Posted by med_empowered on July 6, 2006, at 13:47:35
In reply to Re: Level 3 Results of STAR*D announced, posted by cecilia on July 5, 2006, at 3:40:52
yeah...ive noticed that with shrinks. They seem to have this idea that "the drugs work--PERIOD." and they don't get that: some people require combos or different meds (example: provigil instead of prozac) and that some people's conditions just aren't responding--and it isn't their fault (I hate it when treatment failures are explained away based on alleged "non-compliance" or, even worse, when shrinks blame some previously undiagnosed personality disorder).
Assisted suicide is just sad--I personally think it should be legal, but we should really focus more on effective pain management, so that way people can live out their last days comfortably and not beg for a big bottle of Seconal to end their suffering. I'd definitely take issue with a shrink diagnosing patients he/she had never even seen with depression and then dismissing their problems as "just depression". Interestingly, from what I understand, psychiatrists have a relatively high rate of suicide themselves.
SO..yeah...the STAR study is sobering. Unfortunately, the spin machines will probably go into full gear to show that "70% of patients can achieve remission," even if it take many drug trials to get to remission (and even if this remission rate isn't compared to placebo, psychotherapy, or non-intervention). Also, I imagine when all the data is hashed, some cases of non-response will be chalked up to non-compliance or a personality disorder or perhaps some sort of misdiagnosis--the patient had soft bipolar, not unipolar depression, or OCD features, or something like that. THere's always a loop hole to make bad numbers look better, which in the end helps shrinks and drug companies, but does an absolute disservice to people living in misery.
Oh well.
poster:med_empowered
thread:663938
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060701/msgs/664520.html