Ducking Around

Ooooh, let me tell you: I love vacation.  I really love vacation.  I'm back.  It's cold here, and I spent the day unpacking and doing laundry, and getting ready to start my week.  I returned calls, went in to the office and checked my mail, emailed, postal mailed, and watched the Ducks win the Rose Bowl.  Sad, because even though we Shrink Rappers like ducks, I have my own personal Badger out in Pasadena cheering for Wisconsin, and it's a sad football day for him, I'm sure. 


Roy did a great job of holding down the blog.  Please give him a hand.  Clink was off on another one of her adventures.  For some reason, vacation is not fun for her if there isn't the possibility that she'll fall thousands of feet, get eaten by some form of wildlife, or have her life depend on properly functioning equipment while she gurgles beneath the sea.  She's the only person I know where "I had a fantastic time" is followed by an injury report.


Roy's Happy New Year duck was taken from the Havre de Grace annual New Year's Duck Drop.  From the Aegis:

It was a glorious night for ringing in a new year. Temperatures, unusually inviting for a New Year's Eve in Harford County, hovered around 43. Wind was non-existent. And many people had gathered around the Havre de Grace Middle School grounds for the annual Duck Drop and fireworks to welcome another new year.

In other stories around the web, if you're a distracted duck, you might have notice that it's hard to find Ritalin or Adderall-- perhaps another example of DEA limits allowing Big Pharma to be being overly ducky about reducing supply of the cheaper, generic medications.  From the The New York Times, do check out "A.D.H.D. Drug Shortage Has Patients Scrambling."  


And if you're a duck contemplating filing for Social Security Disability, do read Dr. Steve's post on Thought Broadcast about The Curious Psychology of "Disability."  With 41 comments on that post, I'm going to swim away from the temptation to comment myself. 

And finally, for those ducks who want to know the latest on Electronic Medical Records, check out Shrink Rap News over on CPN for "Notes from SAMHSA's EHR Summit."  If that doesn't make you want to be served up with orange sauce, then nothing will.

So I love vacation, but I did miss all the Shrink Rappin.'  Happy New Year to everyone!  

From Clink: I don't have a duck in this race, so I thought folks might enjoy a seahorse instead. He's black with white stripes and seems to be perched on top of the green moray eel's head. Yes, the eel was that close.

No significant injuries this time.  A slight jellyfish sting and lots of no-see-'ums, that's it.

Whether or not they work, they're getting cheaper.

Over on Thought Broadcast, Steve Balt has a nice, disillusioned post about whether clinical psychopharmacology is a pseudoscience.    By the end of the post, I was ready to take down my shingle and go home.  I liked Steve's graphic so much (the little pill bottle guy juggling those mood stabilizers) that I stole it.


On another pharm note,  there are several popular medications that have recently gone off-patent or will soon go off-patent, allowing for more competitive pricing as generics become available.  Among them, several big-buck psychiatric medications, including Lexapro, Seroquel, Zyprexa, and Concerta. 

Guest Blogger SG on How the Pharmaceutical Companies Have Damaged Psychiatry

SG put a comment on our last post on The Chapter I Wish We'd Written on Bad Psychiatrists.  With permission, I'm making part of those comments their own post.  I gotta tell you, SG, we shrinks aren't so happy about these issues either.

Per SG:

I don't think the issue is so much a few bad shrinks but bad psychiatry. What I object to most is the pervasive compromising of science by pharmaceutical companies and all-out advertising.

This toxic influence is so pervasive that one comes to the forlorn conclusion that evidence-based medicine as it is currently practiced is really just a way for pharmaceutical companies to generate new revenue streams. The companies are so savvy they realized if they own the evidence through biased studies and suppressed trial data (failed studies, nasty side effects), they would have physicians eating out of their hands and prescribing their pills for whatever they wanted. I really think this dynamic is similar to state ownership of the media by totalitarian regimes.

Of course this is endemic in all of medicine, but psychiatry is uniquely vulnerable to this phenomenon because it has become so rigorously based on medical therapy (read: pills) since the DSM III ushered in the new "biologically based" model of mental health.

I refer the posters on this thread to the 1boring old man website in which a retired psychiatrist has been relentlessly examining internal emails between pharma execs, presentations by prominent psychiatrists like Madhukar Trivedi, seriously compromised studies like STAR-D, and various political infighting between powerful psychiatrists.

It's all very vertiginous and one comes away with the conclusion that the last 30 years of psychiatric "breakthroughs" are largely built on sand.
 
I think it is imperative that psychiatry look at ALL the evidence in evidence-based medicine, even if it provokes cognitive dissonance.

