a personal quest to discover, analyze, and question news and personal events relating to mental illness
I’m at half the starting dose now. This means my body still has trace amounts of the drug but it’s so low that it’s not really effective. Here are the side effects I’ve been experiencing:
I’m also having trouble losing weight but I can’t say for sure if that’s attributable to the medication. If you were on Lamictal or are on Lamictal, what side effects have you experienced?
Here’s a list of compiled links providing information on Pristiq. These links include info from my blog and others.
So much for Miss Up-on-Pharmaceuticals.
I’ve been paying so much attention to Pristiq that the very medication I take slipped out from right under my nose.
How did I find this out? It hit me where it hurt.
In the pockets, of course.
I went to CVS yesterday night for my Lamictal refill. Since I’ve been under my husband’s plan, we’ve been paying about $40 for the medication. So I nearly doubled over when the pharmacy cashier said $54.
WHAT?
I was in a bit of a foul mood about money anyway so the last thing I wanted to do was argue about the cost of my prescription that had jumped up by $14. (Which, in retrospect, I probably should have done because I could have saved $49 right there.)
I came home and made my husband’s day go from bad to worse. He flipped out and got on the phone with his insurance immediately. He said that the max he should pay on any medication is $50 so why was he paying $54 and why the cost rose so sharply.
“Well, sir, it’s because Lamictal has now gone generic and you’re paying the difference between the cost of the medication and the cost of the generic.”
Bob gets off the phone and goes straight to Google News to find out when Lamictal went generic.
According to MarketWatch.com, Teva Pharmaceuticals commenced shipment of lamotrigine tablets on July 22nd. So instead of either the pharmacist asking me if I wanted a generic version or the insurance company letting us know a generic version would be available (it would have saved them money), we ended up paying $49 more than necessary. It appears that Teva’s generic is AB-rated, which means that it has similar strength, bioequivalence, and efficacy. Overall, it likely shouldn’t be a problem if I go from Lamictal to lamotrigine. At least I hope not. We’ll see.
Mood rating: 5
The FDA recently approved Stavzor, a valproic acid delayed release capsule, for the treatment of bipolar disorder, seizures, and migraine headaches. Wow. That’s covering the gamut. The drug looks like it’ll be competing directly with the Depakote brand.The mastermind behind Stavzor is Noven Pharmaceuticals (in conjunction with Banner Pharmacaps Inc.). The new “small, easy-to-swallow soft gel capsule” is available in three strengths: 125, 250, and 500 mgs. The pills are are “up to 40% smaller than han Depakote® and Depakote ER® tablets at the 500 mg dosage strength.” From Noven’s PR:
Stavzor is approved for the treatment of manic episodes associated with bipolar disorder, as monotherapy and adjunctive therapy in the treatment of patients with complex partial seizures that occur either in isolation or in association with other types of seizures, and for prophylaxis of migraine headaches.
The drug will hit the market in mid to late August.
The hotline receives an average 250 calls each day from veterans that have fought in Iraq, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.
The issue of soldiers with mental illness has recently come to light with studies showing that 1 in 5 soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have shown symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The issue of the high suicides rate has been a high priority of the VA since mental health director Ira Katz tried to hide the significant number of suicides committed by veterans.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling 800-273-TALK (8255); veterans should press “1” after being connected.
“We have seen a 60 per cent increase in demand for our child anxiety classes in the past six months,” said [Dr. Kimberley O’Brien, of the Quirky Kids Clinic at Woollahra in Sydney].
It sounds more like the article is speaking of children who are exposed to constant physical and emotional abuse. If that’s the case, shouldn’t there rather be an increase in parenting properly classes?
Oh no they didn’t. From Alexza Pharmaceuticals’ recent PR:
Alexza Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced today that it has initiated its second Phase 3 clinical trial with AZ-004 (Staccato(R) loxapine). AZ-004 is an inhalation product candidate being developed for the treatment of acute agitation in patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Alexza believes the novel, non-invasive nature and rapid pharmacokinetic (PK) properties resulting from inhaled loxapine administration via the Staccato system (click on the photo to the right to see an enlargelarement) have the potential to make AZ-004 a viable product to treat acute agitation.
