Thank you, NR! I needed a laugh today.

Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood.
http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/reprint/163/12/1557

Indeed, Psychiatric Drugs .. Blunt instruments…

Like using rusty garden shears, whilst blindfolded to perform heart surgery ..

I like your strategy of figuring out what makes you the happiest.

You have a good day too.

AA

HC

Thank you for your well wishes and for figuring out my post.

I also wish you luck with the Zoloft.

Remeron was prescribed as a sleep aid to counter the insomnia that the Zoloft I was taking at the time was causing.

I suspect the italics were due to my using the symbols in an attempt to set off quotes. I take no credit for the outcome as it was an accident.

AA

Thank you for your well wishes and for figuring out my post.

I also wish you luck with the Zoloft.

Remeron was prescribed as a sleep aid to counter the insomnia that the Zoloft I was taking at the time was causing.

I suspect the italics were due to my using the symbols in an attempt to set off quotes. I take no credit for the outcome as it was an accident (smile).

AA

Are you in England? Just wondering, because you said “advert.” I just entertained my son with all the different English-isms I know, because he asked what a bonnet was.

I get equally frustrated with you because you conflate different issues and you place all blame on pharma while ignoring the other elephants in the room:

1. What GSK has done with Paxil is particular to GSK. You tar all of pharma with the Paxil brush. Zoloft can have withdrawal symptoms, and as soon as we became aware of it, we talked about it. Actually, from the beginning we counseled tapering off the drug slowly, over the course of several weeks. The same is true about the suicidal/agitated behavior signal. It emerged with Paxil, and we immediately acknowledged it and talked to our physicians about it. We weren’t selling Zoloft for depression in kids; it is indicated for OCD only.

2. The fact that I take an SSRI and am a drug rep doesn’t render my opinion any less credible than yours. You too have a bias in the way you see things. You and I are actually in agreement about SOME of the causes of mental illness; whereas much of the secular, reductionist world would find what you say laughable.

3. Pharma is not responsible for the materialist, reductionist approach that medicine currently has toward the brain. This began long before pharma, with Darwin, rationalism, the scientific method and the ejection of religion from public discourse. Seeing the brain as just a mush of chemicals and electricity is the logical endpoint of a process that began with the Enlightenment, actually, and gained steam with the scientific advances of the past two centuries. Pharma is the RESULT of this process. Having said that, I don’t think it is snake oil–nor do I think it is a panacaea. Rather, it is a tool on the workbench. I think I have argued consistently for judicious use of psychotropics; it is you who put words in my mouth by suggesting I think everyone should take these meds.

4. Much of the overuse of psychotropic drugs is not driven by drug reps telling doctors to drug their patients, nor even by DTC adverts telling people they are sick–it is driven by people who don’t understand why they are bored, restless, unhappy and empty–but they aren’t willing to do the hard work necessary to feel better. They want an instant fix that requires no introspection, no sacrifice, no acknowledgement of the sacred and transcendent. This is true not just with mental illness, but all illness. That is why we treat disease so much, because people don’t work on their health. Why do Americans take so many statins and anti-hypertensives? Because we are the most overweight developed country on earth!

5. Epilepsy is not mental illness. Nor, actually, is it a single illness. It can be controlled with AEDs about 60% of the time. Your brother’s occasional “fit” here in the States would render him virtually unemployable, because he could not drive. If he had an infant, he would be unable to bathe it, because during one of his “fits,” the infant might drown. Long-term seizures also lead to short-term memory deficits and cognitive dysfunction. Perhaps that is meaningless to you, but others may view their particular situations differently. There are plenty of alternatives to levitiracetam; your brother maybe should find a neurologist who will try them. Most people don’t get mood effects with Keppra; if they did, it would make my job much easier!

6. Of course an AED doesn’t “cure” epilepsy; epilepsy can’t be “cured”, although sometimes it remits spontaneously. Some people successfully discontinue AEDs after being seizure-free for a couple of years. Some people get surgery or VNS.

7. I don’t understand what you mean by “masking” epilepsy. Epilepsy is a quantifiable occurrence in the brain. It isn’t a mood or an emotion or a feeling–it is a physical event. That’s like saying lisinopril “masks” hypertension.

8. Risk/benefit vocabulary isn’t unique to pharma, nor any other industry. Risk/benefit analysis is what humans do every minute of their day. I just ran to Dairy Queen with my son. From the decision to go, to the route we took, to what we ate was a risk/benefit analysis. We all innately understand this process; it’s what keeps us alive.