Atypical of what?

Today I received a newsletter from Mad in America containing an article about a mother whose son had been enrolled in a clinical trial of Seroquel which is a so-called atypical anti-psychotic made by AstraZeneca. Concerned with her son’s mental state since he had threatened to kill her, the mother attempted to remove him from the drug test. There was no way that such a disturbed young man could have been judged competent to provide informed consent to receive this drug. Despite her protests, she was ignored until she received word that her son had died. It soon became clear that he had committed suicide.

Here was every parent’s nightmare. So, she sued the drug company and the University of Minnesota. added to her pain was the fact that after her suit was dismissed, the university attempted to sue her to recover its costs from defending itself against her. From the Mad in America and a longer article on which it was based in Mother Jones Magazine several things became clear.

1.   Drug companies  routinely discard unfavorable results in their drug trials.
2. Drug trials may be conducted in such a way as to produce the most favorable result for the companies.
3. The independent review boards that were supposed to prevent abuses of patients are not performing the tasks for which they were intended.
4. There is reason to doubt that the new, often more expensive and highly marketed atypical anti-psychotics are any more effective than the older and less expensive anti-psychotics.
5. There is good reason to doubt the efficacy of these atypical anti-psychotics either in a first break down of an individual or on a long term basis.
   

   Mother Jones (magazine) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    

Mad in America (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Related articles

• When university attorneys play hardball with patients (madinamerica.com)
• AstraZeneca sues American drug watchdog over generic competitors (telegraph.co.uk)
• AstraZeneca Pays $520 Million to Settle Seroquel Whistleblower Claims (prweb.com)
• Some studies of popular drugs suppressed (healthsass.blogspot.com)

Life Without the Placebos

Followers of this blog will recall reading about my decision about 10 weeks ago to completely abandon the mood stabilizer and the anti depressant I had been taking for several years. The people in my care team, including my psychiatrist, my nurse practitioner and my immediate family were aghast at my decision. They remembered a lot of the problem that had arisen in the past after I abandoned the safety net provided by chemicals. Nonetheless, I stuck to my rights and to  me it has been the best decision I ever made.

Is this something that everyone could do? Probably not. For one thing I have a a lot of coping strategies. I’m highly educated, work experience in several fields, access to resources in person and over the Internet, a pet and a lot of self-understanding. I have people in the programs where I work who complain about their medications and the length of time they have been taking them. However as soon as they remove these medications from their symptoms they begin to deteriorate. To a certain extent their bodies have been trained to look for these medications and their minds keep asking, where’s the stuff?

Even the most ardent mental health advocates usually  recommend a gradual approach to weaning yourself off medications. This process involves finding other strategies, such as one might develop using a wellness recovery action plan. I developed my plan several years ago and I have helped others. These plans cover many different areas such as exercise, coping with environmental triggers, friendship, employment and romance.

When I moved into a clean and safe duplex recently it was a direct result of the success of my wellness plan. My mind responded positively, too, saying, “I like that, give me some more.”  In other words, now that I have a nice place, how about some company? I worked with a woman over the weekend who I have been dying to get to know for more than a year. As it happened, she moved recently and lives about ten blocks away from me. Walking distance, another one of the coping strategies.

I got a dvd player last week and hooked it up to my big screen television. I bought some dvds, watched one of them at home and decided I should bring it to work. My Internet provider ATT forced me into their rebranded service Uverse which sounds like something that the Unitarian Universalists would have created. It’s a little faster than my old service and works better with my blog. And the aforementioned pet, my little cat, has more room to roam around without getting underfoot. That was one of my pet peeves, pun intended, at my old place.

So you can just imagine with all of these things going on, how would ever have time to become depressed? So my advice, for those who want to replace those little placebos, is to get a life. Really, you’ll be glad you did.

Related articles

• The Placebo Drug Effects – Clinical Studies, Trials and Research With Anti-Depressant Drugs and the Degree of Effectiveness (ducknetweb.blogspot.com)
• Treating Depression: Is There A Placebo Effect? (dfw.cbslocal.com)
• Inside “60 Minutes” placebo story (cbsnews.com)
• Is it mind over meds in depression treatment? (cherished79.wordpress.com)