I'm beginning this site's winter fundraiser a bit earlier than I'd originally planned for a couple of reasons. One, the last few fundraisers have taken longer than the two weeks or so of the glory day of 2007 and 2008,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 18, 2009 12:05 AM
Manoj Waikar, an adjunct psychiatry professor at Stanford who's also in private practice in Palo Alto, Calif., has made $74,850 for speaking on Lilly's behalf 51 times this year. So the New York Times smartly tried to find out what...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 4, 2009 12:03 AM
Eli Lilly announced its third quarter results today. Cymbalta sales are way up: "Lilly's biggest drug, Zyprexa, posted sales of $1.2 billion, up 2.8%. Higher selling prices offset lower demand in the U.S. Demand increased outside the U.S. Sales of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 21, 2009 01:57 PM
Last evening one of little header text ads appeared at the top of my gmail account, something to the effect of "Learn about MDD in kids." MDD being major depressive disorder. So of course I clicked on the link. I...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 8, 2009 12:05 AM
That's the name of a new blog that first appear in early September and which I ran into yesterday. It's an ongoing account of a British writer and "wage slave" who's recently taken his last hit of Prozac and walked...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 1, 2009 12:03 AM
News is out in the Boston Globe that Eli Lilly's recently-released list of payouts to docs includes 60 Massachusetts doctors, including some at Boston Medical Center--the main hospital for the Boston University School of Medicine. The university has ordered the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 29, 2009 12:05 AM
A new website, knowfibro.com, has popped up and interestingly its open and transparent about its sponsorship by Eli Lilly and the National Fibromyalgia Association, a California-based non-profit. NFA is in turn partially funded by Lilly, Forest Labs and other pharma...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 14, 2009 11:28 AM
Remember that list Eli Lilly recently released detailing what doctors it's paying $22 million in consulting fees to? Well, the St. Petersburg Times had a great piece the other day on one of Lilly's top doctors in the Tampa Bay...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 31, 2009 01:38 PM
An utterly fascinating piece appeared in the St. Petersburg Times today by Katherine Snow Smith who recounted a series of blow-ups with her three children, the final straw being one over her kids fighting over Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 28, 2009 03:02 PM
A new report out in the Australian Adverse Drug Reactions Bulletin details cases of serotonin syndrome reported in connection with patients taking Cymbalta, which was recently approved for use in depression in Australia. About 200,000 prescriptions for the drug--which is...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 3, 2009 10:36 AM
Via the Indianapolis Star's Take After Meals blog comes word of a study by researchers at UC-Riverside, published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, which lays to rest the longstanding claim that most suicides occur on Mondays. As it turns...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 16, 2009 09:46 AM
Freda Lewis-Hall, a psychiatrist, is set to become Pfizer's new chief medical officer, putting her in charge of docs who work for the company designing clinical trials and doing marketing to other docs. Frobes.com had an interview with her yesterday....
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 6, 2009 12:01 AM
There's apparently a real trend in our land toward excessive polypharmacy in our elders and this account from Peter Gott's "Family Doctor" syndicated column provides a spooky example of the trend and the overuse of psych meds to "calm" patients....
