Loose Screws Mental Health News

As reported by The New York Times, people with bipolar disorder have a higher risk of suffering from fatal illness according to a study (that reviewed 17 other studies involving more than 331,000 people) reported in the February issue of Psychiatric Services.

In the larger studies, almost every cause of death was higher among bipolar patients: cardiovascular, respiratory, cerebrovascular (including strokes), and endocrine (like diabetes). In the smaller studies, mortality from cerebrovascular disease was higher among those with bipolar illness, but they showed inconsistent results, probably because they used smaller samples or less representative populations.

Gianna at Beyond Meds provides here take here.

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Some crazy nurse in Minnesota convinced a Canadian college student to kill herself and walked her through the process of appropriately hanging herself. Ed Morrissey of Hot Air calls the nurse "the first serial suicide-inciter of the modern age." Couldn't have said it better myself.

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Philip Dawdy at Furious Seasons is on a roll, holding AstraZeneca accountable for its actions regarding hidden information about Seroquel and now he hosts the Seroquel documents — alongside Lilly's Zyprexa documents — that indicate buried studies. Dawdy's also running a spring fundraiser and I suggest you get your butt in gear and donate to him if it's important to you that someone holds pharmaceutical companies accountable for their actions. I've already done my part.

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Sorry this post isn't filled with my normal snark and cynicism. I'm behind on a lot personally — still trying to get the hang of this self-employment thing — and this is what I can throw out for now.

Loose Screws Mental Health News

I could’ve been a statistic right here in this area.

Philadelphia now boasts the sharpest increase in suicides in the country. Despite all the homicides in Philadelphia making the news, the 196 people who killed themselves in 2008 were quietly buried in the obit pages (if they made it there at all).

In light of this news, I’ve decided to place a suicide hotline web banner in the upper right-hand corner of my right sidebar. Susan of If You’re Going Through Hell Keep Going has one in her sidebar and I think it’s a wonderful idea. I’ve had a couple of people comment or send me emails about how they feel they’re on the brink of losing it so hopefully the banner — one of the first things to be seen on this page — will draw some attention and prompt someone to call for help. When I was a teen, I called 1.800.SUICIDE. I can’t remember what happened exactly but I called the hotline and someone talked me into why life was still worth living. People who are suicidal don’t really want to die; they want an escape from the pain they’re feeling and they feel the only way to alleviate that pain is through inflicting death upon themselves. I hope someone who is suicidal would be willing to pick up the phone and come to the same realization that I did at the time.

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Speaking of suicide, researchers from the World Health Organization and the University of Verona, Italy have discovered that SSRIs (a class of antidepressants) may significantly reduce the risk for suicide in adults. SSRIs — which include such medications as Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft — are not be confused with SNRIs such as Effexor, Pristiq, and Cymbalta. PsychCentral notes:

Previous studies, including a 2007 study by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), found the risk of suicide in adults was neutral, elevated in those under 25 and reduced in people older than 65. A subsequent black box warning was added to all antidepressants regarding increased risk of suicidal symptoms in people under 25 years of age.

Basically, this study just means antidepressants help those who are 25 years and older and hurt those 24 years and younger. I’m sure a new study will come out within the next year or so that contradicts this one. Especially since numerous previous studies on SSRIs found the risk of suicide to be neutral in ages 25-65.

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According to the Boston Globe, a (really pathetic) new study shows that nearly half of young adults between the ages of 19 to 25 “meet the criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder.”

Whether in college or not, almost half of this country’s 19-to-25-year-olds meet standard criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder, although some of the disorders, such as phobias, are relatively mild, according to a government-funded survey of more than 5,000 young adults, published in December in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The study, done at Columbia University and called the National Epidemiologic Study on Alcohol and Related Conditions, found more alcohol use disorders among college students, while their noncollege peers were more likely to have a drug use disorder.

But, beyond that, misery is largely an equal-opportunity affliction: Across the social spectrum, young people in America are depressed. They’re anxious. They regularly break one another’s hearts. And, all too often, they don’t get the help they need as they face life’s questions…

According to the 2005-2007 American Community Survey, the population for adults ages 18-24 is gauged to be around 30 million. Therefore if we’re going to take the study at its word, let’s chop the number by half (even though the number is just under half). That will put us at about 15 million young adults. The NIMH, however, estimates 57.7 million adults in the U.S. “suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder.” If this is the case, those 15 million young adults make up nearly 26 percent of the NIMH’s “diagnosable mental disorder” statistic. The inclusion of alcohol and drug addictions might explain why this figure might be a little high.

Loose Screws Mental Health News: Suicide slide

A new study from the University of Manitoba shows people who regularly attend some kind of religious service are less likely to attempt suicide. The study, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, surveyed 37,000 Canadians and their connection with spirituality, religious worship, and suicidal behavior. Those who simply said they were spiritual but didn’t attend religious services did not show a reduced risk of suicide attempts. However, I was dismayed to read that researchers didn’t investigate why regular church attendance decreases the risk of suicide attempts. (Note to self: Go to church each Sunday!) (pic via www.assumpta.fr)

Alison Go of U.S. News & World Report cites a study from Academic Medicine (originally reported by Inside Higher Ed) which suggests depression affects 21.2 percent of medical students. The rates is 11.2 percent higher than that of the general population. And unfortunately, 13 percent of black medical student reported suicidal ideation in the survey, suggesting that the demographic is more likely to suffer from suicidal thoughts.

And yet another study about suicide… The University of Gothenberg in Sweden performed a study on people who had nightmares following a suicide attempt and found out that they were five times more likely to try committing suicide again. The conclusion is based on a meager sample size of 165 patients but I suppose it’s a start.

While it appears that other sleeping obstacles do not raise the risk of multiple suicide attempts, patients who have attempted suicide seem to battle sleeping problems on a regular basis.

It is normal for patients that have attempted suicide to suffer from sleeping difficulties. Some 89 percent of the patients examined reported some kind of sleep disturbance. The most common problems were difficulty initiating sleep, followed by difficulty maintaining sleep, nightmares and early morning awakening.

Interesting observation considering that I have pretty much all of the common problems with the exception of early morning awakening.

Finally in a semi-cool story, a 22-year-old New Jersey guy who was friends with an 18-year-old Californian over the Internet called California police when he found out the 18-year-old said he would attempt suicide. Although it sounds like the teen (his name was not disclosed) is pretty upset about being saved (I know the feeling), it’s a (somewhat) happy ending compared to what happened in November when a Florida teenager streamed a webcast of him committing suicide by dying of a drug overdose. The Florida teen died before police arrived.

Ghostwriting

According to the International Herald Tribune (IHT), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has published an article about Merck’s practice of writing research studies and then asking doctors to slap their names on them. This practice has called into question Merck’s marketing of Vioxx, a profitable cardiovascular drug that was pulled off the shelves due to its link to heart attacks.

Merck acknowledged Tuesday that it sometimes hired outside medical writers to draft research reports before handing them over to the doctors whose names eventually appear on the publication. But the company disputed the article’s conclusion that the authors do little of the actual research or analysis.

Continue reading:

One paper involved a study of Vioxx as a possible deterrent to Alzheimer’s progression.

The draft of the paper, dated August 2003, identified the lead writer as "External author?" But when it was published in 2005 in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, the lead author was listed as Dr. Leon Thal, a well-known Alzheimer’s researcher at the University of California, San Diego.

The second author listed on the published Alzheimer’s paper, whose name had not been on the draft, was Ferris, the New York University professor. Ferris, reached by telephone Tuesday, said he had played an active role in the research and he was substantially involved in helping shape the final draft.
"It’s simply false that we didn’t contribute to the final publication," Ferris said.

A third author, also not named on the initial draft, was Dr. Louis Kirby, currently the medical director for the company Provista Life Sciences. In an e-mail message on Tuesday, Kirby said that as a clinical investigator for the study he had enrolled more patients, 109, than any of the other researchers. He also said he made revisions to the final document.

"The fact that the draft was written by a Merck employee for later discussion by all the authors does not in and of itself constitute ghostwriting," Kirby’s e-mail message said.

Uh, yeah it does.

The Zoloft-rage/violence connection

[This post is quite lengthy so I suggest you grab a cup of coffee or tea and sit down and read it. The following is not for the faint of heart (or those with a lack of time).]

It’s been amazing to me that I’ve received numerous comments on Zoloft inducing rage. I’m humbled by having a Pittman supporter visit my site and post some comments from the ChristopherPittman.org forums. Read the following:

In my senior year in high school I was diagnosed as being severely depressed and put on medication. The first medication that I was on I took for 5 months and it made me really aggressive. My friends and family noticed the change and I told my doctor about it and she changed my meds. After that I was fine. I am normally a very passive person and will let just about anything fly. But the medication made me really aggravated and aggressive toward my friends and family and it seemed that I wasn’t overcoming my depression. I just got done watching the 48 hours investigation on the Discovery Times Channel and felt a connection with Chris. I felt that I had to write this to let you know that Chris is not the only one out there that had these side effects. I think there should be a study done to see how many people that take antidepressants have increased aggression. The problem is that the pharmaceutical industry has deep pockets and many lobbyists. I hope this helps in some way.

And another:

I remember the case when it happened.

At the time I thought, “Zoloft right”.

Let me tell you my physician put me on Zoloft and it took about three weeks for my to become psychotic and I’m a 50 year old woman.

I have three children and I don’t make a lot of money but please let me know if I can do anything for the Pittman boy.

