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Archive for May, 2013

a whole lot better than this…

( OPINION )

The SSRI era in psychiatry began with Prozac® in 1987 and dominated the 1990s as a steady stream of new drugs were approved by the FDA. When it became apparent that they were only effective in approximately one third of the patients, the term treatment resistant depression came in vogue to describe the patients who […]

Psychiatric Diseases…

( OPINION )

Suffering and Sadness Are Not Diseases Harvard University Press Blog by Richard Noll 28 May 2013 … But the DSM effect on human lives is dramatic. Justification is provided for the widespread misapplication of drug therapies for millions of people who, as collateral damage, now suffer needlessly from side effects and withdrawal symptoms. Symptom relief, […]

one of those…

( OPINION )

Dr. Richard Noll is a psychologist and author who sometimes comments here. He also happens to be a scholar of note. This blog post of his is a cut above the usual DSM-5 fare. I’ve cut out the middle part because it goes better with something I was writing when I first read it [coming […]

than the rest of us…

( OPINION )

We’re barely a week beyond the launch of the DSM-5 and the substantive criticism is beginning to emerge from the din of outrage that they actually went through with it. First, from Dr. Allen Frances an important practical note. There was so much noise about various elements in the Manual itself that the fact that […]

the squeaky wheel…

( OPINION )

This is about the other Vortioxetine study [along with the Jain et al study – academic?…] reported by Dr. Thase at the American Psychiatric Association meeting in 2011 [Investigative Depression Drug Does Better in Europe than United States]. As usual, there was weirdness. The first author and institution of record was Neven Henigsberg MD at […]

all the crevices…

( OPINION )

Having run across the ProPublica article I mentioned last time lead me, as the Internet tends to do, into some pretty strange territory: Dollars for Docs Mints a Millionaire ProPublica by Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein March 11, 2013 … Draud’s $1 million in drug company earnings is probably a minimum figure. Some of the […]

academic?…

( OPINION )

Is research a business? I wouldn’t have thought that [though I’ll admit that one of the things that put me off of a research career was seeing the amount of time my mentors spent worrying about funding]. That blurb is from the web site of R/D Clinical Research, a clinical research center in Lake Jackson, […]

didn’t know that…

( OPINION )

But there’s another type of critique that does not contribute to this goal. These are the groups who are actually proud to identify themselves as “anti-psychiatry.” These are real people who don’t want to improve mental healthcare, unlike the dozens of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and patient advocates who have labored for years to revise […]

WP to Twitter Test Post

It’s Abby, daughter of the Not-Really-That-Boring-Only-Sort-of-Old Man, here to see if I can get this plugin working again. Pay no attention to the daughter behind the curtain, etc, etc, etc…

way past time…

Experimental Antidepressant Moves Closer to US Approval Medscape by Deborah Brauser May 20, 2013 The experimental antidepressant Vortioxetine is safe and effective for treating major depressive disorder [MDD], findings from several new phase 3 randomized controlled trials [RCTs] suggest. Three studies of a total of 1545 US patients with MDD showed that those who received 20 mg […]