We must remember this about evidence-based medicine: it works on paper, but when you factor in human bias, fear, greed, and stubborn attitudes, you could have the most air-tight science (or evidence) in the world, but if it doesn't tell us what we want to hear, then the medical community automatically thinks it's flawed. How is that true evidence-based medicine?

It's time for psychiatry to come to some harsh truths and own up to them so ALL psychiatrists, even the good ones (and yes there are some good ones!) can practice at a higher standard. Even if a psychiatrist does everything right these days, I know they could do far better if they had a more honest and transparent evidence base to draw on.

Pharmaceuticals in the Information Age--Guest Blogger Dr. Mitchell Newmark

Look, I found Mitch, a classmate of mine from medical school, when he started to follow me on Twitter. Only I don't tweet (or I don't "emit tweets?" Sometimes I squawk, does that count?). I sent an email and while we were catching up, I invited Mitch to be a guest blogger.

Pharmaceuticals in the Information Age

It’s become a standard for me, when prescribing psychiatric medication, to ask patients if they intend to look it up on the internet. I think the internet is often a terrible place to go hunting for information. Either you’ll find a company sponsored site with happy faces, bells and whistles, or you’ll find disgruntled groups of patients denouncing the evils of one pill or another. The “impartial information” sites are frequently as toxic, especially for anxious patients, who can read through a comprehensive list of side effects, with little reference to their frequency or importance. And who knows if the information you’re finding is up to date? If a patient is paying to see me, it would make sense to bring his or her worries (Will my hair fall out?), concerns (Will this make me gain weight?) and fears (My friend took this and had a terrible reaction!) to me, not to the Web. If patients do want to Google their Rx’s, I ask them to send me whatever information they find which disturbs them. At least I can try to address the questions the internet has raised.

Even worse are television commercials for medications, which are unavoidable. I find that I need to watch at least some network TV just to keep up with what patients are seeing. How confusing to see such pained sufferers become spontaneously functional and cheery, while listening to the diabolical audio undercurrent of debilitating side effects. I know the messages are powerful; I frequently meet a new patient who comes in specifically because they saw a commercial for Abilify or Pristiq or something else during their favorite show. At least these drug mini-dramas do patients the courtesy of asking them to “ask their doctors.” Every patient is different; what works for someone, or causes side effects for someone else, is often an unknown. I find commercials send the message that THIS medicine will fix everyone.

Mitchell Newmark, M.D. is a psychiatrist, living and working in Manhattan, who is both a psychotherapist and psychopharmacologist, with a subspecialty in addictions.

Drug Reps in the Waiting Room.

Sarebear has been commenting on our posts for years now, since the very beginning of Shrink Rap. She sent us a link to one of her blog posts on Pie-Bolar Served w/ 3 Flavors of Anksia Tea and the post was a detailed discussion about her session that day with her psychiatrist. Lots of details and lots of sadness and angst, but a wonderful glimpse in to what happens in a session with a psychiatrist. I especially loved that Sarebear started her account in the waiting room where she sat with her family...the psychiatrist was running late and two drug reps were sitting there talking! What does a patient think about when such things intrude on their care? With permission, here's Sarebear's thoughts on Drug Reps in the Waiting Room:

My psychiatrist was twenty minutes late today, which means that she got in to the office at 9:20, which was when she was supposed to see ME, but her FIRST appointment, her 9:00, was still waiting to be seen, so I had to wait longer. UGH!! She said, "I'm sorry I'm so late!!", and the other patient said, "Don't worry about it", but I said absolutely nothing . . . . . lol. Can you tell I was a little peeved? In early morning traffic, it takes about 35 minutes to get there, so we had gotten up early, and had gotten there 10 minutes early, even, not wanting to shave it right to the minute. I suppose everyone has an off day, though. It's still annoying for me, as the patient! Guess I wasn't very "patient", heh. While I waited, just after the first patient went in, a pair of drug reps, one in training, came in, and dropped off some samples in her back room, then sat down to wait. I vowed that I'd get seen before them, because patients are more important. They talked alot of business, and about where each of them had worked, and some of the details of the software they were using on the laptop, that they wish they'd had at the previous place, and stuff. It was interesting to listen to them talk. Drug reps are a sadly necessary "evil" of the medical practice, because they provide drug samples for the doctors, without which you wouldn't be able to start some of the initial doses of certain medications, and sometimes the samples are used to help some patients afford the medications, although they do NOT replace the pharmacy, not at ALL. The drug reps also provide coupons and promotions for the patients to redeem for free two week or one month supplies of the medication, with prescription, at the pharmacy, whenever their companies are offering such coupons and promotions, so again, these things are good for the patient's pocketbook, their bottom line, for being able to afford the medications, when the insurance situation isn't ideal. Obviously some of these don't last very long, while other programs will, say, take half off the cost of the medication for a year, but whatever can help the patient, is a GOOD thing. It's just, the whole salesman aspect of the thing, seems a little . . . smarmy. It also feels a bit intrusive, to have salesmen in the medical setting like that, but as I say, it is a necessary "evil", even if one wonders about the influence that they may have over a doctor's prescribing practices. The most ethical doctors will not be influenced, but no one is perfect. Anyway, sitting there for awhile, listening to them, I didn't think they worked for Pfizer, the makers of Geodon, the medication I had been reduced in dose after my recent bad experience on, and was here today to be likely removed off of and put on possibly something else, but if they did, I wanted to tell them I thought it sucked. So, I asked them eventually, "Do you work for Pfizer?" They said, "No", so I continued anyway, since they'd still have an interest, and they did, and I said, "Well, Geodon sucks". They said, "We think so too, we sell a competing product." I said "Oh, okay. I hate it, because I had unexpected side effects." They then expressed their regrets to me that I'd had a hard time, and again said that they didn't like the med. I thought the whole interaction was a little bit funny, hee. Normally I wouldn't, as a patient, have any kind of interaction with drug reps at all, but since my psychiatrist was late, and since they'd been chatting for awhile so freely in front of my husband, daughter and I in the waiting room (after all, this is the type of location that is basically their workspace for the whole day; that, and their car, so one can't expect them to just sit there silently), so their chatting had encouraged me to eventually strike up a conversation, since there was nothing else to do while I waited for the doctor. When she eventually came out, as she walked past them to the front desk, she asked them if she needed to sign something, (I assume as in, to sign for the samples they'd dropped off in her back room) and they stood up and handed her a clipboard and started talking with her, the one in training did. I wondered if he'd bring up with her anything about the competing product for Geodon, since he knew she'd be bringing me off of that one, and potentially on something else, but it seems they had enough discretion NOT to go there, which amazed me slightly, for salesmen. They just brought up the coupons and promotions that are so helpful for patients, and got the signed clipboard back, and in the middle of signing it, she called me in to the office, which helped let the drug reps know that she'd not be spending a lot of time with them, and made me feel like I was her priority. I didn't feel badly that she'd signed for the samples, because otherwise these men would just be sitting around for another 25 minutes doing nothing, when just 2 minutes of her time took care of the whole matter.

Unhinged-- The Trouble With Psychiatry by Daniel Carlat, my Review

Unhinged. The Trouble with Psychiatry--A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis by Daniel Carlat.


Disclaimer: I wrote this book review while I was working on the final draft of our own book, so it's hard not to compare our book and style to those of Dr. Carlat. Ours is better (just so you know). This is not the result of a controlled study and there was no pharmaceutical agency support. It's simply my biased opinion.

So, I started out poised to hate this book. Dr. Carlat is a shrink/writer who has both a blog and an e-newsletter. He has a good reputation in the medical blogosphere, at least I think that's the case. So why was I poised to hate the book? I was offered a review copy by the publisher -- an inquiry email came with hype: "Carlat exposes deeply disturbing problems plaguing his profession." “The shocking truth is that psychiatry has yet to develop a convincing explanation for the pathophysiology of any illness at all.” "This has to stop—and it can. Throughout the book, Dr. Carlat provides empowering advice for prospective patients, describing the kinds of treatments that work, and those that should be avoided. In the final chapter, he provides a powerful prescription for how to get psychiatry back on track."

Yup, it's true, we don't know the actual pathophysiology of most of the psychiatric disorders. Is this shocking? Deeply disturbing? We've got a long way to go and we've got issues in our field. . Does it help to use language that sensationalizes these problems? It's kind of shocking that we haven't cured cancer, dementia, or obesity . I started reading. Carlat presents the fact that we don't know the actual causes of psychiatric disorders as though it's some big secret, something we purposefully withhold from our patients. He doesn't say that exactly, but he implies it with statements about how doctors don't like to admit what they don't know.

Okay, so the book is full of Carlat's epiphanies and revelations: he starts with the realization that it is limiting to see patients for a 50 minute evaluation, write a prescription, and then have the patient come back in a month for a 15-minute visit and refer them to a social worker or psychologist for therapy. Maybe this isn't the type of practice Dr. Carlat was meant to have! It's the way some psychiatrists practice, but it is not the way all psychiatrists practice. He writes as though this is the standard in the field and what we're "taught" to do. It's what some docs do and are comfortable with, but we aren't told that this is how you must practice, and no one packages this version of care as the best, highest standard of treatment. I personally don't like that he peddles the notion that a large volume/brief contact practice is the only thing psychiatrists do.