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 23, 2009 10:15 AM
As many of you know, there was an awful murder-suicide in Middletown, Maryland last week in which a father killed his three children and his wife before killing himself. Sadly, there have been a few of these incidents around the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 22, 2009 11:15 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
There's been a lot of news out lately about how Wall Street bankers are pulling down millions in bonuses despite running their banks into the ground, and now it's Big Pharma's turn to look just as brilliant. According to FiercePharma.com,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 11, 2009 01:31 PM
That's what the AP asked over the weekend in a piece detailing the many millions Eli Lilly and Pfizer have spent to fund nonprofit groups and advertising for drugs to treat fibromyalgia. The drugs are Lilly's anti-depressant Cymbalta and Pfizer's...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 9, 2009 12:27 PM
UPDATE, 10.50 a.m., Feb. 6, 2009. Below the FDA responds to my overnight query of what prompted the label changes and how many cases the agency is seeing. Thankfully, NMS does appear to be rare, but it is intertwined with...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 6, 2009 12:05 AM
I can't figure out who made this YouTube video, but it is a very angry attack on Cymbalta, Eli Lilly's star anti-depressant, and toys with Lilly's "Depression Hurts" ads. It was brought to my attention by If You're Going Through...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 5, 2009 12:01 AM
A study came out in The Lancet the other day and I held off writing about it, waiting to see how the media would handle it. It was a very large meta study of anti-depressant trials where one anti-depressant was...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 30, 2009 12:01 AM
AstraZeneca, maker of Seroquel, and Eli LIlly, maker of Zyprexa and Cymbalta, today both reported their 2008 financial results. For AZ (pdf here), global Seroquel revenues were up 11 percent over 2007 to $4.452 billion. US Sales of the drug...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 29, 2009 01:10 PM
Yesterday, I noted that CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, was expected to be named Surgeon-General of the US by President-Elect Barack Obama. I noted that I had concerns because Gupta struck me as a lightweight as a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 8, 2009 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
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has gone and done it again: poked into a major psych researcher's payouts from Big Pharma, compared it against other required disclosures, and found some underreporting going on. This time out the bustee is none other...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 24, 2008 10:35 AM
The FDA is just out with a list of drugs it identified as having major issues which the agency needs to investigate, based upon data from the first quarter of the year. Two psych meds make the list of 20...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 5, 2008 12:16 PM
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
Only days after news came out of one Lilly-run trial where its anti-depressant/Swiss Army knife of drugs performed weakly in a study of its efficacy in treating low back pain comes news now that a separate Lilly-run trial of Cymbalta...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 29, 2008 11:15 AM
Eli Lilly yesterday announced that its anti-depressant Cymbalta outperformed placebo in reducing low back pain. Cymbalta reduced pain by 50 percent or more in 31 percent of patients while placebo reduced it in 19 percent of patients, according to the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 26, 2008 12:05 AM
Mental Health Notes has been reporting on her own experiences with Cymbalta withdrawal and published an interview with another patient who went through a hellish withdrawal from the drug. Even more, the patient's doc ignored her problem and tried to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 21, 2008 12:03 AM
Regular readers know that I both hate the emerging Nanny State in the US and have written about Seattle's version elsewhere. As it happens, the Aug./Sept. issue of Reason is devoted to a roll call of America's nanny cities, or...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 15, 2008 12:05 AM
I've been doing some reading lately about the history of pharmacology in the US and ran into an interesting bit of history. Eli Lilly once made a tincture of cannabis--used for treating muscle spasms and aches and pains back before...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 8, 2008 12:01 AM
That's the term the Indianapolis Star used in an article this weekend to describe Eli Lilly's blockbuster anti-depressant and it's an apt one. Since being approved for depression in 2004, Lilly has gotten the drug approved by the FDA for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 30, 2008 12:01 AM
I've been noting for some time now the rise in studies of anti-depressants for treatment of pain, the increased use by pain management docs of anti-depressants for pain treatment and the recent approval of Cymbalta for fibromyalgia. I'm fairly dubious...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 23, 2008 12:03 AM
Eli Lilly today announced that it has submitted a supplemental new drug application to the FDA for Cymbalta, its newish blockbuster anti-depressant, for the treatment of chronic pain. The drug is already approved for treating depression and diabetic neuropathic pain,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 29, 2008 09:59 AM
There's been a lot of advance press for this evening's PBS special, "Depression: Out Of The Shadows." NAMI, which is a sponsor of the show, has done a very good job of seeding the media with information about the show,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 21, 2008 12:47 AM
Soulful Sepulcher has a wonderful set of pictures of various pharma swag she's run into over recent years of following her daughter through the mental health system. There was Cymbalta soap at mental health court, her daughter was given a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 8, 2008 12:01 AM
Eli Lilly's first quarter sales and earnings were announced today. Worldwide sales of Zyprexa were up 1 percent to $1.1 billion, but US sales of the controversial antipsychotic were down 5 percent "because of competition from newer products and worries...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 21, 2008 11:40 AM
So someone left a comment on one of my Lamictal withdrawal posts yesterday. The basic story is that a young medical student goes to a psychiatrist complaining of anxiety, doc decides he's slightly bipolar-ish, doesn't make a diagnosis of bipolar...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 28, 2008 12:03 AM
I'm sure many of you saw the Oscars last night and I wonder if you were as struck as I was by an ad for Eli Lilly's Cymbalta during the last hour of the program. There amidst expensive ads for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 25, 2008 12:01 AM
The conclusion of a recent study in the Cochrane Review, as noted today by the New York Times's Well blog, is that anti-depressants aren't particularly useful for treating back pain. "Most of the studies found that patients receiving antidepressants didn’t...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 4, 2008 12:00 PM
Year-end 2007 financial results are just out for Eli Lilly today and it looks like Lilly's sales remain unaffected by bad news and lawsuits and legal settlements around Zyprexa. Sales of the atypical anti-psychotic rose to $4.76 billion, a 9...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 29, 2008 09:57 AM
An important study is out today in the New England Journal of Medicine pretty much confirming what many of us have been saying the 'Net for ages, which is that a whole slew of pharma companies hid data about negative...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 17, 2008 10:47 AM
I hope all of your had a nice Christmas. I've been working my butt off at the shelter and haven't had much time for writing per se. But I wanted to pass along a few items that caught my eye...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 28, 2007 01:29 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 just ran across an interesting abstract in the current Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics--I'm still trying to get the full paper, so if anyone has access pass it along please--in which a psychology professor went back through various studies where Cymbalta--Eli...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 20, 2007 12:03 AM
The syndicated column "Peoples Pharmacy" has a column out this week on reports it's been getting about reactions to Chantix. Depression and suicidality and so on. Thankfully, the FDA is looking into this, although why Pfizer isn't just putting a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 3, 2007 01:38 AM
I almost don't understand why Lilly would need a long-term indication approval for Cymbalta because who's seen a psych doc who does short-term medication treatment of depression? i think docs and pharma companies both have a lot of vested interest...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 30, 2007 10:19 AM
One of the things I am thankful for this holiday season is Seattlest (a local blog owned by the Gothamist folks), and specifically Michael van Baker. He's literally the only other person in the media in Seattle--a big media market--who...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 21, 2007 04:24 PM
OK, we've all run into those free pens and notepads emblazoned with the name of Drug X or Y that pharma sales reps give away to doctors who then pass them onto patients. Well, I have now run into the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 15, 2007 12:51 PM
I don't know how many of you know about the story of Carol Gotbaum, a rich, well-connected New Yorker from an influential family who died in police custody in a holding cell at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport in late September....
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 14, 2007 12:03 AM
That's the view of Alicia Sparks, a blogger in West Virginia and a leader of the local NAMI affiliate, who has run into horrible problems trying to come off Cymbalta. She's written about it all quite well. I feel for...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 29, 2007 11:51 AM
Eli Lilly, makers of Zyprexa, today announced its third quarter financials. Despite reams of bad publicity about its top-selling drug over the last year and reports of eroding market share, the company says its Zyprexa revenues are up 8 percent...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 18, 2007 08:59 AM
Yesterday, the FDA sent Eli Lilly, makers of Cymbalta, a letter concerning a mailer the company had sent to doctors touting the drug for diabetic nerve pain treatment, an approved indication for the drug. From a press account: "The mailer...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 3, 2007 10:44 AM
Last week, there was much media coverage of a large jump in adverse events reports and deaths due to the use--and, perhaps, misuse--or prescription drugs. Most of the coverage cited the general trend, noted how many thousands of deaths occurred...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 19, 2007 12:28 AM
Most of you already know that the CDC released data yesterday showing a rise in the teen suicide rate in the US in 2004. Of particular concern was an increase in suicides among girls aged 10 to 14 years old....
