The psychiatric drug crisis
newyorker.com
The psychiatric drug crisis
1–10 of 153 posts
Re: The psychiatric drug crisis
#2Obscure psychiatric drugs are also ridiculously expensive sometimes. A friend of mine switched from a brand name anti-psychotic to a generic version. He went from paying over $1200 a month to $22 for 30 pills, for something as important as preventing his psychotic episodes.
Re: The psychiatric drug crisis
#3Highs and lows balance. You must endure persecution to win blessings. Doctors are brute-nigger-retards.
God says...
recently encourage shoulders etext90 how sleeper aches roared adomed lover baffling expects 'may assented casts vagrant bulk employest no_more_tears Place prepared debtors uncorruptness indeed mastery dang_it mindful threatenest prose manifold shamefulness Israel findeth disagreements crown changeableness beloved dissolution eat hear givers proclaim I'm_bored cleansing restest enacted night withdrawing earnestness //www unlike Newsletters Angel talents commercial alleging lure finest Continency clearly supported preach ambition disgusted Men what_luck dollar wast enmity forwards lingering commencement persecuted heresy liked fishes struggles regardless asked unexplained god wedlock Jew teachers salt banished at deemed flame Balaneion enough combine instantly writing
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I am at peace -- nothing and I mean nothing can prevent justice.
Re: The psychiatric drug crisis
#4Obscure psychiatric drugs are also ridiculously expensive sometimes. A friend of mine switched from a brand name anti-psychotic to a generic version. He went from paying over $1200 a month to $22 for 30 pills, for something as important as preventing his psychotic episodes.
That's just obscene! All that markup over just the label.
I understand that it takes R&D to develop new drugs, but the amount of profit sought by drug companies is stomach churning.
Re: The psychiatric drug crisis
#5Obscure psychiatric drugs are also ridiculously expensive sometimes. A friend of mine switched from a brand name anti-psychotic to a generic version. He went from paying over $1200 a month to $22 for 30 pills, for something as important as preventing his psychotic episodes.
That's just obscene! All that markup over just the label. I understand that it takes R&D to develop new drugs, but the amount of profit sought by drug companies is stomach churning.
Obscene? What's the "correct" markup?
I sell digital, single-player video games. My manufacturing cost is zero and markup is infinite.
Re: The psychiatric drug crisis
#6My ADHD medication Strattera costs $170 a month and since the generic version only saves me $20 causes serious nausea and vomiting I don't have any choice.
And its one of the only medications you can't develop a tolerance for.
Luckily I'm Canadian, working part time at a Canadian university where health insurance covers the costs.
Re: The psychiatric drug crisis
#7The book, "Anatomy of an Epidemic", provides a really comprehensive look at how we ended up in this situation. Some of the keys here:
1) A desire to bring a level of "science" to a part of our physiology we don't understand. The thinking here is that while we do not understand the etiology of depression, we can at minimum begin to use blunt tools to solve problems. The issue as anyone who has studied complex systems understands, is that the feedback loops are so dense, there is no method to understand what is happening.
2) Financialization of treatment – drugs make more money than therapy and other methods. Or to use an HN phrase, drugs are more easily scaled to the population than other methods. The incentives throughout the entire system push people this direction, regardless of the underlying research.
3) Treatment doesn't happen instantly in any case. The issue with much of the research today is that we take a very limited time window to evaluate the efficacy of different treatments. If, instead, we looked at treatment over the life course, the results are often radically different.
This is where startups like Seven Cups of Tea will hopefully play the world. This mental health crisis offers a huge opportunity for disruption and creativity. As a quote in the Stanford alumni magazine said this month: "One hundred years from now, people will look back at the age of giving SSRIs and they will have a reputation that's akin to bloodletting."[1]
[1] http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?articl...
Re: The psychiatric drug crisis
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just obscene! All that markup over just the label. I understand that it takes R&D to develop new drugs, but the amount of profit sought by drug companies is stomach churning.
Obscene? What's the "correct" markup? I sell digital, single-player video games. My manufacturing cost is zero and markup is infinite.
Your marginal distribution cost is zero, but the manufacturing cost to design and develop the game is clearly not zero. The issue is that just because you can charge a lot doesn't mean you should. Although capitalism rarely works that way.
Re: The psychiatric drug crisis
#9The book, "Anatomy of an Epidemic", provides a really comprehensive look at how we ended up in this situation. Some of the keys here: 1) A desire to bring a level of "science" to a part of our physiology we don't understand. The thinking here is that while we do not understand the etiology of depression, we can at minimum begin to use blunt tools to solve problems. The issue as anyone who has studied complex systems…
"...they will have a reputation that's akin to bloodletting"
Here's to hoping so! And sooner than that.
Re: The psychiatric drug crisis
#10Obscure psychiatric drugs are also ridiculously expensive sometimes. A friend of mine switched from a brand name anti-psychotic to a generic version. He went from paying over $1200 a month to $22 for 30 pills, for something as important as preventing his psychotic episodes.
That's just obscene! All that markup over just the label. I understand that it takes R&D to develop new drugs, but the amount of profit sought by drug companies is stomach churning.
>amount of profit sought by drug companies is stomach churning
What's the right amount of profit a company should seek? For reference, following are the latest reported profit margins of several companies:
Eli Lilly: 20.34% AstraZeneca: 13.33% Novartis: 17.33%
Apple: 19.53% Google: 18.11% Microsoft: 24.95%
It's not at all clear to me that drug companies are somehow seeking more profits than other companies (or that they would generally be able to attain them in any case).