How drug companies sell psychiatrists on their drugs

Medications
August 26, 2010

An excerpt from Unhinged: The trouble with psychiatry- a doctor’s revelations about a profession in crisis. Copyright © 2010 Daniel Carlat. Excerpted with permission by Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

In 1993, the FDA approved Neurontin for the treatment of epilepsy. This should have been a cause for celebration at Warner-Lambert, the drug company that introduced it, but the celebration was muted. The FDA had …

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How drug companies sell psychiatrists on their drugs

Checks and balances in health reform

Health Policy
August 26, 2010

What follows are ten thoughts on checks and balances in health reform.

I am writing from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where I am attending a high school class reunion. My son Spencer, a nationally known poet and a candidate for the Episcopal priesthood, is with me. He is checking on my past, and I am trying to provide balance so he can understand his father’s legacy.

There …

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Checks and balances in health reform

Positive reinforcement can motivate preventive behaviors

Physician
August 24, 2010

Eating right, exercising, avoiding the sun or using sunscreen, moderating alcohol consumption, abstaining from tobacco use, getting mammograms, Pap smears, colonoscopies—almost every measure we’re asked to take to safeguard our future health is difficult.  It’s a strange paradox that we have to work in some way, to expend energy, and experience discomfort of some kind in order to gain benefit in life.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the most pleasurable things …

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Positive reinforcement can motivate preventive behaviors

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