Tag Archives: Major Depressive Disorder

Selling Depression—Adding New Spin and Urgency to Depression Drug Sales

The discovery that many people with life problem or occasional bad moods would willingly dose themselves with antidepressants sailed the drug industry through the 2000s. A good chunk of the $4.5 billion a year direct-to-consumer advertising has been devoted to convincing people they don’t have problems with their job, the economy and their family, they have depression. Especially because depression can’t be diagnosed from a blood test.

Unfortunately, three things dried up the depression gravy train for the drug industry. Blockbusters went off patent and generics took off, antidepressants were linked with gory and unpredictable violence, especially in young users and — they didn’t even work, according to medical articles!

A mother’s grief — without time limits

FIVE YEARS ago, I found my 17-year-old son dead in his bed, and apparently five years is too long to be manifesting the symptoms of sadness: sleeplessness, the sudden and inexplicable onset of overwhelming memories and tears, the occasional entire day spent lying in bed. My time was up two weeks after we found him, according to the proposed fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. If the new edition is approved, my symptoms will be diagnosed as a major depressive disorder.

Glaxo Still Haunted by Faked Paxil Studies in Kids; Crooked psychiatrist expected to plead guilty to criminal charges today

A crooked doctor who faked data in a GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) study of the antidepressant Paxil in children pled guilty to criminal charges today, causing groans among GSK’s senior management as the company hopes to fend off a different criminal investigation into whether it manipulated clinical data on its diabetes drug, Avandia. She was sentenced to 13 months in prison.

IMS Health Canada: New study shows psychiatric drug side effects putting people at risk of an early death

The risk of coronary heart disease and a cluster of conditions known as metabolic syndrome increases soon after otherwise healthy, but depressed people are started on psychiatric drugs, putting them at risk for an early death, Canadian researchers are reporting.

“Psychiatry’s ‘bible’ could roll out a whole new list of disorders—and more prescriptions for psychoactive drugs”

As Dr. Allen Frances read through the list of proposed changes to psychiatry’s bible of mental sickness, alarms started ringing in his own mind. “I was surprised,” the renowned U.S. psychiatrist says, “that the proposals managed to be much worse than my most pessimistic expectations.”