The supposed benefits:
Is this pharmaceutical company really developing a product to treat schizophrenic and bipolar disorder symptoms by inhaling? I thought the injectable Risperdal was bad. Check out how the Staccato system works. It blows my mind that psych drugs are being developed for injection and inhalation.
I just learned that Wyeth produces two major menopause drugs, Premarin and Prempro, that allegedly has produced hormones causing cancer in more than 5,000 women. This added up to a loss of 40 million users and $1 billion annually.
With Effexor going generic in 2 years and the introduction of Pristiq to the market, Wyeth hopes to lure some of those customers back and net an annual $2 billion. However, serious questions linger about Pristiq’s side effects in menopausal women.
Why did two women in the study group taking Pristiq have heart attacks
and three need procedures to repair clogged arteries compared with none
taking placebo? How can Wyeth assure long term safety when 604 of the
2,158 test subjects took Pristiq for only six months and 318 for a year
or more? And what about serious liver complications seen in the studies?
Martha Rosenberg, reporting on Pristiq’s use as a menopausal drug, culled comments from CafePharma’s message boards and found one thread rife with mixed comments on the new drug. From an Anonymous commenter:
Continue reading “Pristiq's side effects: Too close to Premarin and Prempro for comfort?”
As if some psychotropic meds out on the market aren’t bad enough, out from the archives of Neatorama is a post on 10 Mind-Boggling Psychiatric Treatments. Somehow Insulin-Coma Therapy made it to #1 and lobotomy was listed as #10. I don’t know if they were placed in order of craziness. I didn’t even read the text of most of the treatments. The graphics and headlines were enough to make me cringe.
(Hat Tip: Bob Thompson)
Dr. Grohol interviewed Dr. Phil Ninan, Wyeth’s VP of Medical Affairs on Pristiq, its efficacy, and surrounding issues. It was quite an interesting interview (and long) but here are some highlights that I chose to comment on. I’ll be making some comments in between Dr. Ninan’s answers due to the extensive length. Some parts of the answers have been truncated.
Continue reading “John Grohol interviews Wyeth's VP of Medical Affairs on Pristiq”
I have an appointment with my psychiatrist on Tuesday morning. I’m not quite sure what to do.
My “symptoms” are back. Now that I know what to look for as someone with bipolar disorder, I am aware of them. I’m having mania moments. I don’t want to sleep. I have no desire to. My husband sometimes MAKES me go to sleep. I’d rather be up doing the laundry, washing the dishes, blogging, reading other blogs, making to-do lists, and organizing the apartment–all at the same time–at 2 or 3 am. (This doesn’t mean all of this stuff gets finished.)
My husband and I have had physical fights in the past where he has had to restrain me because I wouldn’t go to bed and I wouldn’t sleep. It would be 4 in the morning and I refused to sleep and I’d fight him tooth and nail. I don’t know why. I have no problem wanting to sleep at 2 pm. Make it 2 am and there’s too much to do suddenly. I have the superhuman ability to get things accomplished between midnight and 5 am more than I can during the hours of 9 am to 11 pm. Right.
So now it’s almost 1 in the morning and I have nursery duty at church later in the morning. Then I have a hair appointment in the afternoon. Then I’m paranoid about what my hair stylist thinks of me.
She says she’s my friend but I wonder if she’s just pretending to like me because she feels sorry for me. I’m really lame you know. People at work acted nice to my face and then dissed me behind my back. She does the same thing to others, why wouldn’t she do the same to me? She just keeps me around and kisses up to me because I tip well.
Thinking like that scares me. It reminds me of the way my father used to think. Paranoid. (You can stop reading here. At this point on, it’s just a manic ramble that’s basically full of nothing but stream-of-consciousness just because i can.)
She links to a column written by Byron J. Richards on newswithviews.com. He writes:
The Mothers Act is pending legislation that will indoctrinate hundreds of thousands of mothers into taking dangerous psych drugs.
He goes on to slam Big Pharma about how they control Congress and how mothers don’t need psych drugs for a natural birth process.
The Mothers Act (S. 1375: Mom’s Opportunity to Access Health, Education, Research, and Support for Postpartum Depression Act) has the net affect of reclassifying the natural process of pregnancy and birth as a mental disorder that requires the use of unproven and extremely dangerous psychotropic medications (which can also easily harm the child).
These are some serious accusations. I got pretty riled up myself and decided to see what Congress said in the bill.
depression introspection 