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 7, 2007 01:42 AM
Since it's a slow week, I thought I'd let readers know about what search terms drive non-regulars to this site. I am fascinated by peoples' searches because it tells me a lot about what's going on in the mental health...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 27, 2007 03:08 PM
UPDATED: Based on Katie's comments, I poked around and did some more research. According to the FDA's congressional testimony about rogue Internet pharmacies, it looks like my initial numbers were - although not exactly accurate - not nearly as wildly...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 21, 2007 08:59 PM
Back to my docs today for all sorts of fun. In the wake of last week's post about Cymbalta withdrawal, I listed all the side effects I was feeling, complete with descriptions. I printed out information about those side effects...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 14, 2007 03:38 AM
It has been a long time since I've posted anything here, largely due to surgical interventions to address my chronic pain, filing for disability benefits, physical therapy and a laundry list of other things that have been taking up my...
Posted in Furious Seasons on August 8, 2007 05:23 AM
I apologize to regular readers for being light on posts the last few days. I was busy over the weekend and am playing catch up on some other work as a result and will be through tomorrow. Today is also...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 24, 2007 10:58 AM
Someone over on a MySpace blog recounts the crushing fatigue they're running into on Cymbalta. Along with suicidality, it's one of the more prominent injuries--ooops, I mean side effects!--of the anti-depressant. Less well-known are other injuries such as liver damage....
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 13, 2007 12:05 AM
A few months ago, my friends at Eli Lilly (they unwittingly gave me a nice award, so I've decided we are pals now. Bros even) introduced Reconcile, an anti-depressant for dogs. Such a world we live in: major pharma company...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 7, 2007 12:03 AM
A recent post on CafePharma--where pharma reps often have anonymous conversations about whatever in the pharma world--asked if anyone knew of pending black box warnings coming Cymbalta's way due to reports of liver problems in patients who use the anti-depressant....
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 4, 2007 12:03 AM
Hi. I am mostly back in action this week, barring anything unforeseen. John Grohol at Psych Central has an amazing/jaw-dropping post on just how ineffective anti-depressants are in teens and children. According to a study, only 1 out of 9...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 29, 2007 11:25 AM
Doctors are studying babies (!!!!) for signs of mental illness. Can we get over this watered-down eugenics game we are beginning to play in this culture? (Via The Trouble With Spikol.) Or are we going to become Spartans and hurl...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 15, 2007 11:39 AM
Eli Lilly says it's provided the FDA with all relevant data concerning side effects of Zyprexa, including data related to yesterday's news that the company may have misreported some hyperglycemia data in 2000. What's weird is the person stating this...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 26, 2007 11:22 AM
Eli Lilly reports sparkling financials and increased revenue from Zyprexa, although that's mostly related to increased prices. Cymbalta sales way up. Still, company profits were off 39 percent due to the Icos acquisition. Not clear if the $500 million Zyprexa...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 16, 2007 12:23 PM
Many things to link to today. First, the New Yorks Times' Bob Herbert on a misbehaving six-year-old in Florida being carted off to jail by the police. The girl was having outbursts in class and in an office. She happens...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 11, 2007 11:50 AM
I have zero wisdom to offer this morning--not that I ever do--as I was working on an outside project last night. But I did want to pass along a few Cymbalta comments that have cropped up again. They seem to...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 10, 2007 12:01 AM
A mental health worker's take on The New Yorker's article on bipolar children. The Last Psychiatrist's partly-sarcastic assessment of the end of the anti-depressant age for bipolar and the birth of antipsychotics for everything. We want Seroquel in the water...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 9, 2007 10:23 AM
I bumped into an interesting legal article yesterday. It was mostly interesting because it's now becoming obvious that Eli Lilly may be looking at many more lawsuits by states over the company's behavior regarding Zyprexa. The news just keeps getting...