Later in the book, he talks about the use of therapy by psychiatrists, and discusses one psychiatrist who sees patients for psychotherapy -- she lives in a rural area and she makes half the income of the average US psychiatrist. She is the only psychiatrist he talks about who sees patients for psychotherapy--the others are a now-retired, lost generation of older docs who had it right. I know psychiatrists with psychotherapy practices who make reasonable livings. He doesn't even touch on this possibility, and in a single sentence he dismisses the idea of a fee-for-service, non-insurance based practice. It's not reasonable to present the field in the light that all psychiatrists do is write prescriptions....quickly and badly at that...and that there's no time for thoughtfulness. It got me thinking that -- at least among Shrink Rap readers -- and our informal, non-scientific polling reveals that 44% of readers who responded see their shrink for 45-60 minutes per session (the most frequent answer by far) and that less than 20% of readers see their psychiatrists for 15 minutes or less. Granted, we may have a skewed readership of those who are thinking a lot about their care and perhaps more apt to seek out something more fulfilling. A quarter of our readers see their psychiatrist weekly (also the most common answer but not by much), about the same number who see their psychiatrists every three months. At least among Shrink Rap readers, we can conclude that psychiatrists practice in a variety of ways and it's not uncommon for people to see psychiatrists for 50 minute sessions, or to see them weekly. I'm sure this varies depending on the region of the country, the availability of psychiatrists, the financial needs of those psychiatrists, the setting in which treatment takes place, and the role insurance has in determining care, and the age of the practice-- with the idea that patients may start out with weekly treatment and move to every one-to-three months after they get better. But Carlat glances over those issues. Dr. Carlat notes that fewer docs offer all their patients psychotherapy. One of the figures he quotes is that only 11% of psychiatrists offer psychotherapy to all patients at every visit. Hmm... All patients. Every visit. Some of this might depend on how we each define psychotherapy -- and there is no standard to that -- but if I was asked this same question, I'd say No. I work a half day a week in a clinic and there I see patients who also see a social worker/therapist. I see two patients an hour there, and sometimes they talk and I listen and sometimes it feels a lot like psychotherapy, and sometimes it doesn't feel anything like psychotherapy, but I would say that No, the therapy is done by the social workers and I don't "offer" psychotherapy to "every patient" I see in every capacity of my practice of psychiatry. And I would ask, "how exactly are you defining psychotherapy?" Read the Shrink Rap book (Spring, 2011) and we'll talk more about this. Interestingly, by the end of the book, Carlat talks about doing psychotherapy in 20 minute sessions.

Okay, so he says psychiatrists are taught to write prescriptions and aren't taught how to do therapy. Only he talks in some detail about his therapy supervisors, their thoughtful insights, how he was supervised in a psychodynamic style, and later he talks about how his training program educated residents in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Are we taught therapy or not? This all sounds quite reasonable-- what's he complaining about? For the record, I think I finished training at the same time Carlat started (so, 3 years earlier than he) at an institution with a strong biological focus, so I don't think our differences in opinion on how docs practice is about orientation or timing .At the end of the book, Carlat proposes some solutions: Psychiatrists should NOT go to medical school, it's a waste, and they should have more stream-lined training. All psychologists should be taught to prescribe medications. He had no problems with the DOD program in Louisiana, where 7 years of the program taught a total of 10 psychologists to prescribe. He says this type of program is safe and works well. He fails to note that it cost the military over $600,000 per psychologist (why? no idea?) and that's why they stopped it. Or that it did not decrease the mental health treatment shortage in Louisiana. I'll spare you my rants, you can read about psychologist prescribing here, in a piece by Ron Pies and the article does reference Dr. Carlat. He talks about his own revelations that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works well, that it's good to ask a patient with a recurrence of depression if anything is going on in their lives (funny how that works), and how he he now does a brand of therapy that he calls "therapy lite." I found the examples to be a bit condescending -- his description of therapy sounds a bit like common sense.

Carlat's book may make him enemies. I'm wondering who his audience is:

-- it might appeal to the anti-psychiatry audience, at least from the cover hype, only much of the book is a fairly reasonable discussion of our work, and so it's not really anti-psychiatry.

-- I don't think many psychiatrists will agree that medical school should be done away with for us, or that other professionals can do what we do as well and as safely.

-- The alarmist tone just didn't go over well with me.

