"The greatest amount of expenditures went to psychiatrists as a group, totaling nearly half a million dollars; one psychiatrist received over $112,000, the greatest amount of pharmaceutical marketing dollars spent on any single person," the report states.
Eleven psychiatrists made the top 100 recipients list with an average payment total of $43,473. Shrinks also received the highest pay in 2007, when 11 earned a total of $626,379, or about 20% of the total payments made that year.
The top five spenders in last year's report were Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Novartis, Merck and Forest Pharmaceuticals, with $242,730 listed for the promotion of depression medications and $217,983 for ADHD drugs.
Lilly was the top spender in Vermont for 3 years in a row. The company's psychiatric drug portfolio includes Zyprexa, Prozac, Cymbalta, Strattera, and Symbyax, a combination of Prozac and Zyprexa. A list of drugs in the report shows the most marketing dollars went for Lilly's ADHD drug Strattera and spending on its antidepressant Cymbalta was second. Forest's Lexapro ranked fifth and Pfizer's atypical antipsychotic Geodon was in the thirteenth position.
The drug makers now even have general practitioners wildly writing prescriptions for psych drugs. A study in the September 2009 journal, Psychiatric Services, reported that 59% of prescriptions for mental health drugs in the US are written by family doctors, not psychiatrists.
Drug Peddling in the Military
In a joint project with Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, the Center for Public Integrity reviewed travel disclosure forms filed by Department of Defense personnel from 1998 through 2007, and found the medical industry was the largest sponsor of free travel, accounting for about 40% of all trips.
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