I thought I needed two endings. The first would emphasize the importance of Data Transparency to allow us to thoroughly vet these industry-funded productions like the examples of these Atypical Antipsychotic Augmentation of Treatment Resistant Depression trials. Then the second ending would say that these industry-funded approval-oriented RCTs are way over-valued and no basis for […]
December Tales creative funding I… creative funding II… creative funding III & some other things… skepticism unchanged… the extra mile… a worksheet post… extending the risk… a postscript… a story: starting in the middle… a story: the end of the middle… a story: the beginning of the end… a story: getting near the ending[s]… a […]
Opinion: The AMA is wrong about banning drug ads Pharmalot By Ed Silverman December 30, 2015 In a controversial move, the American Medical Association recently called for a ban on advertising prescription drugs and medical devices directly to consumers. The effort is largely symbolic because any ban would have to be authorized by Congress. But […]
Robert Spitzer, the author of the DSM-III, died on Christmas Day at age 83. While the commentaries so far praise his removing psychoanalysis from psychiatry, he gets mixed reviews for the system he developed. All agree that he became the most influential psychiatrist of his time. I’ve never been able to say much about him […]
When something’s wrong, it’s a lot easier to say what’s wrong than it is to know what to do about it. The cross-fire of the academic-industrial complex and Managed Care is a choke-hold that rarely lets one come up for breath. Here we are about to finally escape from under the patent-life of all these […]
Starting to work in a public clinic after 20 years in practice as a psychotherapist and five years of retirement was something of a shock. Besides the general polypharmacy, the number of people taking Atypical Antipsychotics was staggering to me. At the time, Seroquel® was the number one selling drug in the country, and everyone […]
I started the last post with a borrowed literary device, but I was just practicing. In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles popped into his story and spoke in the first person with the reader. He did that, or at least claimed he did that, because he couldn’t decide how to end his novel. He […]
I think I’ll borrow a literary device from a couple of favorites: T.S. Eliot in East Coker and John Fowles in The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It’s where the author jumps out of his story and speaks in the first person with the reader about his thoughts while he’s writing, then returns to the thread of […]
I’m picking up the thread of a story in the middle, because I didn’t realize it was a story with installments until I was well into it. It started with December’s American Journal of Psychiatry that had two Publicly funded Clinical Trials that looked like Infommercials [Experommercials] to me, one being about augmenting antidepressants with […]