After reading these articles, you should be able to…

You may have already seen journal advertisements for Deplin (www.deplin.com), a formulation of L-methylfolate produced by a company called Pamlab LLC. Touted as an “antidepressant food,” Pamlab claims it is “a first choice in depression augmentation.”

Suddenly, psychopharmacology has apparently become “all Seroquel, all the time.” AstraZeneca’s atypical antipsychotic (generic name, extended release quetiapine), which already had FDA approval for schizophrenia and bipolar mania, recently won approval for bipolar depression, and is now pushing for indications in depression and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).

Dr. Kesselheim, you and your colleagues just published an intriguing paper on generic medications (Kesselheim AS et al., JAMA 2008;300(21):2514-2526). I’d like to start by asking you to explain the generic approval process. What does the FDA do to give its seal of approval to generic medications?

After reading these articles, you should be able to…

Because of the dearth of FDA –approved medications for eating disorders, psychotherapy has gradually become the treatment of choice. Nonetheless, clinical trials of off-label uses of various medications have yielded a few impressive results, particularly for bulimia and binge eating disorder.

A variety of psychotherapy techniques work well for eating disorders, particularly for bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. This article gives a brief summary of the evidence from controlled clinical trials.

A recent follow-up of the Multisite Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) study investigated the long-term course of ADHD and the impact of short-term treatment on long-term outcomes.

Researchers assessed predictors of suicidal events and non-suicidal self-harm in a group of 334 moderately to severely depressed adolescents (ages 12-18) who had not responded to at least eight weeks of SSRI treatment.

In a 2005 public health advisory, the FDA warned that antipsychotics appear to increase the rate of mortality in elderly patients with dementia. The implication is that we should discontinue such agents in this population when possible. But does this actually decrease the mortality risk?