The jury should have been placed on Zoloft before they made they decision. Unless you’ve experience it you simply cannot believe its’ effect.

I did a bit of quick reading/research into Zoloft triggering violence in people who otherwise would have never been violent and it seems that are a few stories out there to support the assertion. I found a few comments on depressionblog.com that mentioned a link between Zoloft and rage fits. A Salon.com article published a story antidepressants inducing rage in 1999. Apparently, Brynn Hartman, the wife of famous comedian Phil Hartman, killed herself and her husband while taking Zoloft. While close friends attribute the sudden behavior on the antidepressant, others attribute it to a combination of the medication with cocaine and alcohol in her system. (Zoloft does have a warning against alcohol use in conjunction with the drug.)

One interesting thing I learned from the article is that this kind of behavior is often labeled under the name akathisia on patient safety guides. Most – if not all – of the major antidepressants list akathisia as a side effect. Here’s the initial description of this condition from Wikipedia:

Akathisia, or acathisia, is an unpleasant subjective sensation of “inner” restlessness that manifests itself with an inability to sit still or remain motionless… Its most common cause is as a side effect of medications, mainly neuroleptic antipsychotics especially the phenothiazines (such as perphenazine and chlorpromazine), thioxanthenes (such as flupenthixol and zuclopenthixol) and butyrophenones (such as haloperidol (Haldol)), and rarely, antidepressants.

Akathisia may range in intensity from a mild sense of disquiet or anxiety (which may be easily overlooked) to a total inability to sit still, accompanied by overwhelming anxiety, malaise, and severe dysphoria (manifesting as an almost indescribable sense of terror and doom).

No real mention of extreme anger or irritability mentioned there. But if you read on…

The 2006 U.K. study by Healy, Herxheimer, and Menkes observed that akathisia is often miscoded in antidepressant clinical trials as “agitation, emotional lability, and hyperkinesis (overactivity)”. The study further points out that misdiagnosis of akathisia as simple motor restlessness occurs, but that this is more properly classed as dyskinesia. Healy, et. al., further show links between antidepressant-induced akathisia and violence, including suicide, as akathisia can “exacerbate psychopathology.” The study goes on to state that there is extensive clinical evidence correlating akathisia with SSRI use, showing that approximately ten times as many patients on SSRIs as those on placebos showed symptoms severe enough to drop out of a trial (5.0% compared to 0.5%).

Take two pills and call me if there's a birth defect

A recent article in the NYT reported that two studies released in The New England Journal of Medicine claim that an antidepressant could potentially increase the risk of a baby being born with a birth defect, but, uh,  it's unlikely and "confined to a few rare defects."

Benedict Carey, author of the article, points out that the studies didn't have a good sampling to really prove that assertion:

"In both studies, researchers interviewed mothers of more than 9,500 infants with birth defects, including cleft palate and heart valve problems. They found that mothers who remember being on antidepressants like Zoloft, Paxil, or Prozac while pregnant were at no higher risk for most defects than a control group of women who said they had not taken antidepressants."

So what's it's sounding like for me is that researchers got a group of expecting moms together, basically said, "Hey, have you taken an antidepressant?" and the ones who said yes were placed in one control group and the ones who said no were placed in another. How reliable.

Having been part of a clinical trial for bipolar disorder, I know it's likely these women got paid for their participation in this study. (Most people do, from what I understand.) So some could essentially have lied in the hopes they could snag $100. It doesn't sound like these women agreed to have their past medical history released to researchers that could prove they've been on antidepressant medication, they could have just been like:

"Uh, yeah. I took the antidepressant with the happy little egg sad face thingy."

Doctor: "Zoloft?"

"Yeah, yeah! That one. It maketed me alllll better."

Remember – it's mothers who "remembered" being on antidepressants while pregnant, not medical histories that proved that they've at least been prescribed the medication.

One doctor, not involved in the research, had reservations about the so-called findings:

"These are important papers, but they don't close the questions of whether there are major effects" of these drugs on developing babies, said Dr. Timothy Oberlander, a developmental pediatrician at the University of British Columbia, who was not involved in the studies.

Despite the seemingly positive outcomes that "support doctors' assurances that antidepressants are not a major cause of serious physical problems in newborns," both studies uncovered some pretty serious – but considered rare – conditions.

"One of the studies, led by Carol Louik of Boston University and financed in part by the drug makers GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis, found that use of Paxil was associated with an increased risk of a rare heart defect, which the company had previously reported.

The other study, led by Sura Alwan of the University of British Columbia, found that use of antidepressants increased the risk of craniosynostosis, a condition in which the bones in the skull fuse prematurely. Rare gastric and neural tube defects may also be more common in babies exposed to the medication, the studies suggested."

