Posted by ron1953 on April 30, 2012, at 10:50:17
In reply to Psychiatry is a bit impotent right now., posted by linkadge on April 29, 2012, at 19:35:57
Seems to me that psychiatry has really not made any real progress for a much longer than mentioned. Prozac, etc. didn't seem to genuinely live up to the hype and buzz they generated when introduced, but an amazing number of doctors (and not just psychiatrists but GPs as well) jumped on and stayed on the bandwagon. The marketing strategies (especially on TV) of Big Pharma have managed to keep use of the medications quite high, to the detriment of many.
I think it's naive to believe that the drug companies develop drugs for altruistic reasons. And remember that many drugs end up being marketed for conditions other than what they were developed for, due to observed side-effects that just happened to be potentially useful. Minoxidil (Rogaine) was developed and prescribed as a med for hypertension, but has a side-effect of hair growth. Seroquel and other anti-psychotics started getting used experimentally by practitioners for other conditions, like depression.
poster:ron1953
thread:1016713
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120425/msgs/1016748.html