. As usual, I cannot find notice of this on the FDA's website (it's supposed to be here, but it's not...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 5, 2009 12:05 AM
This is a very alarming new paper--a literature review actually--just out in Psychiatric Services and asserting that people with bipolar disorder are at a very heightened risks of premature death due to death from general medical conditions. The basic range...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 5, 2009 12:03 AM
OK, this is odd and journalistically lame. Three years ago, about.com flat-out censored an article written for it by Andy Behrman, author of Electroboy about how Abilify messed him up. As it happened, the site had tons of ads from...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 30, 2009 01:29 PM
Bristol-Myers Squibb today announced its 2008 financials and its atypical antipsychotic Abilify, the object of much TV advertising over the last year, saw its sales hit $2.15 billion, a 30 percent jump over 2007's sales of $1.66 billion. The company...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 27, 2009 11:23 AM
Some of you are likely aware of the syndicated column "The People's Pharmacy," which I often find interesting, and which has often taken a deeply-skeptical stance on various psych meds. In this week's column, the authors go after atypical antipsychotics...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 26, 2009 12:01 AM
I keep wondering when the many pieces of bad news around the atypical antipsychotics will finally wake up patients and doctors to the unacceptable dangers of these drugs and lead to decreases in their use. Now comes this study from...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 15, 2009 12:03 AM
I'm not sure what happened, but yesterday's post on former Abilify spokespatient Andy Behrman was fine when I posted it but now has developed a problem where about half the text is cut off and is missing from my blog...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 20, 2008 01:38 PM
This is a repost of what was originally posted on Dec. 19, 2008. Sometime after the original post something went wacky in my blog sfotware and the last three paragraphs of the original post were cut off and missing from...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 19, 2008 12:01 AM
As I do every three months, today I'm beginning this site's winter fundraiser. The goal is to raise $3,000 over the next two weeks. The fall fundraiser was a big success and ended early, and I hope that's the case...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 1, 2008 12:05 AM
Some of you may remember that earlier this year, New York Times columnist Judith Warner accused critics of slamming kids with psych meds of engaging in "narrative," which I suppose means that they were making up stories of overmedicated kids...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 24, 2008 12:05 AM
Although there are likely many, many examples of lamery on the part of the FDA--this year's salmonella outbreak, for example, which it took the agency months to track down--I wanted to point readers to some recent examples of inanity at...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 21, 2008 12:05 AM
Some of you may know of Andy Behrman, who wrote Electroboy, which was published in 2002. It's a good memoir of mania, bipolar disorder and craziness and his rough experiences undergoing ECT. A few years later, Behrman began taking Abilify...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 20, 2008 12:03 AM
As I noted on Monday, an FDA committee of outside experts was set to review the use of the atypical antipsychotic Zyprexa in teens. The meeting, according to the New York Times, turned into quite the affair with doctors denouncing...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 19, 2008 12:03 AM
Most of you are aware that for the last few weeks I've been noting the presence of the Abilify for depression TV ad, which has been running late nights. Abilify is an atypical antipsychotic, carries black box warnings for all...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 17, 2008 11:33 AM
It's interesting to me in a rather ironic way to see how many people (lots) now read this site and its comments and walk away with the conclusion that you and I are all a bunch of bitter nutbags who...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 13, 2008 07:20 AM
Last night, I saw a new version of the Abilify for depression ad on TV. As with the first version of the ad, nowhere is it mentioned that the drug is actually an antipsychotic. Instead, all the language is about...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 12, 2008 02:33 PM
I saw the Abilify for depression TV ad again over the weekend and I continue to be concerned about how Bristol-Myers Squibb is very craftily making the drug, an atypical antipsychotic, sound as if it's an anti-depressant. Nowhere in the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 10, 2008 08:45 AM
I noted the other day that Bristol-Myers Squibb has begun rolling out TV ads touting its atypical antipsychotic Abilify as an add-on treatment for people who've done poorly on anti-depressants. Doug Bremner, a psychiatrist at Emory University, caught my post...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 7, 2008 12:05 AM
Last night, quite late actually, I saw an ad for Abilify, an atypical antipsychotic, on TV. The ad, filled with hopeful string-section music, touted the use of this drug--primarily intended as a treatment for psychosis--as an add-on treatment for depression....