-- Sometimes it felt like he quoted studies when they fit his agenda. There were several mentions of how psychiatrists feel inferior to other doctors, and I'm not sure what to make of that one. Is this a universal phenomena?

-- His bash on how pharmaceutical companies interface with psychiatry include some of our major psychiatrist players here. But if you want to hate the drug companies, this is the book to read.

So what was good about it, why did I read it to the end, and why would I ever put this review on Shrink Rap? After the beginning, Carlat presents a reasonable view of how the DSM is crafted, including the controversies about disclosure in the process of writing the new DSM-V. The most interesting part of the book, however, is his discussion of how the drug companies have influenced research, publications, and practice. Some of this I had read in the New York Times. Some was news to me. I've never seen this side of the pharmaceutical hard-sell -- it was interesting, a bit shocking, and definitely eye-opening. His insider's view of this world is revealing.

So is Daniel Carlat the emissary of truth and ethics while the rest of us remain busy trying to get the big bucks by seeing too many patients too quickly or by getting money unjustly from the pharmaceutical industry? Read the book and see what you think.

I'm Still Here.

I'm talked out on the subject of whether or not psychiatric illnesses exist and whether or not psychiatric treatments work. I went to work today. I think I'll go again.
For the sake of completion, here's Louis Menand writing in The New Yorker, "Head Case." Click the link and read away.

Do Generics Work as Well as Name Brands?

It's my first night of vacation! I saw my last patient today and then started pulling the pictures off the walls in anticipation of my move. I ran over to see the new place, and it still needs insulation (it's on the floor), paint, and carpet. And doorknobs might be nice.

So we're expecting quite the snowstorm here. I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow, but the current forecast is for up to 20 inches. It didn't take me long to float from the weather to the health section of the New York Times, and here's an article by Leslie Alderman about generics versus name brands.

Are generics as good as name brands? I don't have any studies, I'm purely running on anecdotes, but this is my thinking: Usually. When I was resident, I learned that 15% of the time (and this isn't science, I don't think, I believe it's someone else's anecdote) generic nortryptiline doesn't work when name brand Pamelor does. So I've always asked patients to start with Pamelor....I don't use it much anymore....because who wants to spend 6-8 weeks on a medication trial and have someone not respond only to realize they were in that small group of patients who are sensitive to the brand.

Other meds: I've had a handful of people complain about generic Prozac-- fluoxetine. It's not as effective for them, or they have more side effects. Alderman's article talks about Wellbutrin XL and I didn't even realize that the XL form now has a generic. Sometimes people want the name brand.

So what do I do when a patient specifically requests the name brand? I give it to them: if they are right, then they are right. And if they simply believe that they won't respond to the generic, because there are people who say "Generics don't work on me," well, then there's power to such beliefs, and I just want my patients to get better.

What do you think?

Twitter Novel About a Psychiatrist and a Drug Company

So this is something different. A novel... by a psychiatrist... released 140 characters at a time via Twitter (@goosenovel). If you try to read it via Twitter, you have to start at the beginning, so it is easier to catch up by going to his novel site, for the twitter-impaired. It is written by Doug Bremner MD at Emory, who has already written a book about drug safety.

I thought the idea of a twitter novel was interesting (and surely Dinah will have something to say about this).

Shrink Rap: Grand Rounds is up at ACP Internist

This week's Medical Grand Rounds has some great links, including:

• Philip Hickey laments the "med-check", blaming the cozy shrink-pharma relationship;
• neurofeedback for ADHD?
• four factors of addiction
• balancing of error-reporting
• should physicians be involved in health reform?

And, Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The SSRI Horse Race-- Take Our (Meaningless) Polls

This is not science, I'm just playing here, nothing random, nothing controlled, just questions for our readers.

I just read Peter Kramer's Psychology Today blog post called Lexapro and Zoloft in a Cloud of Dust. Dr. Kramer talks about the relative efficacy of SSRI's, their market share, and if the drug company's influence docs to prescribe in a way that isn't in sync with research. Lexapro, the most expensive SSRI, apparently has the biggest market with 13% of the market share. He writes:
Now comes news of a large-scale analysis of research on antidepressant efficacy. Published in The Lancet, it finds a hierarchy, with Remeron, Zoloft, Effexor, and, yes, Lexapro, leading the pack, Cymbalta and Prozac in the middle, and Luvox, Paxil, and (especially) reboxetine, which is marketed outside the US, bringing up the rear. Celexa and Wellbutrin gave statistically fuzzy efficacy results; the two drugs appeared to be about average for the group. In terms of tolerability, Zoloft, Lexapro, Celexa, and Wellbutrin led the pack. So the results give a special place to Zoloft and Lexapro.

