Celexa Complaints
Thinking about taking celexa for depression or some other problem?
Before celexa (the brand name for citalopram) burst onto the U.S. drug market in the fall of 1998, hundreds of doctors were paid $500 each to prescribe celexa to their depressed patients. I wonder if your doctor was paid to promote celexa? You might want to ask. I'm talking about cold, hard cash, not the mountain of free gifts doctors usually recieve as bribes for prescribing certain medications.
It's no secret that drug companies spend more on marketing than they do on research and development.
Overall, antidepressants somewhat relieve the symptoms of about two-thirds of the people who take them, as long as they're not severely depressed. In fact, every 'breakthrough' drug treatment for depression, from cocaine in the 19th century, to opium in the first half of the 20th century, all the way to celexa today, offers the same approximate level of effectiveness. Psychiatrists gushed about opium and cocaine the same way they gush about celexa today.
These days, however, prescriptions for antidepressants come mostly from general practioners (family doctors) rather than psychiatrists. Drug companies, well aware of this fact, spend 90% of their marketing budget on family doctors.
In addition to the constant flow of gifts and 'clinical sidebars' (which literally means to provide the doctor with a free lunch!) - drug reps also supply most of the information that doctors recieve about prescription drugs. In the trade, this is referred to as 'detailing'. For all the 'detailing' done by celexa drug reps, just as much 'counter-detailing' occurs by the competing drug reps. The main counter-claim about celexa, that it's no more effective that a placebo, is generally discounted by doctors since studies have shown placebo often times equals the effectiveness of any antidepressant on the market. This raises the nagging question of why depression medications are ever prescribed at all.
What if you're a nursing mother? Do you really want your baby to go through celexa withdrawal?
What if you're pregnant? Do you want to chance the increased risk of birth defects that celexa imposes?
