Regular readers of this blog will remember my earlier article on Rebecca Riley, the young girl whose overtreatment with powerful psychiatric drugs may have led to her death.

Now it turns out that some psychiatrists may actually be getting paid by the drug industry to give kids powerful drugs! And this is in spite of an almost complete lack of evidence that these drugs work or are safe for children.

The New York Times has an article called Psychiatrists, Children, and Drug Industry’s Role, and this scary article documents the secretive practice of paying psychiatrists to prescribe certain drugs.

The article documents that more than half a million children are now receiving atypical antipsychotics such as Risperdal, Seroquel, Zyprexa, Abilify, and Geodon. These drugs have never been tested on or approved for use in children!

In Minnesota alone, the only state that requires such reporting, from 2000 to 2005 payments from pharmaceutical companies to psychiatrists soared by six times, to $1.6 million, and the rates of prescribing antipsychotics to children went up by nine times.

And the Times found that the money worked. Those psychiatrists who received more than $5000 from the drug companies wrote 3 times as many prescriptions for atypical antipsychotics than those doctors who got less or no money. Other interesting figures are that the average payment to psychiatrists was $1750, with a maximum of $689,000. (Nice work if you can get it!)

I should point out that atypical antipsychotics are not benign drugs. Side effects can include rapid weight gain that leads to diabetes, and movement disorders such as tics and dystonia, which can lead to a lifelong muscle disorder.

The Times describes one unfortunate girl, Anya Bailey, who was given Risperdal for an eating disorder by her psychiatrist George Realmuto, who had received more than $7000 from Johnson and Johnson, the maker of Risperdal.

Although the drug helped her gain weight, she also developed a painful and permanent dystonia in her neck that now causes her chronic pain and a movement disorder, even after stopping the drug.

And she was never given any counseling for her problems, only drugs!

So what can we learn from this article? First of all, the practice of paying psychiatrists to prescribe certain medications is widespread, but only Minnesota requires full disclosure. We should pressure our legislatures to mandate full disclosure in every state. Write to your state and federal congress and senate and ask them to either ban this practice or to require full disclosure, on the web, by name of doctors, of how much money is given by each drug company.

Secondly, when you take your child to a psychiatrist, you should ask them for a full written disclosure of any money they received in the last few years from drug companies for speaking, or for research. Payments to psychiatrists (and other M.D.’s) are disguised as speaking honorariums or research payments, but when a doctor receives $5000 for giving one or two talks, it is safe to say that they are being paid for something else. If the psychiatrist admits to receiving money, then you should probably find another psychiatrist, as this creates a bias to prescribe that I do not think can be overcome.

Third, you should be dubious about any suggestion to give your child an antipsychotic medication for any diagnosis other than true psychosis. This means that unless your child is actively hallucinating, and delusional, i.e. “crazy” there is no evidence that antipsychotics will help them. For instance, there was only one well-controlled study of the use of atypical antipsychotics in bipolar illness in children, and it found little or no difference between using the antipsychotic and not using it. And most of the children in the group receiving the antipsychotic dropped out of the study due to side effects. A second study by the same researchers found no advantage to using antipsychotics.

Fourth, consider taking your child to a psychologist or counselor rather than a psychiatrist. Psychologists don’t receive money to influence their treatment decisions and use behavioral approaches that don’t have side effects. And there is much more research evidence that supports the use of these behavioral approaches in childhood disorders. Dangerous medications should be reserved for second or third line treatments only. Remember the old saying that to a young boy with a hammer everything becomes a nail, similarly to a doctor whose specialty is giving drugs, all problems become biochemical.

Finally, let’s put pressure on our legislators to outlaw this thinly disguised bribery, which threatens the health of children and adults. Shame on the pharmaceutical industry! And even more shame on psychiatrists, who of all people should be trustworthy and not willing to accept such bribes. I make the perhaps radical suggestion that patients boycott psychiatrists who accept money from drug manufacturers. If doctors can’t earn a decent living without taking payments from drug companies that often have the appearance of bribes, then perhaps they need a new profession. I realize that there are decent, honest psychiatrists who either don’t take drug company money or don’t let it influence them, but I suggest that it may be hard to tell the difference unless psychiatrists employ full disclosure.