Do read the original post.

So I thought I'd put up two polls, and again, this isn't science, it's just curiosity. Pretend you didn't read the paragraph above, and I'd like you to answer two questions: What do you think is the most Effective SSRI, and Which SSRI do you think causes the most side effects. I don't care if you're the patient or the doctor, or a non-MD therapist who's simply just heard patients talk about the meds. It's a question of perception, with the awareness that maybe you haven't seen all the horses race. Efficacy: Which med works the best (If you've only been on Prozac and that worked great, it's fine to answer that!). Side Effects: Which med makes people feel the yuckiest (now there's a scientific term).

The Scientific Method

So my kid comes home from school today and announces,
"Guess what I learned at school today?"
"What?" (Good to know they're learning something, anything....)
"There are a lot less kids at my new school with ADD then there were at my old school."
"Oh? How do you know this?" Shrink Mom's wondering if they do public surveys or something.
"I wrote with a Concerta pen all day and no one came up to me and said they were taking it. Tomorrow I'm going to try a Prozac pen."

Hmmmm.......

So the scientist in me thinks of all the options here:
1) Kids at old school were more open about revealing their psych histories
2) Difference between middle and high school?
3) Kids at current school less attentive to classmates' choice of pens?
4) More kids at old school actually did take Concerta.

I do recall that in the past, when my kids have taken pharmaceutical company pens to school, they've gotten personal as well as family histories offered ("Hey, my dad takes that!").

This is Why You Need A Psychiatrist

From today's Wall Street Journal, an article on how antidepressants aren't all they were cracked up to be: Antidepressants Under Scrutiny Over Efficacy. David Armstrong and Keith Winstein write,

"Since the overwhelming amount of published data on the drugs show they are effective, doctors unaware of the unpublished data are making inappropriate prescribing decisions that aren't in the best interest of their patients, according to researchers led by Erick Turner, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health & Science University. Sales of antidepressants total about $21 billion a year, according to IMS Health."

Actually, the issue at hand is that the pharmaceutical companies don't publish or make public the studies that don't show the results that will sell their meds. It's not a news release that we've suddenly realized that antidepressants don't always work. These are two separate issues. The WSJ article is based on a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, Selective Publication of Antidepressant and Its Influence on Apparent Efficacy, and it uses data on antidepressant studies to make this point. Okay, it's also about how antidepressants aren't as effective as the drug companies say they are, but this just doesn't surprise me. The WSJ article goes on to say,

"There is a view that these drugs are effective all the time," he (Dr. Turner) said. "I would say they only work 40% to 50% of the time," based on his reviews of the research at the FDA, "and they would say, 'What are you talking about? I have never seen a negative study.'" Dr. Turner, said he knew from his time with the agency that there were negative studies that hadn't been published.

There's someone out there who thought antidepressants work all the time? This is why people need psychiatrists, not primary care docs, managing their psych meds:

1) Even at high enough doses given for long enough (6 weeks), any given antidepressant may not work on any given patient. Or it may help with some symptoms and not others.

2) If one antidepressant doesn't work, another might.

3) If one antidepressant doesn't work, augmenting with a second medication may work.

4) As a patient suffering from Bipolar Disorder, depressed, moderate in severity, recurrent, said to me recently, "I think the therapy helps as much as the medicine."

I don't think it's news that a) anyone can write a prescription for Prozac and the patient may not get better, or b) this is complicated stuff.

The issue of the pharmaceutical agencies hiding their negative data is also not news. Personally, I think the legal penalties for withholding this information should be stiff enough to stand as a deterrent. You just don't hear of drug company CEO's in the cell next to Martha Stewart.

What I Read in The New York Times Magazine Today.

I thought Roy was going to write about the psychiatrist drug rep who wrote about his year of selling his soul in today's New York Times Magazine. Apparently Roy went shopping, and then he got eaten by a Leopard (is that the new Apple thing?)

In "Dr. Drug Rep," Daniel Carlat, a psychiatrist in Newburyport, Mass, talks about the year he worked for Wyeth pharmaceuticals. He visited the offices of primary care physicians and talked about the wonders of Effexor. He describes his ambivalence and conflicts-- the money he made was good. Oh, never mind, the money was great-- he was getting up to $750 an hour to talk to docs over lunch. But he felt like he was minimizing the risk of hypertension and withdrawal symptoms. Dr. Carlat writes:

I wrestled with how to handle this issue in my Effexor talks, since I believed it was a significant disadvantage of the drug. Psychiatrists frequently have to switch medications because of side effects or lack of effectiveness, and anticipating this potential need to change medications plays into our initial choice of a drug. Knowing that Effexor was hard to give up made me think twice about prescribing it in the first place.