But don't worry, pregnant moms – the risks are low, "appear remote, and confined to a few rare defects." So, hey, even if your baby DID develop a rare defect, at least it's rare! [sarcasm]

I'd take the chance of depression if it meant my baby had a better chance of being born healthy. I'm lucky – I couldn't take Lamictal if I got pregnant. I wish antidepressants would have the same instruction.

Copies of published studies

All right, I think I asked this before and I know one of my readers sent me a few links to the STAR*D study (which I haven’t had the chance to read). Does anyone know where I can get my hands on CATIE and BOLDER (I and II)? Will this PDF from The New England Journal of Medicine suffice? (I believe it’s phase 1.)

Otherwise, I’ll cross my fingers and hope – oh crap, wait! Maybe I can use the library at my job! Geez, why didn’t I think of this before?

Well, if anyone’s got an electronic copy, that’s preferable. Many thanks in advance.

UPDATE: I just checked the medical library in my building and apparently, I do have access to medical publications that require subscription online. It’s probably unethical to disseminate business material for personal purposes (especially since my other duties require me to work with confidential material), but I can always read the articles and try to pass along bits and pieces that jump out at me here and there.

More during the summer…

Loose Screws Mental Health News

I need a new subject header for “Mental health news.” It’s so blah. I need something snazzy. Perhaps “Loose Screws News”? Okay, nevermind… That’s what I get for being a former copy editor. Renamed as of 2/16/2009.

A new study, published in the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology has found that women who experience chronic headaches, namely migraines, are four times as likely to report symptoms of major depressive disorder. Of the 1,000 women surveyed, “593 reported episodic headache (fewer than 15 headaches per month) and 439 had chronic headache (more than 15 headaches per month).” Migraines were diagnosed in 90 percent of the women. Author of the study Dr. Gretchen Tietjen said that more studies are being done to discover whether the a serotonin imbalance in the central nervous system is the cause of chronic headaches, severe physical problems, and major depressive disorder. (source: The Trouble With Spikol)

According to businesswire.com, the non-profit organization Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI) will provide up to $9 million to fund Omeros Corporation’s schizophrenia program, which will help the completion of
Phase 1 clinical trials. Business Wire basically listed SMRI’s press release so I’m curious to do some research on SMRI and how this non-profit was able to obtain $9 million. I don’t know much about this organization but a non-profit organization funding a biopharmaceutical company’s program seems out of the ordinary to me. (This may be something normal, but I’m not aware of this.) According to SMRI’s “about us” blurb at the bottom of the PR, they state:

“The Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI) is a nonprofit organization that supports research on the causes and treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness), both through work carried out in its own laboratories and through support of researchers worldwide who are working on these diseases. SMRI has provided over $200 million in funding since 1989.”

Whoa. $200 million since 1989 is not a whole lot. Where in the world did this $9 million come from? Do non-profit organizations actually save up money to blow on a worthy future project? (The cynical patient in me wonders if there’s a drug company like GSK or Wyeth slipping money through SMRI’s back door.)

Liz Spikol usually blogs headlines before I can even get to ‘em so I credit her with discovering the following three links:

According to the Delhi Newsline, yoga can help with cases of severe depression and schizophrenia. (Hm, interesting.) Patients who took yoga classes in addition to meds improved more rapidly than patients only on meds. The connection with yoga seems to be the relaxation component — outdoing counseling and “talk therapy,” which can aid treatment in a mentally ill individual.

Oy. UPI has reported that Swedish researchers have discovered that those who struggle with suicidal ideation have problems with nightmares and sleep problems. Of the 165 patients surveyed, 89 percent of them reported a sleep problem. Nightmares proved to be the highest indicators of those with a high suicide risk. However, lead author Nisse Sjostrom is quick to note,

“Our finding of an association between nightmares and suicidality does not imply causality.”

But —

“Our findings should inspire clinicians to include questions concerning sleep disturbance and especially nightmares in the clinical assessment of suicidal patients.”

My husband thinks I suffer from sleep apnea – he claims I stop breathing sometimes in the middle of the night. I’m going for a sleep assessment sometime in February so I’ll let you know if I come back with a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine.

I’ve had increased dreams (or nightmares, what have you) on these psych meds. I haven’t been excessively suicidal and I hope it’s no indication of more suicide attempts on the way. *sigh* Were any of the surveyed patients on meds like Effexor and Lamictal?

(ASIDE: Dang working in a medical industry! I’m becoming more familiar with unfamiliar medical acronyms.)

And finally, News 24 reports that children who suffered from neglect and abuse are more likely to develop severe depression as adults. The study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, says the data specifically shows that “depression is a consequence of… abuse.” Um, who wouldn’t be depressed after such a traumatic experience? How do physicians differentiate between major depressive disorder (DSM-IV term for clinical depression) and post-traumatic stress disorder? Ah, once we get the answer, we can use it as a Jeopardy! question.