Tag Archives: antipsychotics

Australia’s Reckless Experiment In Early Intervention

Early intervention to prevent psychosis requires first that there be an accurate tool to identify who will later become psychotic and who will not. Unfortunately, no such accurate tool exists. The false positive rate in selecting prepsychosis is at least about 60-70% in the very best of hands and may be as high as 90% in general practice. That’s right, folks, nine misidentified non patients for one accurately identified truly prepsychotic patient. Those are totally unacceptable odds.

Grassley Investigates Drugging of Elderly with Antipsychotics

Sen. Charles Grassley recently sent a letter to the administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He wants some answers after a federal report Grassley requested found many nursing home residents with dementia are given antipsychotic drugs. These drugs are not approved to treat dementia. They can be lethal for those afflicted with it, and Medicare has been paying for them.

How Seroquel, a Risky Antipsychotic, Became a “General Purpose” Mental Health Drug

In 2008, the FDA declared that powerful antipsychotics such as AstraZeneca (AZN)’s Seroquel were being over-prescribed and started a monitoring initiative to curb their use. It hasn’t worked, judging by an analysis of the FDA’s adverse event database by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices.

Seroquel is only approved for schizophrenia, mania and bipolar disorders. It’s a powerful drug that has serious side effects if taken for a long time: It’s associated with weight gain and diabetes, among other problems.

Gem of the Week: Big Pharma in Juvie

This week’s gem for reporting on science, health, and the environment goes to… the Palm Beach Post in Florida, for revealing ties between psychiatrists in juvenile halls and manufacturers of antipsychotic drugs. The Post’s investigation found that a handful of psychiatrists working for Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) were paid high speaking fees or given gifts by pharmaceutical companies like AstraZeneca. “In at least one case, the number of Medicaid prescriptions a psychiatrist wrote for children rose sharply around the time he was paid, The Post found.” Even worse, the antipsychotics were prescribed by the DJJ doctors were not approved for safe use in children.

Drugging the Vulnerable: Atypical Antipsychotics in Children and the Elderly

Pharmaceutical companies have recently paid out the largest legal settlements in U.S. history — including the largest criminal fines ever imposed on corporations — for illegally marketing antipsychotic drugs. The payouts totaled more than $5 billion. But the worst costs of the drugs are being borne by the most vulnerable patients: children and teens in psychiatric hospitals, foster care and juvenile prisons, as well as elderly people in nursing homes. They are medicated for conditions for which the drugs haven’t been proven safe or effective — in some cases, with death known as a known possible outcome.

The benefit for drug companies is cold profit. Antipsychotics bring in some $14 billion a year. So-called “atypical” or “second-generation” antipsychotics like Geodon, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Risperdal rake in more money than any other class of medication on the market and, dollar for dollar, they are the biggest selling drugs in America.