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 4, 2008 09:44 AM
Yesterday, just as I was about to fax the agency a FOIA request in response to the FDA's continued silence on defining pediatric bipolar disorder, I got an email from Sandy Walsh, a press officer at the agency, stating the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 16, 2008 12:03 AM
Results of the long-awaited TEOSS trial, sponsored by NIMH, were released today by the American Journal of Psychiatry. The study randomly assigned 119 children and teens aged 8 to 19 diagnosed with psychotic symptoms to receive either Zyprexa or Risperdal--two...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 15, 2008 09:48 AM
I read the New York Times Sunday Magazine piece on alleged child bipolar disorder over the weekend. It wasn't quite as big a piece of crap as I heard from readers initially, but Jennifer Egan's article was, in my opinion,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 15, 2008 12:03 AM
Many of you are aware that in late July the FDA announced, in response to an inquiry I made, that pediatric bipolar disorder was a valid diagnosis. This came despite the fact that the controversial disorder (sometimes known as child...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 10, 2008 11:24 AM
It's been a little over three months since I began the last fundraiser for this site and so I come before all you dear readers again to ask you to contribute what you can to helping fund my work on...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 3, 2008 12:05 AM
Yesterday, I reported that the FDA's psychiatry products chief, Thomas Laughren, and the FDA itself were refusing to answer questions about pediatric bipolar disorder which the agency had two weeks previously determined unilaterally was a valid diagnosis. The FDA's move...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 15, 2008 09:16 AM
Two weeks ago, the FDA announced that pediatric bipolar disorder--aka, child bipolar disorder, juvenile bipolar disorder, etc.--was a valid diagnosis, despite the fact that it doesn't exist in the DSM and child psychiatrists cannot even agree amongst themselves whether the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 14, 2008 12:03 AM
Yesterday, I posted an item wherein the FDA says it accepts as valid the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder, despite much controversy within psychiatry about the validity of the disorder. I also noted that a Harvard child psychiatrist had written...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 31, 2008 12:01 AM
Earlier today, I asked the FDA to respond to a statement made by Harvard child psychiatrist Janet Wozniak, wherein the doctor claimed that the FDA accepted the validity of the hotly-debated child bipolar disorder. That was news to me, since...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 30, 2008 02:07 PM
There was a recent op-ed in the Boston Globe by an emeritus Harvard med school professor criticizing the many financial conflicts of the group of child psychiatrists headed by Joseph Biederman. Among other things, he pounded on the meds given...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 30, 2008 08:58 AM
Over the weekend, I visited a friend of mine in a psych hospital in the Seattle area. Diagnosed with schizophrenia eight years ago, she's been in on an involuntary commitment for almost two weeks. She seemed OK when I saw...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 2, 2008 12:03 AM
The fine folks at Bristol-Myers Squibb are running new TV ads for Abilify, its super-expensive, chock full of side effects atypical antipsychotics. I saw it air last night during "The Tonight Show." The new ad--which hasn't made its way to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 20, 2008 08:19 AM
Most of you are well aware that AstraZeneca has been trotting out data--not especially impressive data BTW--touting its antipsychotic Seroquel as a treatment for depression and generalized anxiety disorder. The drug is already approved for treating schizophrenia, mania in bipolar...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 8, 2008 12:03 AM
Yesterday, in response to my post calling for research on psych med withdrawal, I got many wonderful reader comments. This one took the cake, however, as it came from a mother whose child had been variously diagnosed with ADHD, autism...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 29, 2008 12:03 AM
Decision Resources, a market analyst firm, is out with a report on the market for atypical antipsychotics, which the company estimates at $15.9 billion in 2007 with growth projected to $17.8 billion in 2011. That's a lot of doped up...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 5, 2008 12:03 PM
That headline quotes an editorial in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry by Nassir Ghaemi, an associate professor of psychiatry at Emory University and one of the thought leaders in psychiatry on bipolar disorder. I'm beginning to like his thinking...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 4, 2008 12:03 AM
This is certainly a fabulous Friday for pharma execs in the land. Abilify gets approved for kids this morning and this afternoon we learn that the FDA just approved Pristiq for depression. The drug is made by Wyeth and is...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 29, 2008 04:00 PM
The FDA today approved the atypical antipsychotics Abilify for use in treating bipolar disorder in kids as young as 10 years old. Of course, there's much controversy in the land about what age a doctor can properly diagnose bipolar disorder...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 29, 2008 09:42 AM
UPDATE: Mere hours after I posted the following, AstraZeneca filed a supplemental new drug application for Seroquel XR, the extended release version of Seroquel, for treating depression under 3 different indications: monotherapy, adjunct therapy, and maintenance therapy in adult patients....
