Topics Related to  Prescription Drugs, Anxiety, and       

       Depression

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Prescription drugs are in the news- and in the bodies- of many of us. Just the group of drugs designated “antidepressants” is taken by at least 7% of all adults in the US. There are so many issues concerning drugs and pharmaceutical companies: are generic drugs equivalent to brand drugs; are pharmaceutical companies willing to put any drug on the market, no matter whether it is safe, as long as they make a short-term profit; how does a drug get to market, anyway? There are two main sources of information on these topics: the pharmaceutical companies and those that see all pharmaceutical companies (and probably, drugs) as a creation of The Devil. That makes accurate information on prescription drugs and questions pertaining to prescription drugs pretty hard to come by.

So that is where this column comes in: I'll pick a topic* and discuss it from the point of view of an insider, someone who has been in the industry for over 30 years and has oodles of contacts, also within Pharma, so you get a better idea of what is really going on...both the Good and the Not-So-Good. I hope you'll join me.

Note: I've specialized a bit on this site to the subclass of drugs known as psychotropics, in particular, those psychotropic drugs that are used to treat anxiety and depression.  I have a special interest in this drug class, in no small part since I think of them in the same way I do chemotherapeutic agents for cancer-they are drugs that have a long way to go before they are as effective and side-effect free as one would hope.

*This is a reverse-disclaimer: all the stories I tell in this Web site are true; all the "examples" come from actual experience.

A second comment is that you'd think that since my experience for the last 30 years has been in the scientific world, that my references on this site would be exclusively journal articles-that's not the case.  My references are  not to lend credence (as in a journal article) to  anything, but rather to point the interested reader to an informative site that discusses the topic at hand.

 Content on this Web site  is for informational purposes only. We do not provide any medical advice, diagnosis or treatment