Some people wrap themselves in marketing phrases and feel-good privacy statements which mean little in the real world. So just a reminder to our regular readers about what online anonymity entails.
You can’t be anonymous online if you…
1. Join virtually any social network (since, by their very nature, they encourage you to share as much […]

One of the biggest problems facing the mental health system today is slipshod diagnoses — diagnoses made too quickly, without obtaining enough information, and checking for reasonable alternative diagnoses. Professionals sometimes complain that they are overworked and need to make a diagnosis quickly in order to be reimbursed for the interview. I say that’s rubbish […]

If it’s May, it must be Mental Health Month, that special, warm, cozy time of the year that we all gather around our medication bottles and sing a little mental health happiness song.
Yes, I’m starting a new tradition. Please join in if you’d like.
But for most Americans, Mental Health Month is meant to highlight mental […]

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) got some grant money from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals to produce an updated brochure on Women and Depression. The result?
A publication that is largely information that’s been regurgitated time and time again (you can see many of the same topics in NIMH’s Women and Depression brochure), culled from a myriad […]

Philip over at the Furious Seasons blog often says things that don’t sit well with “either side” — anti-psychiatry folks and pro-psychiatrists too. You see, there’s this undercurrent anti-psychiatry movement that’s been around for decades, every since doctors in the 1940s and 1950s routinely performed lobotomies (sometimes forced upon the person without their consent) to […]

In a rare behind-the-scenes disclosure (due to a lawsuit), the public is seeing for one of the first times the degree and depth some pharmaceutical companies will go to in order to publish positive results about their drug. Using the same peer-review process that is supposed to prevent abuses by researchers and drug companies and […]

The spigot of free gifts, travel and other give aways to doctors, professors and students in the nation’s 129 medical schools is about to be closed. Gosh, I don’t know how they’ll manage…
The New York Times brings us the story today:

Drug and medical device companies should be banned from offering free food, gifts, travel and […]

You’ve got to scratch your head when one of the government’s chief advocates for health care in the Veterans Administration just reinforces the old stigmas associated with mental health concerns. Testifying before a federal judge in San Francisco, Michael Kussman said:

“The number of patients who have adjustment reactions to the experience that they have in […]

Walmart has made $4 generics the talk of medicine. But are generic medications always as good as their name-brand counterparts? Not always.
The Wall Street Journal yesterday wrote an entry yesterday about how they differ — Inexact Copies: How Generics Differ From Brand Names. The spotlight is shining on generics because of their low cost and […]

Apparently some of the people running the U.S. Veterans Administration (VA), the agency charged with taking care of our military veterans’ health and mental health needs when they leave the service, think nothing of lying about some of the significant issues they’re facing. Especially with regards to veterans’ suicide rates.
According to their own internal emails […]

The devastating numbers released by researchers today suggest not only that approximately 1 in 5 returning U.S. soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan may have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or a traumatic brain injury (TBI), but also that veterans often fail to seek care for these problems.
The study was conducted by the RAND Corporation and suggests […]

For everyone who trumpets the invincibility of peer-reviewed research, here’s another nail in the coffin…
Research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association today described how multiple Vioxx studies were ghostwritten for the researchers by, yes, you guessed it, Merck & Co.-paid writers. Researchers were welcomed to edit or change the writing, but not […]