Can psychiatrists be expected to treat themselves before it's too late?

In the most recent issue of the New York Times Magazine, Walter Kirn is taking a hard look at student use of attention deficit disorder medications like Adderall and Ritalin to help boost academic performance. He’s in a good position to critique them, he says, because he took Adderall back in the 80s.The psychiatrist who prescribed the drug predicted they would enhance his concentration and give him a new competitive edge — as long as he used it properly.“What I wished for back then — a mode

Source: Alternet Some years ago, a friend told me that he had been diagnosed with a major depressive disorder and that his psychiatrist had given him a prescription for Forest Laboratories’ popular SSRI antidepressant Celexa (chemical name, citalopram hydrobromide; $1.5 billion in sales in 2003). Knowing him to be a vociferous critic of the pharmaceutical companies, I asked whether he agreed that the origins of his unhappiness were biological in nature. He replied that he unequivocally did n

Posted by superlagirl in Mental health. trackback I steal from the Roses. Adderall was one of the original psychotropics prescribed to me. It was great, although I had to give up caffeine, lest my heart explode. I can’t remember exactly why I stopped taking it. I know my psychiatrist at the time did not agree with my primary care physician’s original decision to prescribe it. I’m pretty sure he talked me into discontinuing it, but I may have dropped it during one of my bratty FINE! tantrums

Q. I’m a 50 year old woman diagnosed with both Bipolar II and ADHD. I was first diagnosed as bipolar 11 years ago, after years of being diagnosed with treatment resistant major depression. Although adding a mood stabilizer to my meds seemed to be a promising start, within a year I was assigned to a different psychiatrist, who decided that all of my hypomanic episodes had been medication related, and that I was not truly bipolar. So it was back to treatment resistant major depression, and 6 year