But now, pharma is giving depression the don't-wait scare treatment like coronary events (statins), asthma attacks ("controller" drugs) and thinning bones (Sally Field). If you don't hurry and take medication, your depression will get worse!
"Depressive episodes become more easily triggered over time," floats an article on the physician web site Medscape (flanked by ads for the antidepressant Pristiq.) "As the number of major depressive episodes increase, the risk for subsequent episodes is predicted more from the number of prior episodes and less from the occurrence of a recent life stress." The article, unabashedly titled "Neurobiology of Depression: Major Depressive Disorder as a Progressive Illness ," is written by Vladimir Maletic who happens to have served on Eli Lilly's Speaker's Bureau, says the disclosure information, and whose co-authors are each employees and/or Lilly shareholders.
Before direct-to-consumer advertising, the health care system was devoted to preventing over-treatment and assuring patients they were probably okay. Who remembers "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning"? Now patients are assured they probably aren't okay but probably have a progressive disease. Luckily their disease can be treated with progressive prescriptions from pharma.
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