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 29, 2008 12:03 AM
Most of you probably know that I worked all through the weekend on this site and have been doubling up during the week between the site and some outside work. I am tired and burned out, and will be back...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 21, 2008 12:05 AM
PBS' "Frontline" took on the controversies around the bipolar child paradigm and medicated children last night. I was at work and did not see the program, so I have no opinion of it. You can watch it online here. I'd...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 9, 2008 12:40 AM
A reader of this blog threw down a huge gauntlet before NAMI National a few weeks ago, sending a letter to the National office that called the organization on a lot of its rhetoric and ideology. His name is Steven...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 4, 2008 12:05 AM
Here's the second installment of my year-end wrap up. So much happened in mental health news this year that I broke it into two posts. 2007 was that busy of a year. The first part is here and now for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 27, 2007 12:01 AM
I'm glad to see that smaller papers are poking into questions around diagnosing small children with mental illnesses and giving them medications that don't perform well for adults and are damn near unresearched altogether in children. Here's what the Rochester...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 10, 2007 12:01 AM
I was tied up yesterday getting ready to leave town, so here's something I haven't done in two months or so--links to things I've found interesting recently. Not that there aren't about a bazillion other things I could link to....
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 26, 2007 12:01 AM
Daniel Carlat, known to many readers as author of the Carlat Psychiatry Report, a professor of psychiatry at Tufts Medical School, and author of his own blog, has a long essay in tomorrow's New York Times Sunday Magazine about his...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 24, 2007 10:54 AM
In today's Holy Shit Dept., Abilify, the as-seen-on-TV atypical anti-psychotic targeted to women, has just been approved by the FDA as an add-on treatment for depression. I don't even have time today to go after this in any thorough way....
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 20, 2007 02:15 PM
Earlier today, the FDA approved Seroquel XR--the extended release version of the atypical anti-psychotic Seroquel--for use as a maintenance treatment in adults with schizophrenia. What with all the new FDA approvals going on or imminent for the atypicals--Abilify for kids...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 16, 2007 10:43 AM
Last week, Abilify was approved for use in youths aged 10 to 17 years of age who are being treated for schizophrenia. Now, the drug is set to receive priority review for use in bipolar disorder in youths aged 10...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 16, 2007 12:03 AM
Well, those annoying TV ads must be paying off. Yesterday, Bristol MyersSquibb, makers of Abilify, announced third quarter sales of the drug hit $420 million, a 34 percent increase over the same quarter of 2006. I continue to be stunned...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 26, 2007 12:07 AM
I've been tracking that Abilify TV ad lately, and all of a sudden there is a new entrant in the antipsychotic ads derby: Geodon, Pfizer's atypical antipsychotic. I ran across a Flash ad for it on HealthCentral.com, where a self-congratulatory...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 24, 2007 12:05 AM
So I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone in between the sixth and seventh innings of Sunday's Redsox-Indians ALCS game seven. On comes the Abilify for bipolar disorder TV ad which I've written about previously. It...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 22, 2007 12:05 AM
Well, perhaps not everywhere, but this evening I saw it on live TV--as opposed to on BMS' website--and I just sat there and shook my head as I watched history being made. You see, this ad is the first time...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 5, 2007 11:22 PM
Last week's $515 million settlement reached by BMS with the Department of Justice was reportedly as a result of internal whistleblowers at the company, according to this press release from the National Whistleblowers Center. The settlement closed a case brought...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 2, 2007 12:01 AM
Late yesterday, the Department of Justice announced a settlement with BMS of allegations involving a range of drugs the company makes and markets, including Abilify. The company is paying $515 million. The allegations involving Abilify were these: "Second, the Government...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 29, 2007 12:36 PM
I've just viewed the Abilify TV ad online and BMS is clearly marketing the drug at women. From the sound of symptoms they describe, it sounds like an ad for a bipolar disorder 2 treatment. You can view the ad...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 26, 2007 11:06 AM
I heard from a reader who's seen ads for Abilify, an atypical antipsychotic, on CNN. If anyone has seen this ad, I'd appreciate it if you could shoot me a description of the ad and what condition it was being...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 26, 2007 12:03 AM