During my talks, I found myself playing both sides of the issue, making sure to mention that withdrawal symptoms could be severe but assuring doctors that they could “usually” be avoided. Was I lying? Not really, since there were no solid published data, and indeed some patients had little problem coming off Effexor. But was I tweaking and pruning the truth in order to stay positive about the product? Definitely. And how did I rationalize this? I convinced myself that I had told “most” of the truth and that the potential negative consequences of this small truth “gap” were too trivial to worry about.

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And on another note, ClinkShrink mentioned to me tonight that writing doesn't come easily to her-- huh?! Some words of encouragement anyone?

And Roy, quicker on the uptake here! Hope you enjoy the new purchases. I hope you don't mind that I stole your topic....

My Three Shrinks Podcast 27: Shrinks On The Take

[26] . . . [27] . . . [28] . . . [All]

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Back in Dinah's back yard today. For our U.S. readers, please have a safe July 4.
And if you live in France, the UK, Canada, Cuba, or Guantanamo Bay, Dinah wants your comments on her post about Michael Moore's Sicko. Okay, okay, citizens of other countries are welcome to comment, too!

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July 1, 2007: #27 Shrinks On The Take


Topics include:

• Doctor Anonymous has new Podcast, where he talks about chatty doctors, nursing home patients, and discovers BlogTalk Radio (similar to TalkShoe).
  
  
• Vermont Shrinks Rolling in Pharma Dough. The New York Times reported on doctors who get money from drug companies, finding that in Vermont the #1 specialty to cash in is Psychiatry. Vermont has a law requiring the reporting of such income, and the story misleading suggests that the average Vermont psychiatrist gets $45,000 from drug companies. Closer reading shows that there were 11 psychiatrists who received an average of $45,000. Still. What are they getting paid for? Here's some insight from a #2 specialty: Endocrinologists. A US Senator has suggested that all such income get reported, just like they have to do (makes sense to me).
  
  
• Zyprexa Class Action Lawsuit for Fraudulent Marketing Zips Ahead. CL Psych informs us that a judge is allowing this suit to go forwards, based on allegations that Lilly engaged in fraudulent marketing of Zyprexa for unapproved uses. See also the March FDA Drugs for an FDA warning against Provigil. We launch into a wider discussion about off-label prescribing and combination medications. Listen to find out the #1 prescribed drug which is FDA-approved for bipolar depression (hint: it's not an SSRI).
  
  
• Doctors Who Talk Too Much. The Archives of Internal Medicine has an article by McDaniel et al., which has been in the news. They sent fake patients into participating physician offices over the course of a year and recorded the interactions, categorizing the utterances in various ways. One-third of the visits contained physician "self-disclosures" (talking about themselves), with 85% of these not being useful. It doesn't seem that they asked the pretend patients how useful these discussions were. I view the study's conclusions with suspicion. I would like to see compliance rates and outcome measures compared between a group of patients whose physicians self-disclose and one whose physicians do not (ideally, assignment would be randomized, and a physician would have patients in both groups).
  
  
• Q&A: Can you have a mental disorder and still become a mental health professional? Listen in as we address this question from a listener.
  

The song at the end is called "Talk Talk," by the group, Talk Talk. You can get it at iTunes.

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Find show notes with links at: http://mythreeshrinks.com/. The address to send us your Q&A's is there, as well. This podcast is available on iTunes (feel free to post a review) or as an RSS feed. You can also listen to or download the .mp3 or the MPEG-4 file from mythreeshrinks.com. Thank you for listening.

I Still Prescribe Seroquel But I Don't Get Paid To Do It.

Chapter 10 remains up at Double Billing. Thanks to those who've commented!

And don't forget to check out the ClinkShrink fiction venture at Double Celling!



From today's New York Times : PSYCHIATRISTS TOP LIST IN DRUG MAKER GIFTS. Great.

How this money may be influencing psychiatrists and other doctors has
become one of the most contentious issues in health care. For instance, the more
psychiatrists have earned from drug makers, the more they have prescribed a new class of powerful medicines known as atypical antipsychotics to children, for
whom the drugs are especially risky and mostly unapproved.

Vermont officials disclosed Tuesday that drug company payments to psychiatrists in the state more than doubled last year, to an average of $45,692 each from $20,835 in 2005. Antipsychotic medicines are among the largest expenses for the state’s Medicaid program.

