BEST Websites to Self-Educate Psycho-Pharmacology??

[unrEliAble]

Use the B.N.F. and have done for years. Buying a hard copy can set you back - the N.H.S. always issued them to staff.
But there's an online version now which has lots of additional information and linkshttps://bnf.nice.org.uk/

Should anybody encounter a problem with paywalls, there's this...

The Best Way to Get Past an Article's Paywall

You should always pay to support journalism when you can—but when you've lost your password or just need to get around a paywall quickly, there are a few methods you can try to do it. My favorite one is Archive.today.

lifehacker.com

N9t sure how helpful it will be.

 

[4DQSAR]

I think one good tip is to avoid the DSM IV and DSM V as the UK has done. The decision was made after it became apparent that pharmacutical companies were in effect bribing the editors to introduce new diagnoses which only that one pharmacutical company had a medication to treat.

Look at how Upjohn was bought out and closed - all the buyers wanted was the alprazolam patent as, wait for it, when the DSM IV was published, GAD was a new disorder and wait for it, ONLY alprazolam was listed as an approved medication.

Likewise inducation creep. Just look at how antispychotic drugs are suddently ideal for bipolar disorder and even unipolar depression. Now schizophrania is such a serious condition, a medication that knocks a decade off a patient's lifespan is still statistically a better outcome as suicide among people with schizophrania makes it so.

But to suggest that such medications are appropriate for other condictions has that useful property of not needing to go through the entire licencing process again. They could start at stage 2 trials (not too costly) and as long as a medication was roughly as good as the alternatives, it gets a licence for those new indications. Now HOW those qualitative values are measured are dubious at best.

You can bet your boots someone prescribed 300mg quetiapine/day won't be visiting the clinician again - either they are asleep OR decide the treatment is worse than the illness and simply stop consuming them. That doesn't mean prescriptions are not filled, just that they get flushed, left in a desk drawer or even SOLD. Incredible that someone would consider an antipsychotic as a recreational drug but there are people who do just wish to sleep all of the time - hardly good for bipolar OR unipolar depression, but unless clinicians KNOW, they assume the DSM is legal, descent, honest and truthful.

 

[unrEliAble]

I think one good tip is to avoid the DSM IV and DSM V as the UK has done. The decision was made after it became apparent that pharmacutical companies were in effect bribing the editors to introduce new diagnoses which only that one pharmacutical company had a medication to treat.

Look at how Upjohn was bought out and closed - all the buyers wanted was the alprazolam patent as, wait for it, when the DSM IV was published, GAD was a new disorder and wait for it, ONLY alprazolam was listed as an approved medication.

Likewise inducation creep. Just look at how antispychotic drugs are suddently ideal for bipolar disorder and even unipolar depression. Now schizophrania is such a serious condition, a medication that knocks a decade off a patient's lifespan is still statistically a better outcome as suicide among people with schizophrania makes it so.

But to suggest that such medications are appropriate for other condictions has that useful property of not needing to go through the entire licencing process again. They could start at stage 2 trials (not too costly) and as long as a medication was roughly as good as the alternatives, it gets a licence for those new indications. Now HOW those qualitative values are measured are dubious at best.

You can bet your boots someone prescribed 300mg quetiapine/day won't be visiting the clinician again - either they are asleep OR decide the treatment is worse than the illness and simply stop consuming them. That doesn't mean prescriptions are not filled, just that they get flushed, left in a desk drawer or even SOLD. Incredible that someone would consider an antipsychotic as a recreational drug but there are people who do just wish to sleep all of the time - hardly good for bipolar OR unipolar depression, but unless clinicians KNOW, they assume the DSM is legal, descent, honest and truthful.

I'm actually shocked by how often antipsychotics are prescribed to help with sleeping.
Frankly, no sleep med should be issued for more than a week. Long term prescriptions are very rare- absolutely not the norm.
We never use brand names. Pharmaceutical companies are forbidden from advertising directly to practitioners or to patients. ThT is where your problem lies, right there.
Capitalism kills

 

[4DQSAR]

I can only speak for the UK where clinicials have to report any gift worth more than £2.74. Why that specific number I do not know, but before that pharmacutical representitives would offer clinicians a 3 night stay at a luxury 5 star hotel and all they were required to do was to attend two 1 hour lectures. One on the Friday night, one on Monday afternoon.

But last time I visited the US I saw no end of TV ads describing a long list of vague symptoms and every single one of them concluded with 'ask your doctor about <insent brand name of drug>'.

Now I've certainly noted how many people are self-diagnosing as being ADHD sufferers and now most doctors are essentially seen as 'pill pushers', the number of scripts for stimulant ADHD medications has gone through the roof. Rule-of-thumb - if you managed without medication for 50+ years, chances are you have found coping stratergies but in a decade a 700% increase in ADHD medication has been seen. Novartis Pharmaceuticals still hold the patent on Focalin and profits have increase from $6.71 billion to $13.98 billion in the same period.

I've always had a soft touch for the French pharmacutical industry since instead of licening or purchacing dexmethylphenidate, Rhône-Poulenc developed levophacetoperane in the 1950s and that is the reversed ester OF dexmethylphenidate. I'm certain that the moment methylphenidate was recognized, French researchers first found the most active isomer and then made THAT their metric. Before people ask, having two chiral centres makes synthesis 'challanging'.

