I despise drug ads. No one should be interrupted from watching the season-finale of House only to have a picture of a highly unkempt woman on a couch quickly to be turned into vital young dream girl thanks to the latest wonder-pill. That is absolute poppycock.
But drug companies spent $4.2 billion in 2005 on direct-to-consumer advertising in the US.
Read MoreAs I mentioned last week, it’s very difficult to measure long-term outcomes of depression treatment due to the confounding depression variables like severity of depression, duration of depression, number of depressions and so on.
In short, the sicker you are, the more depressed you are, the more likely it is you’ll get treatment.
I discussed the basic outcomes of this study: The association between antidepressant use and depression eight years later: A national cohort study by Colman et al. which tries to take these variables into account.
Colman et al. showed those who took antidepressants had better depression treatment outcomes than those who didn’t, eight years later, once confounding variables were taken into consideration.
I’ll now point out the strengths and weaknesses of this study as well as some other interesting tidbits shown or cited in the study. Oh, and I’ll give my opinion on what it all means.
Read MoreRecently the controversy over long-term outcomes of those who use psychotropic medication has flared up again. Some people argue depression/bipolar/mental illness patients do the same, or better, when they don’t take psychiatric medications long-term. However, the statistics they use to assert this claim are often faulty.
A study from Calgary, Alberta, Canada (yes, we do research up here too) has attempted to fix some of the bias seen in other long-term depression treatment outcome statistics. I’ll cut to the chase for you:
Over the course of eight years people with depression who took antidepressants had better outcomes.
Read MoreOne of the crazy things that will happen to you when you seek treatment for being crazy, is doctors will ask you what treatment you want. Usually your psychiatrist/doctor will give you two options: Would you like to try psych med A or psych med B? This provides the mirage of control over your mental illness and your mental illness treatment.
Frustration, thy name is bipolar.
This choice, of course, is ridiculous.* How should you know which medication to pick? They’re the doctor, the fancy psychiatrist, aren’t they supposed to know?
What criterion could you possibly use to pick a psychotropic medication that would conceivably compare to an actual doctor?
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If you’re been reading my writings here at the Bipolar Burble for a while, you’ve probably gathered that I don’t like antipsychiatry groups. These groups are often under the “mad pride” flag or “psychiatric survivors” or people for “human rights” or people fighting psychiatric abuses. Often the language they use is solely designed to convince you that psychiatry is evil, psychiatry should be stopped, no one should take psychiatric medication and in many cases, psychology is also evil. Many antipsychiatry groups are sneaky. Antipsychiatry groups sounds reasonable on first glance but it’s only once you dig into them that you see how insidious they are.
Antipsychiatry groups are ridiculous.
I’ve tried to look into antipsychiatry groups to see if there’s something worth understanding but they have no evidence. Just ardent supporters that make wild claims without proof. And their tactics of cruel, personal, abusive attacks are not worth my time. It assures that their groups have no credibility whatsoever.
And sometimes I spend entire days fighting antipsychiatry people. Antipsychiatry shows up on the Bipolar Burble, antipsychiatry finds me on Twitter, antipsychiatry follows me to Facebook, antipsychiatry shows up on Breaking Bipolar. And these charming antipsychiatry folks, for whatever reason, read all about me and then use those person details to ensure their personal attacked will be as nasty as possible.
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Long (long) time readers will recall that once-upon-a-time I took the atypical antipsychotic Geodon. I found this to be an unbearably painful and side effect laden psych med. I hated Geodon. I wouldn’t wish Geodon on my worst enemy. I lost touch with reality with Geodon. I passed out at work on Geodon. I got sick constantly on Geodon.
You know, that being said, Geodon works for a lot of people.
I gather my reaction to this antipsychotic was fairly atypical. And if I had known what to eat when taking Geodon that might have helped.
Read MoreWhen I tell people to see a mental health professional, I recommend they get someone who specializes in whatever mental illness the person has. This is just common sense. You don’t go to a neurologist when your foot hurts.
I also tell people to get a therapist who specializes in their disorder. Again, this makes sense. Honestly, if your therapist is used to hearing the woes of the Real Housewives of Some Rich Place then they may not be the best choice for a person with major depressive disorder.
I tell people to get a therapist for their mental illness because psychiatrists don’t do psychotherapy.
Read MoreI am very medication-reactive. Not so much with the positive effects, but I can almost guarantee you I’ll get all the side effects.I get every side effect for antidepressants, every side effect for antipsychotics and every side effect for pretty much anything else.
And sometimes, just for good measure, I’ll get side effects that doctors say “aren’t possible”. They are my favorite. And those overractions are often on the lowest known effective dose of the medication.
But if you add a low dose, lower than thought effective, of an antipsychotic, can this be helpful?
Read MoreI have written thousands and thousands of words in this blog and elsewhere about how much I hate medication.
I hate it in the car, I hate it on a train, I hate on a boat, I hate it in the rain.
I hate it in the snow, I hate it in the sun, I hate it standing still, I hate it on the run.
I hate it before breakfast, I hate it after lunch, I hate it in the morning, I hate it during brunch.
And while I could fill an entire blog with all the ways I hate psych meds, I still, take them, everyday.
Weird you say?
(Well, yes. But no more so than the disease it treats.)
Because no matter how much I might hate psych meds, medication non-compliance kills.
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