Cut on the bias

At the recent meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, there was a presentation of results of “clinical studies” of Seroquel XR revealing that it’s better than placebo for major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

Guess who gave the presentation? AstraZeneca, of course. From Andrew Eder’s article on DelawareOnline.com:

Opening Seroquel XR for treatment of major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder would greatly expand the market for the drug. About 15 million American adults suffer from major depressive disorder, and about 6.8 million suffer from generalized anxiety disorder.

In the first quarter, AstraZeneca said U.S. sales of Seroquel were $702 million, up 7 percent from a year earlier. The company said prescriptions of Seroquel were up 8 percent, with 25 percent of the growth attributable to Seroquel XR. Its top-selling drug, Nexium, meanwhile, saw its U.S. sales drop 15 percent due to increased competition from cheaper alternative drugs.

I’m glad the APA continues the tradition of non-biased presentations.

liz | 12:20 PM | Uncategorized

Happy happy joy joy … uh … maybe not

It was just a few years ago when Celebration Recovery was presented by the Irwin Foundation in collaboration with APA. According to the Irwin Foundation’s director back in 2005, “Celebration Recovery highlights an emerging concept in psychiatry that emphasizes person-centeredness, respect, responsibility, hope, choice, quality of life, consumer and family agency and empowerment, self-help, partnership, diversity, and community inclusiveness.” All the deliciousness of recovery, in other words. The event was held in Austin, Texas, at the NAMI convention in 2005.

Sadly, as Joe points out, fast-forward three years, and you get this from the Associated Press:

Employee disciplinary records show abuse and neglect are systemic in mental hospitals in Texas, which has worked over the past year to revamp its juvenile prison system because of similar allegations, according to a report published Sunday.

Seventy-two workers have been fired in the past three years over allegations of abuse, while hundreds of others have been fired for other violations, including sleeping on the job and overmedicating patients, according to personnel records obtained by The Dallas Morning News.

The violence against patients included choke holds, headlocks and threats against patients at the state’s 10 psychiatric hospitals, the newspaper reported.

There are about 18,000 patients and about 7,400 employees in the state psychiatric hospital system.

Ah, Austin. Those were the good old days.

Mental health is latest Texas agency to bear abuse criticism

liz | 12:49 PM | Uncategorized

Too depressed to get off the couch?

Drooling onto the pillow in your bed in your sleep instead of going to work? Now that saliva can be put to use. Reuters spills the beans about a new spit test for bipolar disorder:

The $399 kit uses a saliva sample to test for one of the likely dozens of genes associated with bipolar disorder, GRK3; the results and a report are mailed to your physician. The company’s website states that if you have the gene, you are two to three times more likely to have the disorder, depending on the particular gene variation found.

But the test cannot give a definitive diagnosis or predict future risk of developing the disorder, and a negative test does not rule out bipolar disorder. As well, the test results are only valid for Caucasians with Northern European ancestry who have at least one relative with bipolar disorder, and who are exhibiting symptoms of the disease themselves.

So, as my Jewish relatives would say: What could be wrong? A LOT.

What it boils down to is that the information provided by the existing tests don’t add or subtract anything of value, [Harvard Medical Letter editor Michael C.] Miller said. They just provide a result that may confuse more than it clarifies.

“Sometimes a little knowledge is a bad thing,” he said, “especially if you don’t know how to interpret it.”

There is also the issue of privacy. On Thursday, Congress passed a bill that protects individuals against discrimination based on genetics. But putting your genes — especially as related to psychiatric health — on record, could still come back to haunt you later, warned Miller, adding that mental health is still poorly understood, which allows a person’s psychiatric history to be manipulated.

liz | 10:52 AM | Uncategorized

Holocaust Remembrance Day

Yom HaShoah:
MOURNERS’ KADDISH IN TIME OF WAR AND VIOLENCE

The below is from Rabbi Arthur Waskow, from the Shalom Center:

Dear Friends,

Today is Yom HaShoah (the Day of Remembrance of the Nazi Holocaust), observed one day earlier in the Jewish calendar than usual, because of not wanting to observe it on Friday as Shabbat is coming into the world.

It seems especially fitting to use as the Mourners Kaddish for today a rendition in Aramaic, Hebrew, and English of the MOURNERS’ KADDISH IN TIME OF WAR AND VIOLENCE that we at The Shalom Center have developed.(See three paragraphs below). Though it is of course a Jewish prayer, we offer the interpretive English translation below, in the hope it may be spiritually helpful for many people of many other traditions as well.

For not only have we – the human race — experienced several genocides since the Shoah, including the present violence in Darfur, but we continue to experience wars and acts of terrorism in our midst today. Some of these murderous wars and terrorist actions are asserted by some members of different communities of God – minorities in each of their communities — to be carried on in the name of God.

This version of Mourners Kaddish is intended to ASSERT WITH ABSOLUTE CLARITY THAT NO SUCH KILLING CAN BE IN THE NAME OF GOD.

Please feel free to circulate this whole message to anyone or any list you think will find it helpful.

Shalom, salaam, peace — Arthur

More »

liz | 11:10 AM | Uncategorized

High prison numbers

From Joe:

“More than 93 percent of the men and women met criteria for at least one lifetime psychiatric disorder and nearly two-thirds of the participants had had three or more disorders in their lifetimes, the U of I reported.”

I’ve never heard numbers that high. It’s generally been around 60 percent, although there are always more people with mental illnesses in prisons and jails than in mental hospitals.

Study results published in Des Moines Register

liz | 8:08 AM | Uncategorized