Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Half(ass) Reporting is Worse that No Reporting USA Today!

So USA Today has a blurb (let's not call it a "news story") about how the use of antidepressants doubled in 10 years.
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Here are some "problems" with the story.
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1. No definition of anti-depressants in the story anywhere.
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2. The quote that half are taking the pills for reasons beyond their intended purpose. Wha??? Where is that statistic from? Oh...it's from the obviously unbiased Archives of General Psychiatry journal, who has no interest in moving people from pill use to pyschological therapy.
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3. Of these, "non-intended", uses as are fatigue, sleep difficulties, back pain or other difficulties - all of which depression can effect. Partifularly is the anti-depressants include anxity medications (but we don't know because they don't list them).
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4. The unstated assumption is that depression can be treated via pills OR psychotherapy. But, in fact, these pills are often used to correct chemical imbalances in the brain. While it is true that psychotherapy can correct psychological issues it can't do shit about a malfunctioning serotonin or dopamine system inside you - which is where antidepressants come in.
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Americans just can't get enough of their pills. A new study finds that the number of Americans on antidepressants doubled from 1996 to 2005, sending the total number of people using the medications to 27 million. Interestingly, the percentage of people seeking psychotherapy while on antidepressants dropped over the same 10-year period—80 percent of antidepressant users were prescribed their pills by doctors other than psychiatrists. The study also finds that half of the users are taking the pills for reasons beyond their intended purpose, including "back pain, nerve pain, fatigue, sleep difficulties, or other problems." A major reason for the increase is that doctors are “more comfortable prescribing antidepressants," one expert told USA Today.
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My brilliant by crazy ass grand-father was a manic-depressive (now called bi-polar) and some of these new anti-depressants would have made life a little easier for everyone around him. He was a brilliant, occasionally loving, occasionally pathologically cruel, by turns sad, furious, funny and warm. I wish he had been alive long enough to get Effexor.