Posted in Furious Seasons on April 4, 2007 12:03 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
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
OK, I blew it. I am actually on the radio Friday evening US time. That whole international dateline thing is something I just cannot come to grips with. So links to my little chit chat with Australia's Radio National will...
Posted in Furious Seasons on March 1, 2007 10:46 AM
One of the pleasures of the mental health blogging world has been the appearance of AHRP's Vera Sharav on the scene in recent months. She's interested in more than mental health, of course, and here she is going absolutely ripshit...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 28, 2007 12:03 AM
A reader posted a comment yesterday challenging a post I did referring to the STAR*D study. I don't completely understand the reader's point and the comment was left with a fake email. My policy here is to correct errors of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 28, 2007 12:01 AM
Cymbalta, Eli Lilly's blockbuster anti-depressant, was today approved by the FDA as a treatment for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), the company announced in a press release. The drug is also approved for peripheral neuropathic pain. I cannot wait for the...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 26, 2007 06:53 AM
As most of you know by now, yesterday US District Court Judge Jack Weinstein handed down his ruling in the Zyprexa documents case. It was a mixed decision--defending the rights of anyone who didn't illegally obtain the documents to publish...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 14, 2007 12:01 AM
I took it kind of easy last night. Translation: I was working on some other things. This allows me to pass along another fine post from Marissa at depression introspection. Here, she takes on certain aspects of the blogosphere and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 6, 2007 12:05 AM
From Chimp Chat comes one of the better posts on depression, food and the workaday life that I have seen in ages. Read it. And, then, here's one of the stupidest from Medical News Today (kind of a press release...
Posted in Furious Seasons on February 2, 2007 12:01 AM
Eli Lilly today released its financials for all of 2006. Zyprexa sales totaled $4.363 billion up from $4.2 billion in 2005. Cymbalta, the company's newish SNRI anti-depressant, had sales of $1.316 billion, way up from 2005 sales of $679 million....
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 31, 2007 10:28 AM
CL Psych has really been tearing up all the news on Paxil (Seroxat) and adding his own original analysis. Go read it here. Now for some highlights of his take on the BBC show on Paxil and the involvement of...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 31, 2007 12:03 AM
So I was being a good boy last night, when Google Alerts alerted me to the following You Tube of an early version of the "Depression Hurts" campaign ad for Cymbalta by Eli Lilly. I've poked fun of this ad...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 26, 2007 12:01 AM
Last week, I noted that I'd been receiving lots of negative comments about patient experiences with Cymbalta. I asked if there were positive reports and got a few responses which I've posted below. In addition, several more bad reports trickled...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 25, 2007 12:50 AM
A comment came in over the weekend, concerning one person's recent experience with Cymbalta, a newish anti-depressant made by Eli Lilly. I thought it was worth posting on the main page and I'll leave it in its original all-caps form:...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 15, 2007 04:08 AM
My cold moved into my sinuses yesterday, my head felt like it would explode, so I have little to post right now of any degree of thoughtfulness. Yesterday, this blog received a comment from an anonymous commenter--I approve anonymous comments...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 12, 2007 01:11 AM
Soon after New Year's I began noticing some depression ads running on TV. One ad was specifically about Eli Lilly's Cymbalta and the company's sugary "Depression Hurts" ad campaign, in which even the family dog is encouraging you to get...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 11, 2007 12:05 AM
There is a remarkable letter to the editor in this month's American Journal of Psychiatry about Seroquel abuse in an Ohio prison, especially involving the snorting of crushed up tablets. In the joint, the atypical antipsychotic has earned the street...
