[co-author: Madeline Campbell, Ph.D.]
Over 17 million people in the United States are diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD). Antidepressants and psychotherapy are the leading forms of treatment; however, antidepressants are not always an effective long-term treatment for some MDD patients. In a recently published paper, the authors examined several major research reviews on the efficacy of antidepressants and concluded the benefits of antidepressants are minimal. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the situation is more severe. Mental health professionals and patients are left searching for other alternatives for treatment-resistant depression, defined as depressive symptoms that do not improve with the use of two or more standard antidepressant medications.
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With a decision Tuesday, the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals has brought to a screeching if hopefully temporary halt for efforts to establish a groundbreaking permitted safer injection facility in the city of Philadelphia. In the case of US v. Safehouse, the nonprofit group set to run the site, the court held that allowing the supervised onsite consumption of illegal drugs will break the law because it conflicts with a 35-year-old amendment to the Controlled Substances Act aimed at crack houses.
The Vancouver safer injection site. We still can t have those in America. Yet. (vcha.ca)Never mind that the city is in the midst of an opioid overdose epidemic and needs to try something new after decades of failed prohibitionist drug policies. The sanctity of the drugs laws must be maintained, the court held: Though the opioid crisis may call for innovative solutions, local innovations may not break federal law, it opined.
It’s a story that unfortunately never gets old: Career bureaucrats failing in their mission to address a major public policy issue try to shift the blame, shirk the responsibility and scapegoat the innocent.
In the case of the opioid epidemic, those bureaucrats are at it again. Despite the massive failure of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to recognize and deal with the enormous growth in the production of opioids (which is literally their job – to regulate production levels), and despite their crisis-fostering failure to end prescribing by problematic doctors (again, literally their job), the DEA is targeting pharmacists and pharmacies for blame.