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Archive for February, 2012

smell a campaign…

Why the sudden interest in Cymbalta and Pristiq, you ask? Something got stuck in the back of my mind that lit up finally this morning: Why would Robert Gibbons still be trying to debunk the FDA Black Box Warnings about suicidality on antidepressants [Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior With Antidepressant Treatment]? Why would he study Prozac […]

worthy of respect…

8:00 AM  I was getting ready to leave for the clinic and my wife was playing the phone messages from the day before. One was from one of my oldest friends, a psychiatrist/analyst, returning a call, "Sorry I missed your call. I’m in my office catching up on my pharmacy calls. I don’t practice medicine […]

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Dr. Roy Poses of Healthcare Renewal frequently mentions what he calls the anechoic effect in covering healthcare issues. It means exactly what you’d think it means parsing the word – no echo. He’s referring to the fact that big healthcare stories have a short shelf life – coming into the media, then quickly disappearing from […]

not the way things are supposed to work…

Antipsychotics for Children and Young Adults: A Comparative Effectiveness Review by Seida JC, Schouten JR, Boylan K, Newton AS, Mousavi SS, Beaith A, Vandermeer B, Dryden DM, and Carrey N. Pediatrics 2012 Feb 20. [Epub ahead of print] BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Despite increasing on-label and off-label use of antipsychotics, prescribing antipsychotics to children remains controversial […]

15 years of study 15 [and counting]…

Stephany has some interesting things going on at Soulful Sepulcher. She’s been interviewing one of the attorneys involved in the Seroquel litigation about AstraZeneca’s lackluster payoffs, even though they got off light. It’s worth a look. And she brought up Study 15, the one that showed Seroquel to be inferior to the older drugs before […]

two lessons…

Dr. Frances’ most recent post quotes former Journalist now PsyD Donna Rockwell giving tips about how activism ought to work, how to apply leverage where it’s needed right out in the open – engaging people who matter, relying only on the merit of the argument and appealing to their "better sides" through education. Just reading […]

how quickly we forget…

Were I reading this, I might think, "There he goes again, being boring, talking against removing the bereavement exclusion from the MDD criteria in the DSM-5. Hasn’t he said enough about that?!" But then I’d look at who wrote these articles, and it would be a lot clearer why they’re posted here: Complicated grief and […]

watchful waiting…

The last post, I said I was obsessed, but maybe I should have said perplexed. I just don’t understand the seven year hegira Dr. Gibbons has been on to disprove the need for the black box warning on the antidepressants about the possibility of treatment emergent suicidality in children and adolescents. His persistence transcends reason. […]

coming soon?…

At the risk of being labeled obsessed myself, I’m still on the Gibbons et al article [Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior With Antidepressant Treatment] published on-line this month in the Archives of General Psychiatry about treatment emergent suicidality with the SSRIs. They said of their data sources for this meta-analysis, "we obtained complete longitudinal data for […]

the neurotic covenants…

BLOGSCAN – Television Advertising Revenue and the Anechoic Effect Healthcare Renewal by Roy Poses February 21, 2012 We have often discussed the anechoic effect, how cases involving or discussions of the topics we address on Health Care Renewal, the concentration and abuse of power in health care, fail to produce any responses, or echoes.  Two recent blog […]