Monday, November 08, 2004

F.D.A. Drug Safety System Will Get Outside Review
New York Times article - "Amid intense criticism that it is slow to raise the alarm about unsafe medicines, the Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that it would hire the nation's top scientific review body to figure out whether the drug safety system is adequate. In another step, after embarrassing disclosures that the views of its own drug safety officials had been suppressed, the F.D.A. said it would set up an internal appeals process. If someone inside the agency feels that superiors have made a mistake by approving a drug or, after approval, refusing to order its recall, that person will be able to make a case before a committee of experts, from inside and outside the agency, who were not involved in the decision. ... A stinging editorial Friday in The Lancet, a British medical journal, condemned the F.D.A.'s entire system of drug safety review and said the agency had acted out of 'ruthless, shortsighted and irresponsible self-interest' in failing to demand the removal of Vioxx earlier." [Viewing New York Times resources requires registration, which is free]. See also Vioxx, the implosion of Merck, and aftershocks at the FDA in the Lancet, which also requires free registration.    
  

VA Says Culture Change Will Transform MH Services
Psychiatric News story - "The VA has responded to the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health with proposed action steps that promote "functional recovery" and expansion of mental health services. Federal agencies were asked to respond to the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health after submission of the commission's report to President George W. Bush in July 2003..." See VA Announces Action Plan at the same source and the related items in the October issue of the VA mental health program's "Consumer Council News" (Adobe Acrobat format).  
  

Who Seeks Emergency Psychiatric Care?
Psychiatric News story - "Data from psychiatric emergency departments could supply critical information about a growing segment of people who need mental health care, but the resource is going untapped. Schizophrenic, agitated, noncompliant with medication, possibly substance abusing—this is the picture of the typical person who comes to the psychiatric emergency department at St. Vincent's Charity Hospital in Cleveland, according to chief psychiatrist Philipp Dines, M.D. The picture is not different from that seen in emergency departments elsewhere around the country. A report in the February Academic Emergency Medicine confirmed a sharp increase in the number of mentally ill persons coming to the nation's emergency departments between 1992 and 2000." See also As Insurance Coverage Wanes, Psychiatric ERs Get Busier at the same source.  
  

Complex Factors Keep Many Blacks From MH System
Psychiatric News story - "Stigma surrounding mental illness in African-American communities is preventing many from receiving quality mental health services. Underrecognition of a range of mental health problems by clinicians, a lack of trust in the medical community, and poor access to mental health services are keeping many African Americans with mental illness from recovery. William Lawson, M.D., Ph.D., who is chair of the psychiatry department at Howard University in Washington, D.C., illustrated these points at a seminar titled 'African Americans: Facing Mental Illness, Experiencing Recovery,' which was held in conjunction with the 2004 annual conference of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill."