The drug industry knows how to market their drugs. For the big named drugs they spend billions of dollars on consumer advertising, but to sell medicines that treat schizophrenia the companies focus on a smaller group of customers, the state officials who oversee treatment for patients with mental illness. These patients make states among the largest buyers of antipsychotic drugs.
Past evidence has shown, since the mid-1990s a group of major drug companies had campaigned to convince state officials that a new generation of drugs--with names like Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroquel--was superior to older and much cheaper antipsychotics. The campaign has led a dozen states, including Texas, to adopt guidelines for treating schizophrenia, which in turn made it almost impossible for doctors to prescribe anything but the new drugs, which resulted in transforming the new medicines into blockbusters.
To adopt the guidelines, major drug companies wined and dined different state officials and urged them to follow the lead of Texas, according to evidence found. Evidence written in a report also showed that in May 2001, as Pennsylvania was deciding whether to adopt the Texas guidelines, a pharmaceutical company paid $4,000 to fly two mental health officials to New Orleans, where they ate at an elegant restaurant with the company executives. These reports show a lot more money was given out to other mental health officials at different times.
With all this evidence floating around, it started to stir up some concerns about the drug companies new generation of the drugs, called atypical antipsychotics, used to treat a variety of mental illnesses. The concerns were coming from a joint panel made up of the American Diabetes Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists, and the North American Association for the Study of Obesity who said, mental patients who take these drugs may be increasing their risk for obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol--all which lead to heart disease.
The joint panel has issued a statement asking doctors to screen all patients on these medications for signs that could lead to any of these diseases, stating there is considerable evidence from studies conducted.
New York Times February 1, 2004
These new antipsychotics are loaded with side effects. Four medical groups, including the American Psychiatric Association, have warned that the new drugs could increase a patient's risk of heart disease by increasing:
This NY Times article details how the drug companies have manipulated and influenced state governments to purchase even more of these expensive side effect-riddled drugs. Questions have multiplied about the many ways that the drug industry tries to influence the medical information that determines its products' success or failure.
This makes perfect sense to me. Drugs are in no way, shape or form the answer for mental illness. They may control symptoms, but they do so at quite a significant price, and one that many people are not willing to pay. Why exchange one set of horrible side effects for diabetes?
This makes no sense to me, unless you are the drug company--and then it makes perfect sense.
Fortunately, we do have some natural options. Dr. Stoll is the director of the psychopharmacology research lab at Boston's McLean Hospital and assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He discusses the use of omega-3 extensively in his book The Omega-3 Connection. He reviews the new evidence supporting the use of omega-3 oils for mental illness.
The book is excellent, but Dr. Stoll is seriously misinformed about cod liver oil. This is especially true in terms of schizophrenia, which seems to respond particularly well to therapeutic doses of vitamin D.
A study I posted in 2002 strongly connected the dots from not enough sunshine and subsequent vitamin D to prevent schizophrenia. Optimal exposure to sunlight can provide enough vitamin D, but for most of us the winter provides a major lack of sun exposure and our levels fall in the dirt. Fortunately, cod liver oil can be used to replace this level to near ideal ranges. My favorite source of both omega-3 and vitamin D happens to be Carlson's cod liver oil. If you can't find this brand in your local health food store we carry the Carlson’s brand in our Recommended Products section.
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