Wow! Or maybe Oy! That's a lot of money, they don't say How Many Vermont psychiatrists see that kind of moola. One, two, ninety percent of those maple-syrup, Birkenstock-wearing Shrinks, or all of them?



So, for the record, last year I earned $0.00 from pharmaceutical companies. Funny, it was the same amount that I earned the year before and the year before that and the year before that. What am I doing wrong? Where's my 45 grand?



Full disclosure: I work in two different settings that serve indigent, often uninsured, patients. Some of the people I see in private practice have no health insurance. Atypical antipsychotics cost a lot of money. If you don't have health insurance, they remain pretty much inaccessible to many many people. So I'm nice to the drug reps, I chat for a few minutes, I sign for samples, sometimes I even call and request samples, I use their pens, and if you show up needing an antipsychotic agent, you get the one that's in the closet. I used to run a clinic, and part of that work entailed educational programs for the staff and boosting morale: go straight for the stomach. Sometimes I asked the pharmaceutical reps to provide lunch and they'd bring a tray of sandwiches. This went over well with the staff.



Do the pens and sandwiches influence what I prescribe? I can't say no for sure, but it feels like they all come, so what's to say which I use more? Really, boils down to my anecdotal evidence more than anything else: if the first time I try a med, the patient returns saying it helped, I'm more likely to use it. If I have to slowly titrate up and it takes a lot of time and a lot of appointments, I'm less likely to use it. Sorry, Effexor. If the first patient who tries it comes back ranting it was horrible, I get a bit colored. I talk to my shrinky-friends: are they having the same experience? If not, I'll reassess and try again. Even if I don't use the drug myself, I still smile at the reps, sign on the dotted line, and throw the samples in the closet for whoever else wants it.



So why aren't they paying me? Really, that post I wrote on Why I Still Prescribe Seroquel, shouldn't that be worth a few bucks? Look, I'm cheap, never mind the 45 grand, I'd have done it for a mere $20,000.



Finally, I need to say a few words about media sensationalism. Villainizing psychotropics seems to be the thing to do, and hell, get those docs who prescribe them while you're at it. I really wish that atypical antipsychotic medications didn't cause weight gain, diabetes, and metabolic problems. And now that I know this, I tell people. Many people don't develop these side effects-- I've become more diligent about checking labs and warning people of the risks. Though I really wish I could say that it's rare for people to develop diabetes either on or off these meds-- the truth is it's a really common illness and a lot of my patients have it before they see me, a lot get it during the course of treatment, and some get it during the course of treatment with atypical antipsychotic medications. If there was something else I could prescribe, I would and often I do. From my perspective of the doc-in-the-office, there sometimes is just no option but to use these medications, they're what we've got. This isn't to defend the drug companies, I believe their goal is simple: to make money. Kind of like your health insurer runs ads with soft music telling how they care, but really they just want to make money. What surprises me is that anyone expects anything else from them. No answers, sorry.



My last word about media sensationalism: It's hard to get Medicaid, you have to be sick. An episode of depression treated with Prozac doesn't do it. To get Medicaid, at least in Maryland, you have to be chronically ill (and even that isn't always enough), so a bad psychiatric illness, chronically, probably one that you need a chronic, expensive, antipsychotic medication to get. No wonder antipsychotics are a high percent of the Medicaid budget.

Okay, send the check, I'll be waiting

Pot Calling the Kettle Black?

Lilly is complaining that all the lawyer ads about suing Lilly for diabetes is resulting in pts stopping their meds and relapsing.

Lilly on Wednesday released the results of a company-funded survey that asked 402 psychiatrists who treat patients with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia to complete an online questionnaire. More than half of the participating psychiatrists said they believed their patients who stopped medication or reduced the dosage did so after seeing lawyers' advertisements about anti-psychotic drugs.

Wonder how many people went on Zyprexa due to Lilly ads?

Abilify Calling? Nobody home.

On May 19 I found this public pay phone advertising Abilify. I went today to pick up my General Tso Chicken, and I see the ad has been taken down. Maybe the purchased ad time ran out.







Or, maybe, Bristol-Meyers Squibb realized that they've gone too far by putting ads for their antipsychotic on pay phones.

Abilify Calling

I can't believe how far this Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical marketing has gone.

I went to the Chinese take-out place ("take-away" for you Brits) tonight to pick up some General Tso chicken, and outside the place I see the phone above. Sealed onto the outside casing of the phone, and obviously part of a marketing scheme that Verizon is making money on, is this huge ad for Abilify (aripiprazole), an atypical antipsychotic drug for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

That's just going too far.