Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Most Drugs Prescribed for Children Are Primarily Studied on Adults
Boston Globe story reprinted at PsycPORT - "Pediatricians are forced to engage in risky "trial-and-error" medicine when they give drugs to children because two-thirds of all drugs they routinely prescribe have never been adequately studied on kids, according to a study by Food and Drug Administration researchers to be published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. What's more, when certain drugs developed for adults were methodically tested in children, researchers found previously unknown safety risks, including higher incidences of death, seizures, and suicidal thoughts, according to new data contained in the study..."  
  

Depression Weighs Heaviest on the Elderly
August 24 Health Day News story at Yahoo - "As crippling as depression can be for young and middle-age adults, it's truly severe in the elderly, and more often fatal. And while depression and related illnesses afflict 20 percent of America's elderly, only a fraction are getting the treatment they need."  
  

Severe Attention Disorder Linked with Drug Abuse
August 17 Reuters Health story at Yahoo - "Children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder are more likely to smoke, drink and use illegal drugs, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday. It could be because children with the disorder -- called ADHD -- have trouble paying attention, have problems at school and difficulty with relationships with friends and family. This, in turn, could make them susceptible to abusing drugs and alcohol, the researchers said. It also shows it is important to diagnose and treat ADHD early, the researchers write in the August issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology."  
  

3 Schizophrenia Drugs May Raise Diabetes Risk, Study Says
Front page New York Times story - "hree drugs commonly prescribed for schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses increased patients' risk of developing diabetes when compared with older antipsychotic medications, researchers said yesterday, presenting the results from a long-awaited study of patients treated at veterans hospitals and clinics across the country. The drugs — Zyprexa, made by Eli Lilly, Risperdal, made by Jannsen Pharmaceutica, and Seroquel, made by AstraZeneca — were associated with higher rates of diabetes than older generation drugs for schizophrenia like Haldol, the study found. But the increased risk was statistically significant only for Zyprexa and Risperdal, the researchers said, possibly because of the smaller number of subjects who took Seroquel." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free].  
  

Depression in Teens Likelier to Recur Later
Health Day Reporter story - "Teens who suffer a major depressive episode are more likely to have adjustment problems in early adulthood. Less satisfaction with their lives, a smaller social network, and poorer relationships with family are some of the ways this group differs from those who were free from depression as teens, according to a study from the Oregon Research Institute, a nonprofit behavioral research center in Eugene. The results of the study appear in the August issue of the Journal of Abnormal Psychology."  
  

Study: Stereotypes prevail in media coverage of depression
University of Michigan Health System press release at EurekAlert - "A new analysis of the media's coverage of depression, anti-depressant drugs and related issues over the past 15 years shows a significant shift in how newspapers and magazines portray mental health problems. Instead of describing depressive illnesses in terms of specific symptoms and medical terms, as they did when the era of Prozac began in the late 1980s, the printed news media are now far more likely to depict women's mental issues in relation to gender-stereotyped roles, such as marriage, motherhood, and menopause. But during the same time, descriptions of depression in men have not shifted in the same way. The new findings, made by researchers at the University of Michigan Depression Center and just published online by the journal Social Science & Medicine, show that gender stereotypes increasingly pervade popular media discussions of mental illness."