Tag Archives: pharmaceutical

Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy

A 2005 government survey found that just 11 percent of psychiatrists provided talk therapy to all patients, a share that had been falling for years and has most likely fallen more since. Psychiatric hospitals that once offered patients months of talk therapy now discharge them within days with only pills.

Recent studies suggest that talk therapy may be as good as or better than drugs in the treatment of depression, but fewer than half of depressed patients now get such therapy compared with the vast majority 20 years ago. Insurance company reimbursement rates and policies that discourage talk therapy are part of the reason. A psychiatrist can earn $150 for three 15-minute medication visits compared with $90 for a 45-minute talk therapy session.

Competition from psychologists and social workers — who unlike psychiatrists do not attend medical school, so they can often afford to charge less — is the reason that talk therapy is priced at a lower rate. There is no evidence that psychiatrists provide higher quality talk therapy than psychologists or social workers.

After surviving war in Iraq, U.S. troops now being killed by Big Pharma

They survived live fire, explosive devices, terror attacks and grueling desert conditions. But upon returning home to seek treatment for the mental anguish that too often accompanies war, U.S. soldiers are now being killed by the pharmaceutical industry in record numbers.

A recent example is found with the late Senior Airman Anthony Mena, who returned home from Baghdad only to be killed by a toxic cocktail of prescription medications in his apartment in the USA. As the New York Times reports, a toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood

Brain shrinkage seen in those taking antipsychotic medications

A new study finds that one the fastest-growing classes ofprescription drugs in the United States is linked to shrinkage in the brains of those who take it, raising some new questions about the widening use of antipsychotic medications.

What they found was that those whose treatment with antipsychotic medication was most “intensive”—those who took the largest doses over the longest time–had the greatest losses in brain volume. The intensity of a subject’s antipsychotic medication therapy was a far stronger predictor of brain-volume loss than was the severity of his or her psychiatric symptoms or of the extent of his or her illicit drug or alcohol abuse, the researchers found.

Drug Industry Fraud—The Whistle Has Been Blown, But Where’s the Enforcement?

by Ralph Nadar
One of the worst violations involves companies promoting unproven, often dangerous uses for their medicines. Last year, Pfizer paid $1.2 billion for illegal off-label promotion -the largest criminal fine in U.S.history. Other major corporate violators were GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Schering-Plough, Bristol-Myers Squibb, AstraZeneca, TAP Pharmaceutical, Merck, Serono, Purdue, Allergan, Novartis, Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson, Forest Laboratories, Sanofi-aventis, Bayer, Mylan, Teva and King Pharmaceuticals.

The violations by these and other drug companies point to the wide range of impacts, including taking many lives of patients, which stems from these recurrent activities. These criminal or civil illegalities cover (1) overcharging government health programs, (2) unlawful promotion, (3) monopoly practices, (4) kickbacks, (5) concealing study findings, (6) poor manufacturing practices, (7) environmental violations, (8) financial violations and (9) illegal distribution.

Seven Ways Medical Conflicts of Interest are Disguised

The American Psychiatric Association, in its 240 page guide to its May annual meeting, “forgot” to mention the conflicts of interest of its own president Alan Schatzberg, MD. It had to print them on the newsletter circulated the third day of the meeting. Nor were names even alphabetized for easy information retrieval. (Schatzberg is financially linked to Eli Lilly, GSK, Merck, Pfizer, Forest, Takeda, Sanofi-Aventis and eight other companies.)