The researchers also contacted the drug maker's medical-information department by phone or email; and contact was also made by way of a certified letter to the company's medical-information department, including a deadline for responding in writing as to whether the results of a study had been published. If these steps failed to reveal any publications, the researchers concluded that the results had not been published.
The researchers who conducted the study include Erick Turner, MD, Annette Matthews, MD, Eftihia Linardatos, BS, Robert Tell, LCSW, and Robert Rosenthal, PhD, from Oregon Health and Science University, Portland Veterans Affairs Medical Center; Kent State University; the University of California–Riverside, and Harvard University.
In their paper, "The Media and the Chemical Imbalance," Mr Lacasse and Mr Leo point out the problem in the media where reporters still quote the people responsible for publishing bogus studies that have long been debunked.
"For instance," they write, "several of the researchers involved with the studies of SSRIs in children are still cited in the press even though the following information has come out about their published studies: they downplayed the suicide risk; they exaggerated the benefits; and the papers published under their names were actually written by ghostwriters paid by the pharmaceutical industry."
According to Dr Levine, depression is not a biochemical disorder and refers to it as a strategy used to shut down overwhelming pain. Dr Levine states that, if the strategy is used to excess, it can lead to immobilization and greater pain.
He explains that depressed people experience feelings of hopelessness and helplessness and that labeling them with a disease leads to more of the same feelings.
Instead of calling it an illness or weakness, Dr Levine says, depression can be lessened by helping patients understand that it is a normal human reaction and they can identify the source of the pain and heal.
More Disorders Equals More Profits
To expand the market, the SSRI makers have managed to create a whole new generation of psychiatric illnesses by simply padding the bank accounts of a few psychiatrists who determine the criteria for the inclusion of mental disorders in the DSM. With their inclusion in the billing bible comes the guaranteed payment for the cost of the SSRI's and the visits to the prescribing doctor by public and private health insurance programs.
There are also a whole new slew of SSRI treatable disorders lining up for inclusion in the next DSM edition. For instance, an August 3, 2006 article by Reuters reported that, "People with 'body dysmorphic disorder' are 45 times more likely to commit suicide than people in the general population, a new study shows."
"The findings underscore the importance of recognizing and treating this 'often secretive' psychiatric disorder," Dr Katherine Phillips, the study's co-author, told Reuters.
Individuals with body dysmorphic disorder, she said, have a distorted body image and think obsessively about their appearance, often for hours a day, but can be helped with drugs like Prozac or Zoloft and cognitive behavioral therapy.
On October 3, 2006, the New York Times ran the headline: "Can't Keep From Shopping? Help Could Be on the Way," for an article that said, compulsive buying, "in its extreme forms may be a psychiatric illness -- an impulse control disorder associated with abnormal levels of depression and anxiety."
The article discussed a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry, and the lead author, Dr Lorrin Koran, told the Times: "Many of those who come in for treatment suffer from depression, anxiety disorders and other impulse control disorders like pathological gambling and binge eating."
She also threw in a sales pitch saying, "studies suggest that psychotherapy or medications help many compulsive buyers to stop."
This news could potentially raise SSRI profits by 10%, because the Times says a statistical analysis of the study results found 5.5% of men and 6% of women could be afflicted.
