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In this week's compilation of pop culture crap, Joan Rivers has an endless supply of jokes about Snooki's pussy, Ramona Singer takes another wide-eyed stroll down the catwalk, and Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband talks about his plan to have a baby with his 94-year-old wife. More »
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A new survey says that 9% of postpartum women suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. You know, the same disorder that Iraq vets and plane crash survivors get. Something does not compute here, especially when you read further into the Wall Street Journal piece about this increasingly common affliction. "Childbirth-related PTSD became more of a focus of study only after 1995, when the American Psychiatric Association broadened criteria for the disorder," the Journal notes. In addition, the treatment is the same for childbirth-related PTSD and regular postpartum depression: talk therapy and sometimes anti-depressants like Zoloft. At the bottom of the WSJ article, there is a list of symptoms of PTSD vs postpartum depression, and while the PTSD symptoms are more specific, they also fit the criterion for regular old postpartum blues. Of course, women should feel comfortable speaking up and getting help about whatever issues they have in those difficult post-birth months, but something still irks me about this classification of childbirth as "trauma." More »
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There's a major backlash a-brewin' against the use of psychotropic medication to battle depression, and the forthcoming book Comfortably Numb by Charles Barber, could easily be called the bible of that backlash. Barber, a psychiatrist, cautions against over-medication, and argues that, "anger, greed, laziness, impulsivity, as well as jealousy, lust, anguish, and so on, are simply part of the human predicament" and should not be treated with medication. Barber is attempting to draw a line between "real" depression and just being bummed out, suggesting cognitive behavioral therapy or other forms of talk therapy to combat depression. I think no one can argue that anti-depressants are over-prescribed — horror stories about five-year-olds on Zoloft litter anti-drug literature and Scientology screeds — but without prolonged talk therapy, how can you draw that line? And even after thorough psychiatric investigation, won't each therapist's discretion be subjective? More »
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A dozen popular antidepressants don't work nearly as well as the "data" doctors cite to tell you they do, according to an FDA review. (The whole graph is after the jump.) The biggest grade inflators were Serzone, Zoloft, Remeron, Wellbutrin SR, Paxil and Cymbalta. Effexor, the drug that shame-ridden shrink confessed to shilling unethically in the New York Times Magazine last fall came in seventh. Which brings me back to an important part I was trying to make when I posted insensitively about fibromyalgia the other day. See, it is often times the people who think they're least susceptible to advertising — ahem, doctors — who turn us all into suckers. More »
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Psychology Today has a trio of articles about antidepressants and love/sex that I feel uniquely qualified to comment on since I am both on antidepressants and in love (and having sex). [Braggart! -Ed.] The main article, "Sex, Love, and SSRIs" wonders whether selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (the class of drugs that includes Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and others ) "compromise the ability to feel love," because SSRIs inhibit dopamine, which is also responsible for the feelings of elation and ecstasy that accompany falling in love. The author uses the anecdotal evidence of "Megan," whose sexual side effects ruined her relationship with high school sweetheart "Neil." The anecdote felt so weak (a high school love affair dissipating when the pair goes to separate colleges? You don't say!) that I wasn't surprised when she also used a seemingly dubious statistic to back it up: "Approximately 70 percent of people taking SSRIs suffer from sexual side effects." More »
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