Copyright 2007 The Psychology Lounge/TPL Productions

I will return to the theme of happiness in a few more days, but today we will continue with our series about depression, based on Peter Cramer’s book Against Depression, which I heartily recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about depression.

Depression is not just a psychological disease. It impacts the whole body, and especially impacts the cardiovascular system. Depression is one of the strongest predictors of cardiac disease. Even minor depression increase the risk of cardiac disease by 50 percent. Major depression increases risk by 3 to 4 times. For those with pre-existing coronary artery disease, risk is increased 5 times!

You might be thinking that this is no surprise. Perhaps depressed people smoke more, exercise less, eat more bacon, etc. What is surprising is that the numbers in the preceding paragraph are after adjusting for lifestyle and behavior! The raw numbers are even higher!

Why is this? What is the mechanism by which depression reeks havoc with the cardiovascular system?

There are several possible mechanisms. One is through the impact on blood clotting.

Blood clotting is controlled by cells in the blood called platelets. The stickier the platelets are, the more likely you are to develop blood clots, which can lead to stroke or heart attack. Depressed patients have stickier platelets.

Another mechanism is stress. Depressed patients are under constant physiological stress, with excess stress chemicals circulating in their blood. This may raise blood pressure and cause other changes that affect the cardiovascular system.

So what happens if you treat depression? Does this reduce risk of cardiovascular disease?

Studies of antidepressants given after heart attack show a 30 to 40 percent reduction in subsequent heart attacks and deaths.

Antidepressants improve the outcomes after stroke as well. When stroke patients were given either antidepressants or placebo, 66 percent of the antidepressant group survived 2 years, but only 35 percent of placebo group.

Other physical triggers like treatment with interferon for hepatic C and melanoma can also cause depression. In fact, 50 percent of patients who receive interferon will get seriously depressed. Depression in these cases is serious because it can cause the person to stop taking a potentially life-saving treatment.

Antidepressants help even in these cases of drug induced depression. One study found that treatment with Paxil, an antidepressant, reduced depression from 45 percent to 11 percent.

What are the implications of these finding?

1. All patients who have had a heart attack or a stroke should probably take an antidepressant.
2. All patients taking long-term interferon treatment should begin taking an antidepressant several weeks before starting the interferon.
3. Probably most seriously ill cancer patients should take an antidepressant as well.
4. Counseling that focuses on evaluating and treating depression should be part of any seriously ill medical patient’s treatment regimen.

Copyright 2007 The Psychology Lounge/TPL Productions

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As regular readers know, your editor is a big fan of a type of psychotherapy called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Cognitive therapy is a modern non-drug therapy that teaches clients new ways of thinking and feeling. The basic concept is that it is our distorted thinking that creates psychological problems of anxiety, depression, panic, etc. The cognitive therapist combines teaching cognitive skills with behavioral techniques that allow the client to overcome their difficulties.

And much to his surprise, this week Forbes Magazine put CBT on their cover! The Forbes article about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was very positive. They summarize 30 years of research, including studies that show that CBT works well for insomnia, hypochondria, anxiety, depression, bulimia, obsessive compulsive disorder, preventing suicide, and even matches surgery for low back pain. Here is a video demonstration of exposure treatment for an elevator phobia.

They also compare the effectiveness of CBT to antidepressant medication. Although both work, in the long run CBT is more cost effective, and leads to less relapse. In one study comparing Paxil to CBT, only 31% of the CBT group relapsed within one year of completing treatment, compared to 76% of the Paxil group! This is a very big difference. The skills that clients learn seem to have a lasting impact on preventing future depressions.

Even in terms of cost, CBT beats antidepressant medications, at least with the assumptions the Forbes editors made. After three months of treatment, they estimate the costs of cognitive therapy at $1200 and the costs of medication treatment with Effexor at $502, which includes one psychiatrist visit at $200, and $302 in drug costs. At one year, they estimate the costs of cognitive therapy at $2000, and drug treatment at $2009, which includes $800 for four psychiatrist visits at $200 each, and $1209 for the Effexor.