I only mention it to highlight how the French go their own way in many common medications and that low doses of CNS stimulants are sometimes prescribed to offset the sedative effects of antipsychotics.

I also still feel very sad after watching footage of a 5 YO kid in the US explaining how he took pill A in the morning, pill B at teatime and then pill C so he could sleep (the last being an α2-Adrenergic agonist). Add-ons to reduce side-effects should be limited to situations where no alternative exists. I only watched it because a friend from South Africa noted how so many kids were being given pills just for not getting expected grades at school. I coudn't believe it until I watched a child who didn't really know what the pills were, but was told he must take them.

As soon as prescribing means profit, it isn't a doctor-patient relationship, it's a customer relationship in which a provider sells products to buyers. It is a long time ago but in an anonymous questionarre, not one UK doctor admitted that a pharmacitical representitive had altered their prescribing habits BUT 76% said they knew a doctor who HAD. Now how can that possibly be the case? Over ¾ of doctors seeing such behaviors and yet not a single one was themselves doing just that...

 

[unrEliAble]

I can only speak for the UK where clinicials have to report any gift worth more than £2.74. Why that specific number I do not know, but before that pharmacutical representitives would offer clinicians a 3 night stay at a luxury 5 star hotel and all they were required to do was to attend two 1 hour lectures. One on the Friday night, one on Monday afternoon.

But last time I visited the US I saw no end of TV ads describing a long list of vague symptoms and every single one of them concluded with 'ask your doctor about <insent brand name of drug>'.

Now I've certainly noted how many people are self-diagnosing as being ADHD sufferers and now most doctors are essentially seen as 'pill pushers', the number of scripts for stimulant ADHD medications has gone through the roof. Rule-of-thumb - if you managed without medication for 50+ years, chances are you have found coping stratergies but in a decade a 700% increase in ADHD medication has been seen. Novartis Pharmaceuticals still hold the patent on Focalin and profits have increase from $6.71 billion to $13.98 billion in the same period.

I've always had a soft touch for the French pharmacutical industry since instead of licening or purchacing dexmethylphenidate, Rhône-Poulenc developed levophacetoperane in the 1950s and that is the reversed ester OF dexmethylphenidate. I'm certain that the moment methylphenidate was recognized, French researchers first found the most active isomer and then made THAT their metric. Before people ask, having two chiral centres makes synthesis 'challanging'.

I only mention it to highlight how the French go their own way in many common medications and that low doses of CNS stimulants are sometimes prescribed to offset the sedative effects of antipsychotics.

I also still feel very sad after watching footage of a 5 YO kid in the US explaining how he took pill A in the morning, pill B at teatime and then pill C so he could sleep (the last being an α2-Adrenergic agonist). Add-ons to reduce side-effects should be limited to situations where no alternative exists. I only watched it because a friend from South Africa noted how so many kids were being given pills just for not getting expected grades at school. I coudn't believe it until I watched a child who didn't really know what the pills were, but was told he must take them.

As soon as prescribing means profit, it isn't a doctor-patient relationship, it's a customer relationship in which a provider sells products to buyers. It is a long time ago but in an anonymous questionarre, not one UK doctor admitted that a pharmacitical representitive had altered their prescribing habits BUT 76% said they knew a doctor who HAD. Now how can that possibly be the case? Over ¾ of doctors seeing such behaviors and yet not a single one was themselves doing just that...

It's wonderful to hear someone iterate my own exact sentiments.
I helped advise a couple of Americans who posted elsewhere crying out for urgent advice after getting into trouble swallowing a ungodly amount of Clobromazolam each day. At the E.R. doctors had issued them 10mg Diazepam. These people were calling them every name imaginable and some I could never have imagined for good measure.
I explained that there is no established protocol for treating the effects of washing machines, televisions and Clobromazolam, being as none are medicines.The E.R.Doc did the right thing in issuing a long acting benzodiazepine and advising them to see their own doctor asap.
Self diagnosis drives me to distraction. Worse still ate those.who are firmly of the opinion that the diagnosis made by their Facebook echo chamber holds so much weight that no other diagnosis has any meaning or is acceptable.
The other thing that bothered me is that they all ask about the "long term prescription". There should never be a long term prescription unless it's keeping you alive (which obviously does include particularly complex, problematic and treatment resistant conditions). But they simply can't comprehend the idea of not taking meds every day until they keel over.
I honestly don't believe it's possible to do your job as a physician in a situation like that in the U.S. Your priority must always be the welfare of your patient and achieving the best possible outcome for them, whatever that might take.If there's a possibility that they can eventually reach a point where they live a life free from pain, dependency on medication and routinely attending outpatients clinics, that should obviously be the objective. Please help me find one single person in the U.S. with that philosophy.

On the subject of kids being medicated, it's something I really disliked.
But I recently discussed the matter with patients who had been diagnosed and medicated for ADD, ADHD or (symptomatic relief of) Autism l
After some consideration, every one decided they would have benefited from medication at an earlier age. It really reminded me of the reason why each individual case should be evaluated on its own merits and that there might be a young person who does need medication. That's for their specialist to decide. But I will never tell anyone that their medication is a lifelong option.