David Carr, a media columnist for the New York Times, former alt-weekly editor and one of the genuine good sorts in the journalism world, had an interesting piece yesterday wherein he examined his first brush with the health care blogosphere...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 12, 2007 12:07 AM
There was an interesting AP wire story on the Net last night about a psychosis prevention program in Portland, Maine. It's so successful, say its proponents, that it is going to be replicated at four other sites in the US....
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 11, 2007 12:01 AM
As I noted in January, ads for Abilify have popped up around Seattle. The one I saw in my part of town disappeared, but apparently the one in the University District didn't. Thanks to a reader tip and another reader...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 16, 2007 12:05 AM
Last night CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" spent a bunch of time on the new FDA warnings on sleeping pills, going into the medical issues and the experiences of one man who got busted for a DUI while on Ambien. They...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 15, 2007 12:01 PM
I am glad to see that my colleague CL Psych is slapping around the silly diagnostic criteria of early-onset bipolar disorder, especially its vague cousin bipolar disorder NOS: "Of course, the upshot to a bipolar diagnosis is that it requires...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 15, 2007 12:01 AM
And not the good kind, but three subpoenas from US Attorneys in Boston, San Francisco and Philadelphia. The subpoenas are related to ongoing investigations of sales and marketing of Risperdal. Which is to say off-label marketing. Although Zyprexa and Eli...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 12, 2007 10:47 AM
A neighbor of mine, whom I'll call B., is about to be evicted from his apartment here in Seattle. He's 61 years old and has had schizophrenia since he was in his early-20s. But I'll come back to that problem...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 8, 2007 12:01 AM
Apologies for the late posting today. I was working on a long, cranky, experimental post for today last night and it just wasn't quite there yet. But that's OK because CL Psych has run into something in a recent issue...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 7, 2007 11:03 AM
I don't often use the term "scandal" on this site. It's one of those over-used terms in the media like "epidemic" and "public health problem" that has been watered-down over time. In fact, I've only used the term four times...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 21, 2007 12:14 PM
It probably comes as no comfort to Eli Lilly that yesterday Slate.com wrote up one of the Zyprexa documents, apparently downloaded from this here website. Go read their nice piece here. Many thanks to Slate. This makes me wonder where...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 16, 2007 12:01 AM
I noted recently that the Abilify ads that have been cropping up on phone booths and such in Seattle and elsewhere in the country took DTC advertising to new lows. Here's a picture of one of the ads in Philadelphia,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 5, 2007 12:49 AM
CL Psych has caught AstraZeneca authoring yet another paid editorial which has been placed in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. When will these allegedly independent academic journals catch a fucking clue? If they continue to run such naked ad campaigns...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 2, 2007 11:55 AM
So I took a drive in the sun yesterday afternoon in my lovely neighborhood of Capitol Hill. Yes, it's occasionally sunny in Seattle in January. Anyhow, I drove by the phone booth where I saw an ad for Abilify last...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 31, 2007 12:05 AM
I noted recently, a federal government study found, after reviewing the scientific literature, that there was not enough evidence to support the off-label--ie, unapproved use--use of atypical antipsychotics. At the time, I mentioned that another government study had determined that...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 29, 2007 12:01 AM
As I noted last week, Intueri had an item on her blog about ads for Abilify appearing on phone booths in Seattle. I finally dragged my sorry ass down to Broadway the other evening and, lo, there was an ad...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 26, 2007 12:37 PM
There was an interesting story last week in Psychiatric Times. It was a curtain raiser on what the reporter promises will be a big year of data for psych MDs. Lots of studies on using atypicals in kids and adolescents--I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 24, 2007 12:01 AM
I would be remiss if I didn't pass along some links to interesting posts that others are doing on mental health and such. Especially since CL Psych has several posts up that are amazing. Just read them here, here and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 19, 2007 12:12 PM
There's a lot of news in this post. Happy reading. An anonymous tipster pointed me to something called "zyprexakills." Apparently, it is a response by the netroots to the court order forcing Jim Gottstein, a lawyer in Alaska, to return...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 26, 2006 12:05 AM
Prevention has always been the goal of the psychcopharmacological revolution. Preventing relapses of mania, psychosis and depression, be they full-blown on sub-syndromal, is claimed as the chief good of the revolution and is certainly part and parcel of pharma advertising....