As much as I like the comparison, it is based on faulty assumptions. First of all, it’s not clear how many sessions of cognitive therapy they are estimating. The $2000 would pay for 20 sessions at $100, but only 13 at $150. It’s probably optimistic to believe that a good outcome would come out of only 13 sessions. And because the primary group of professionals who perform cognitive therapy are psychologists, who typically charge more than masters level therapists, $100 is probably too low.

So let’s fix the numbers. Let’s assume 25 sessions of cognitive therapy, at $150 per session, which comes out to $3750. That’s probably a fairer assumption.

Now let’s look at the other assumptions. Effexor is an expensive, non-generic anti-depressant, which costs $100 a month, or even more. But the generic version of Prozac, called fluoxetine, can cost as little as $10 a month. And four psychiatrist visits in a year is also too optimistic. In my experience, patients need every two week visits initially to get the medication adjusted, and after 6 or 8 weeks, can graduate to once a month, and after another 3 visits, can be seen every three months. Also, psychiatrists typically charge at least $300 for the initial evaluation, and less than $200 for the follow-up visits which tend to be shorter visits.

So by these assumptions, the psychiatrist visits would cost $1380 at least. This brings the total cost of one year of treatment with Effexor to $2589. Of course, if fluoxetine was substituted then the total costs would only come to $1500!

So drug treatment costs less than cognitive therapy, right? It either costs a lot less ($1500 compared to $3750) or somewhat less ($2589 compared to $3750).

But there is still a glitch in the assumptions. We are only looking at the first year costs. Remember the statistics mentioned above, that up to 76% of patients who stop taking antidepressants relapse back into depression. Those are pretty bad odds. If a patient stayed on Effexor for 5 more years, their total cost of treatment would skyrocket to $6756, assuming psychiatrist visits 4 times a year. Compared to this cognitive therapy looks good!

There is another, unmentioned advantage to cognitive therapy, which is incredibly important, and which too often is left out of this debate. Here’s the dirty little secret the drug companies don’t want you to know—most antidepressants ruin your sex life! With really just a few exceptions (Wellbutrin, and Emsam) almost all of the major antidepressants make it much harder to have an orgasm for both men and women, and for men may make it difficult or impossible to get or maintain an erection. Antidepressants should really be called anti-sex drugs! (Caveat: not everyone will have the sexual side effects, but most will.) Here is a good article about the sexual side effects of antidepressants.

And this leaves out all of the other side effects of antidepressants. Here’s a link to common side effects of antidepressant medication Dry mouth, dry eyes, blurred vision, nausea, insomnia, headaches, the list goes on and on. How do you place a value on the costs of side effects?

Cognitive therapy obviously has no sexual side effects, or any other side effects. So for this reason, and for the advantage in preventing relapse, I believe cognitive therapy should be the first choice therapy for those patients suffering depression, providing they can afford therapy or have good insurance coverage for therapy. If not, then having your regular doctor prescribe and monitor a generic antidepressant such as fluoxetine (Prozac), sertraline (Zoloft), or bupropion (Wellbutrin) is the best option, with the downside being that you will most likely need to take the medications long-term to avoid relapse, and that you will most likely have physical side effects. Thus it may be worth taking a loan from your credit card in the form of a cash advance, or simply using a credit card to pay for cognitive therapy. After all, that’s how most people pay for their next car, or flat screen television set.

So here’s the executive summary. Cognitive therapy works for a large variety of common psychological problems, and even a few physical problems. Although initially it costs a little more, the effects are longer lasting than medication treatment. And in the long run, it can end up saving money. Best of all, other than working a little bit on therapy homework, there are no side effects of therapy! Conclusion: If you are depressed, anxious, having insomnia, obsessive compulsive disorder, hypochondriasis, phobias, or relationship problems, your first move should be to find a psychologist who specializes in cognitive therapy. Borrow the money if you don’t have it, or put it onto your credit card, but don’t miss out on this effective treatment out of some false sense of economizing.

Copyright 2007 The Psychology Lounge/TPL Productions