Long-term use of bipolar drug questioned

Long-term use of bipolar drug questioned
05/03/11 06:18 PM, EDT

The growing use of a popular drug in the long-term treatment of bipolar disorder is based largely on a single, flawed clinical trial that may be steering doctors and patients away from drugs with a more established track record, a new review published this week in the journal "PLoS Medicine"
suggests. Read the full story at

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000434

Little Nemo in NAMI Land - Man Boobs

Little Nemo in NAMI Land - Man Boobs



Read about the original Little Nemo here.

Treating the underlying cause of the gynecomastia may lead to improvement in the condition. Patients should talk with their doctor about revising any medications, such as risperdal, that are found to be causing gynecomastia.
Read about Gynecomastia - here.

Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disease

Britney Spears' manager gave her medication
It seems there wasn't much bipolar disease before certain psychiatric drugs were put into use by physicians.

"Has the pharmaceutical industry become the Pied Piper of Hamelin–ridding us of lethal diseases only to turn around and “take” our children?
Would a physician from the 1950s “have identified the frenzy to treat bipolar disorders in infants that developed in twenty-first-century American as a mania?”

In his latest book, Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disease (the John Hopkins University Press) David Healy, author of Let Them Eat Prozac, looks at the historic roots of our current “medicalized distress” in which half the population is said to suffer a mental illness at some point in life and babies are diagnosed in utero as bipolar.

Bipolar disorder, once called manic depression, has been embroiled in controversy from its first descriptions in Paris in the 1850s. The pharmaceutical companies and academics behind its current popularity as a “catch-all” disease say it dates back to the ancient Greeks.

But David Healy, professor of psychiatry and the director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine at Cardiff University, is not so sure.

References to the frenzied behavior of mental patients found in Hippocrates’ Epidemics books 1 and III, Plato’s Phaedrus and other early writings almost certainly referred to infective states and not what we mean by bipolar disorder
infective disorders with high fevers, hysteria, postpartum manias, catalepsies and melancholies developing into manias, he writes.

Even if the disorder existed before direct-to-consumer television advertising beamed its warning signs into living rooms, it was rare says Healy. Between 1875 and 1924 only 123 patients from North West Wales were admitted to the asylum in North Wales with what we would today call bipolar disorder from a population of a quarter of a million or 12,500,000 person years."

Hmmm... Link
We suspect, too, that nutritional deficiencies have something to do with this.

Bipolar Disorder Caused by Antidepressants

In an essay appearing March 17 in The Lancet, Franco Benazzi, MD, PhD, writes about a common but poorly recognized form of bipolar disorder, called bipolar disorder II.
Because the disorder is so often misdiagnosed, patients are often wrongly treated with antidepressants alone, which can make the problem worse, the professor of psychiatry tells WebMD.

"These patients need to be on mood-stabilizing drugs, and if depression persists an antidepressant can be added," Benazzi says. "Treating these patients with antidepressants alone can actually increase the manic episodes and worsen the disorder."

Bipolar II caused by antidepressants

And more evidence from Am J Psychiatry 166:2, February 2009.
Pdf
Thanks to Philip Dawdy of Furious Seasons for releasing this information.

Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive

Part One of Twelve

Part Two of Twelve. Click through on the video for the rest of the series.

Mr. Fry's website is here.

When Thyroid Imbalance Masquerades as a Mood Disorder

Dr. Escamilla suggests that as scientific understanding of the interactions between genetics, biophysiology, and mood dysfunction advances, "it may be only a matter of time before many of the patients who we currently diagnose as having bipolar disorder will actually have more specific designations that describe in detail their underlying pathology."

NOTE: Comprehensive Thyroid Assessment is important for assessing underlying clinical and subclinical thyroid imbalances linked to a variety of mood disruptions, including chronic anxiety, depression, insomnia, and restlessness. This evaluation of central and peripheral thyroid metabolism can pinpoint hidden causes of treatment dilemmas.
Source: Nath J, Safar R. Late-onset bipolar disorder due to hyperthyroidism. Acta Psychiatr Scand 2001;104:72-75.


Article is here.

NAMI: PACT, Pharma's slush fund, and Mrs. Doonesbury

NAMI gets the money to run its "meds to your door and we'll watch while you take them" program, called PACT,
from Big Pharma.

Read NAMI's PACT pamphlet here

Investigative journalist Jane Pauley and her husband Garry Trudeau, freedom-loving creator of DOONESBURY, should learn about PACT before she accepts an award from NAMI.
Will most people who hear about her breakdown through NAMI ever know that she became ill while taking steroids and antidepressants - because of medication?


Pauley and a crew of Pharma movers and shakers are
big money-makers.

As a celebrity spokesperson (whose speaker's fee is "Category E - $50,000 to $100,000"), Pauley broadcasts the prescription dictum promoted (in unison) by leading psychiat lists and the drug industry.
In a New York Times Magazine Eli Lilly Advertising Supplement, (October 30, 2005), Pauley embraces drug-dependency for life without an iota of skepticism or reservation:

"Although I had only one episode, no one can tell me whether I will have another one, so I must take medication for the rest of my life."
She says she takes both Lithium and an antidepressant.

To understand how Big Pharma buys influence, The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) is a good example.
DBSA bills itself as a grass roots organization that: "throughout 2003 over 4 million people asked DSBA for help."
The DBSA website has multiple "self assessment" tools to assist interested persons in self-diagnosis for a variety of conditions.
The site offers "testimonials" from "real people" who credit medications for their recoveries.
(To see their self-tests online - so bad they are embarassing - go here)

While claiming to be member supported, at a minimum 90% of DBSA'a income comes from the drug industry.
The DBSA 2003 annual report shows who the major donors are:


The “Leadership Circle” consists of donors of $150,000 or more. Listed are: Abbott Labs, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Meyers Squibb,Elan Pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen and Pfizer.
The “Founders Club” consists of donors of $10,000 to $149,000. These include: Cyberonics, Forest Labs, Merck, Organon, Wyeth.
The “Advocate Council” consists of donors of $5,000 to $9,999. These include: the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association (SAMSHA).
The “Platinum” donors of $1,000 to $4,999 include TAP Pharmaceutical
See: http://www.dbsalliance.org/PDF/AnnReptFINAL.pdf

Is NAMI Jane's Bag?














Images from http://www.namipharma.org


Is it time to give that Cronkite Award back?

AND...

April - Happy Birthday to Spike Milligan!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Milligan
British comedian Spike Milligan was born on April 16th. Without his wonderfully non-neurotypical brain, the world would be a sadder - and much less funny - place.
We miss you, Spike.