Posted in Furious Seasons on January 4, 2007 12:01 AM
Just because it's obligatory and vaguely amusing, here are some of the posts that generated the most hits on my blog this year. Thanks to all of you for reading and for your support. Happy New Year. Love American Style:...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 31, 2006 03:34 PM
A new research report is out linking a "chronic cough" with depression. Sigh. As I've noted before, I am tired of researchers painting absolutely every human ailment in terms of depression, as they recently have with teenage acne. It's a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 13, 2006 12:01 AM
I am taking things rather light today because I was working my butt off yesterday on the other project, code-named "The Other Project." But there is loads of news on the depression front, so herewith is your official depression round-up,...
Posted in Furious Seasons on December 7, 2006 12:01 AM
Because I am in a moody space right now (now being about 10 p.m PST), albeit a good creative space, I am going to pass along a few recent reader comments that articulate better than I can what's going on...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 29, 2006 12:03 AM
Each time I see an article on mental health that's datelined Indianapolis I get suspicious. That's where Eli Lilly is headquartered. The company makes and markets famous or infamous, depending on your view, psych meds such as Prozac, Zyprexa ("opening...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 28, 2006 12:01 AM
I've joked before on this site about how researchers are in a race to link depression with absolutely every malady known to humankind. Now, we have reached the bottom. A researcher in New Zealand reports that acne in teens and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on November 14, 2006 12:01 AM
America's reigning most-famous bipolar and former talk show host Jane Pauley is suing the New York Times. The complaint in her lawsuit is a bit tough to follow, but indicates that someone passed themselves off as a Times reporter and...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 26, 2006 08:48 AM
I have no appetite. I apologize to everyone repeatedly because I seem to have a pronounced case of CRS and can't remember what I said. Luckily, I'm not in the habit of lying so I don't have to worry about...
Posted in Furious Seasons on September 17, 2006 10:56 AM
After an unsuccessful week of spinal taps and blood patches during which I could not receive anything beyond 800 mg ibuprofen for pain due to my recent withdrawal, I'm sort of back in the swing of things. I had a...
Posted in Furious Seasons on July 27, 2006 05:53 AM
Now that the worst of it has passed - the shakes, the chills, the twitching, the sweating - and was made a little easier by a prescription of Zanaflex which has had me dozing off and on for the last...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 30, 2006 06:35 AM
If my experience with Lyrica is typical for people with chronic pain, if the medication shuffle for pain management is the same as it is for mental health, I can hazard a guess at why people kill themselves while on these meds.
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 29, 2006 05:34 AM
In response to a recent post on problems with the anti-depressant Cymbalta, a reader commented: "I took cymbalta for 10 days. My doc had me tapering off paxil while taking 30 mg. of cymbalta. I felt quite manic which got...
Posted in Furious Seasons on June 22, 2006 12:01 AM
I'd like to encourage TAC, which obsessively catalogs "preventable tragedies" involving the mentally ill, to start cataloging some of the other preventable tragedies in the mental health world. Patients raped and abused in state hospitals. State hospitals that dump delusional...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 23, 2006 12:04 AM
Or more accurately her depression's fault that her kids are a mess, according to this study: "UNC Psychiatrist Erin Malloy, M.D. explains, "Maternal depression can be a risk factor for a number of different types of disorders in kids." Those...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 11, 2006 12:05 AM
Ah, my good pals at Eli Lilly just cannot leave a good thing alone. They've just filed a supplemental application with the FDA to get approval for Cymbalta's use in treating generalized anxiety disorder. What's more, the company is in...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 9, 2006 09:23 AM
A reader was good enough to pass along the following about Cymbalta: "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...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 9, 2006 12:03 AM
Not to make light of depression--it's bad, it's evil, I know it oh so well--but the new television ad campaign for Eli Lilly's Cymbalta is a bit much. It's called "Depression Hurts." Both the ad and website stress that depression...
Posted in Furious Seasons on May 8, 2006 12:22 AM
Just an observation, but in the new round of anti-depressant ads on television (for Paxil CR and Cymbalta, mostly), all the fictional patients sure seem to be rich and prosperous and have this look to them that's not of depression...
Posted in Furious Seasons on October 12, 2005 03:05 PM