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 20, 2006 12:01 AM
There was an Associated Press story the other day on how there's bright news on the atypicals front for drug makers (yes, but what about for the patients?). At the end, the AP business reporter noted that Bristol Myers-Squibb had...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 11, 2006 12:03 AM
I am taking the day off to focus on other things. I'll be back on Monday with news of things like the Associated Press completely screwing up a study on Abilify. Ah, the AP. Where to begin? Have a nice...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 8, 2006 12:27 PM
Last week, I wrote a post attacking docs for trying to use antipsychotics to prevent psychosis in teens in advance of an episode of psychosis in the patients. I am opposed to such research on ethical grounds and this particular...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 23, 2006 08:16 AM
And it goes like this. All kidding aside, a study just came out in the UK claiming that: "Over 40% of people regularly worry that negative comments are being made about them; 27% think that people deliberately try to irritate...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 29, 2006 12:01 AM
As I mentioned the other day, I had to knock down my recent, short-lived bout of depression with 50 mgs. of Seroquel. It wasn’t pretty and I was so fogged that I couldn’t work the next day, much less stay...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 5, 2006 12:07 AM
I almost never post on Sunday, but there's been enough feedback to the recent posts on Abilify to lead me to ask you all to post to comments/email me about personal experiences (good, bad and mixed) with Abilify. And I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 4, 2006 01:36 AM
I know some of you appreciated my explanation of what went down between Andy Behrman and about.com. His article was well-written and on-point, and about.com does have some articles critical of the side-effects of psych meds on its site. So,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 1, 2006 12:01 AM
I was contacted yesterday by a friend who told me that an article Andy Behrman, author of Electroboy, had contributed to about.com’s bipolar disorder site had been removed from the site. Behrman has contributed many articles to the site, but...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 31, 2006 12:03 AM
This article was orginally published somewhere else. I will get into that story in another post. I am reposting the article here with the author's permission. Andy Behrman is the author of Electroboy. His website is Electroboy, where the following...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 31, 2006 12:01 AM
A reader comments on yesterday's post on how CBT is rapidly gaining acceptance in the UK while hardly seeing the light of day in its country of birth (um, that'd be the US): "I am a huge fan of CBT---it...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 26, 2006 12:01 AM
I'm not even going to detangle this. But Abilify's maker is now claiming that the atypical antipsychotic is a "maintenance" medication for bipolar disorder. They make this claim based on a 6-week study. No, I am not making that up....
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 18, 2006 10:44 AM
It's no secret that bipolar disorder is often misdiagnosed as unipolar depression. That puts patients in the bind of being half-treated and, as we well know, the consequences can be disastrous. Here's an article on the phenomenon alleging that 35...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 6, 2006 08:57 AM
Someone asked me if my earlier posts about Seroquel meant that I liked some of the other atypicals. The answer is no. I've taken Risperdal for extended periods of time and Geodon for a few weeks. Geodon made me agitated...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 13, 2005 09:22 PM