The susceptability of women to advertising leading to dependancy on antidepressant medication

Freud's nephew Edward Bernays one of the most effective PR people ever to promote products rode the coattails of women's suffrage with a campaign to get women to smoke.



Marketing and PR agencies continue Bernays unhealthy legacy promoting antidepressants to women. 12% of all women as compared to only 5% of all men take antidepressants. If you want to know why, just look at the Pristiq television advertisement. It is targeted directly at normal healthy young women to make them feel overwhelmed and dissatisfied.

Pristiq is the successor to an almost identical product Effexor an SNRI antidepressant. The reason for introducing essentially the same drug is Effexor will soon lose its patent protection and the manufacturer Pfizer/Wyeth wants fat profits from a slightly modified drug. It is targeted at women who feel overwhelmed and anxious about their busy stressful lives. Rather than having an outlet for these women to be heard and a chance to learn how to cope with life's challenges they are encouraged to take a pill. Pfizer/Wyeth assault normal healthy women with these direct to consumer advertisements DTC hoping to find a woman temporarily overwhelmed that is receptive to their "take a pill be happy, take a pill be a good person, take a pill be a good mother" message. At the same time, Pfizer/Wyeth has an army of drug sales representatives calling on doctors and psychiatrists promoting Effexor and Pristiq as if they are wonder drugs. Pfizer/Wyeth to invite psychiatrists to promotional events, where they pay psychiatrists to promote Effexor and Pristiq in posh 5 star hotels, in expensive restaurants and at top shelf entertainment events.

This is such a dirty trick. Do a little googling on Effexor and what you will find out is:

Effexor's manufacturer Wyeth paid psychiatrists and researchers to promote the drug even when the promotion proved contrary to unfavorable side effects that were observed in patients who were taking Effexor.

Psychiatrists and researchers were paid to write favorable opinions about Effexor.

Wyeth released only the favorable studies about Effexor and did not release the unfavorable studies. When the FDA was forced to release the data using the freedom of information act, Effexor and other similar drugs proved to be only slightly more effective than plecibos .

The side effects of this drug are significant. Firstly it is addictive. Once on it you can't get off it without withdrawal. It looks to me that Wyeth is employing the same strategy used by cigarette manufacturers. Most of the time patients only learn about their addiction when they try to kick the habit.

The fatigue that accompanies the drug often time results an accompanying prescription for a stimulant "speed" to compensate for this. The drug companies win twice here.

Nightmares, sweating, loss of cognitive and memory capabilities are all commonly experienced side effects.

Many women become frigid when they take Effexor. How does the interruption of a normal sex drive and the disharmony that it causes in a relationship make a patient happy?

Finally, there is no proven "cause and effect" relationship between taking Effexor/Pristiq and a measurable physiological change that correlates to an improvement in a person's mood. You will note the advertisement says, "it is believed to work..." because they can't say what the drug does because they don't know. Essentially the patient is signing up to playing Russian Roulette with her brain chemistry.

The patient's family and friends should give them a going away party before they start taking this medication as the family and friends will remain the family and friends of the patient before the patient took the medication, while the patient often becomes someone else unknown to their family and friends.

It is a shame that women are not given the care and shown the kindness to understand their unhappiness and anxiety. They are drugged into tolerating the intolerable. If they get off these medications, they still need to learn how to cope with the issues that caused their discomfort.

Women are more easily manipulated into taking unhealthy, unproven medication to enrich the pharmaceutical companies. Its about time that society as a whole got behind protecting them from this like we have from domestic violence and the inequities of breast cancer research.

I'm reading: The susceptability of women to advertising leading to dependancy on antidepressant medication

Women manipulated to plead to their doctors for a prescription for Cymbalta antidepressant

Over ten years ago, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that patients suffering from depression who received both medication and cognitive behavioral therapy recovered from depression much more frequently and avoided relapse for longer periods of time than those patients just treated with medication.

Unfortunately this holistic approach does not meet big Pharma's big Tobacco approach to increasing the consumption of antidepressants by the American public. Big Pharma wants patients on medication for life like big Tobacco wants to get people hooked on cigarettes for life. Cymbalta is an addictive antidepressant that fits big Pharma's need to predictive quarterly revenues. Big Pharma marketing calls "addiction" "discontinuation syndrome". To understand either term, just Google and read patient testimonials of the poor souls trying to get off Cymbalta or Effexor.

Here is a case study of how women are duped into pleading with their doctors for a prescription to a a potent and addictive drug called Cymbalta with many side effects. These medications are too potent to be taken like a once a day vitamin.

Imagine that one day a woman is not feeling as happy as she might. She uses her computer and go to the venerable and trusted woman's website iVillage and clicks on Health and Diet. One would think this to be a good place to find unbiased information.





















