Posted by Neal on March 30, 2009, at 15:50:27
In reply to Re: Depression and M/D Improved Treatments » Neal, posted by Garnet71 on March 29, 2009, at 19:21:45
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It seems that progress is exponential in most of the high-tech fields. That's what I was trying to point out when I talked about the history of psych-meds.
First Generation - 10,000BC to 1918
Second Generation - 1918 to 1950
Third Generation - 1950 to c.1990
Fourth Generation - c.1990 to 2008That's not exponential. But we have to remember that psych-meds weren't considered important by society early on; not like armaments or computers or the airplane for example, that got billions in research.
And depressed people often have low energy, anxiety, or social anxiety, so they can't go out and shake-up the system. If you're old enough, you can remember the gay community really shook-up the political system to give money for research for Aides. And it worked - to a degree. But I wonder if depressed people would band together and do that? There's still some stigma, that most people don't want to be publicly identified as depressed. But that's changing too, I think.
But if they did protest, or their family's protested, there would be more and faster progress. I think a lot of the illegal drug takers are trying to self-medicate, and are depressed to a degree. Now that we have a possibly more scientifically enlightened politcal administration at the top, maybe things will perhaps move faster. But the economy is in the dumpster, so maybe not, hard to tell.
I sometimes wonder if big pharma is dragging along trying to wring-out the last bit of profit from the SSRI's. For instance patenting SSRI's that are slightly different from the ones that are going generic. They need a kick in the you-know-where to get going, but who will do it?
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poster:Neal
thread:887168
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090330/msgs/887772.html