What could be simpler? And she gets what you she expected a search box into which she adds the catch all term that she has heard repeatedly on TV for all these unhappy feeling "Depression"

iVillage responds with its links, barely differentiating the "sponsored links" that advertisers paid to list first from the most popular results based on web popularity. If she is not paying careful attention she would confuse the sponsored links with those ranked based on popularity. Look at this and look at a page of Google search results and you will notice how this page is deceptive.




















She does what most people do, clicks on the first link - its not unbiased information. It is an advertisement carefully crafted to lead women to want to self diagnose herself as depressed, request a free sample of Cymbalta and ask her doctor for a prescription. Note the dark and unhappy mood below designed to amplify the reader's low feelings.




















The reader is further drawn in to find out ways to ask their doctor for Cymbalta. Nowhere is the reader provided insight or help in her selection of a doctor qualified to diagnose depression. Why should the doctor interfere with the sale of medication after the patient has diagnosed herself? Note the "free sample". Shouldn't the FDA limit pharmaceutical companies from giving away medication that causes patients significant discomfort due to discontinuation syndrome? Most developed countries prohibit the advertisement of this kind of medication.




















Normal people fit this description of the feelings behind these words during some days and some periods in their lives. It is normal and normal people overcome these bad feelings and learn to feel good. Overcoming sadness and depression builds resilience against future bouts of depression and sadness. Cymbalta and other medications don't always work and they don't help people learn to overcome their sadness. The intent of the advertisement is to use these dark words with the dark mood of the picture to compel the reader onward to the conclusion of the advertisement and ask their doctor to prescribe Cymbalta.






















Has the reader taken the bait? "How does your depression make you feel?" if you click through you have diagnosed yourself as depressed, now there is only one last step, to ask your doctor to prescribe Cymbalta. The exercise is complete. Using the depression impact tool the reader is prepared with the vocabulary of sure fire words that will convince her doctor to write a prescription for Cymbalta.




















The reader has agreed that they are depressed and clicked through and is rewarded with a smiling face and can feel good because they have accepted (been manipulated by) the advertisement and will "Take Your First Steps" on a very personal lonely journey based on a decision made with a computer rather than in the company of family, friends and a doctor that understands depression. No mention that cognitive behavioral therapy with medication produces better outcomes.




















Finally, a light atmosphere is set that you have agreed to talk to your health care provider, defined as anyone who can write a prescription and you have agreed to focus on your depression rather than live your life.























Its not that medication is bad. It is bad to commit to potent addictive medication based upon temporarily feeling bad or sad or depressed. Medication should be take as part of a treatment plan where it is a stabilizer to allow the person to learn to cope with the issues that made them depressed or gave them anxiety. There should be an approximate period of time for the patient to be on medication and then stop taking it. There are so many side effects and so many unknowns that one should not take SSNRI and SSRI medications like they are vitamins.

I'm reading: Women manipulated to plead to their doctors for a prescription for Cymbalta antidepressant

Did you ever wonder how much money could be made if every man and woman took a pill when they had sex: Big Pharma has!

Big Pharma has redefined our sexuality. In much the same way as they have taken the subjective condition of HAPPYNESS" and converted it into treatable diseases such as depression, general anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder ... they have with doctor's on their payroll created FEMALE SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION.

Liz Canners film Orgasm Inc. is the product of her 9 year odyssey documenting the efforts of Big Pharma to define Female Sexual Dysfunction and with Madison Avenue to sell it to us. It is currently being screened around the world - look and see if it will be available near you - screening schedule.

Here is an interview with Liz Canner for the Italian media talks about her motivation for making the film.



As compared to male sexual dysfunction which is largely due to aging organs, female sexual dysfunction FSD is in almost all cases completely subjective. This is exactly the type of condition that big Pharma can exploit well because all the studies to support the FDA approvals, their marketing to the medical community and their direct to consumer advertising will be based on completely subjective data and a completely emotional response by the consumer.

Big Pharma has proven that they can make normal healthy women feel inadequately happy resulting in the over prescription of antidepressants to women. Now they have an opportunity to make women feel sensuously inadequate and based on their experience with antidepressants, they can take this inadequacy to the bank. Big Pharma and their paid consultant doctor's have determined that 46% of all women suffer from SFD. If you were a big Pharma marketeer and compare this proportion of womankind to the meager 12% of men who have erectile dysfunction you would dance with joy to the ring of the cash register.

Here is the the trailer - I recommend that you watch it. It is a wonderful case study about how big Pharma works.



NBC Miami wrote a fabulous essay that you should read here

We women need to love ourselves, love one and other and love our men, partners, families and the people in our lives, and just get out and live and we will feel better than any pill ever will make us feel.

Love with a lover by its definition will not need a pill to produce the thrill, passion and emotional connection.

I'm reading: Did you ever wonder how much money could be made if every man and woman took a pill when they had sex: Big Pharma has!