Desperate abuse of the depressed...
Can you believe the headlines: "New hope for people with therapy-resistant depression" they declare. Given the epidemic proportions of depression globally one can understand that the condition is topical and therefore newsworthy. Such a headline however, seems quite absurd.
The sub-headline in one news release by news-medical.net went on to claim: "A study at the University Clinics of Bonn and Cologne gives people with therapy-resistant depression reason for hope." Well I'm all for giving hope to the depressed and to those affected by the depressed but I cannot approve of such sensationalist reporting. The last thing depressed people need is to be given false hope that, on even gentle probing, turns out to be a let-down.
In that same article following the grand claims the very first sentence admits that "The doctors treated two men and a woman with what is known as deep brain stimulation." Can you believe that? Now I've seen plenty of claims to support the use of drugs and various procedures based on scant data but this reaches new lows.
Three people, just two men and a woman. Give me a break. That's not worth the neighbourhood newsletter, much less a prestigious medical journal. "Nevertheless, the results of the preliminary study are so sensational that they have now been published in the renowned journal Neuropsychopharmacology (doi: 10.1038/ sj.npp.1301408)" the article goes on to claim.
This damns the news media and possibly the professional journal, though it is unlikely the editor would agree that the findings were published because of their sensationalism. It is more likely because of the novelty of the procedure and the strength of the reported results.
The treatment itself is rather radical. It involves inserting electrode probes deep into the brain and wiring these to an electrical pulse generator implanted within the chest. This is called deep brain stimulation (DBS). Such major attention itself would likeley have some impact on the subjects and might well result in observations and reports of improved mood.
Interestingly. a little more reading reveals that in "the first few days of the DBS the symptoms of depression improved significantly in two of the three patients." What? Yes, only two of the three. One could have expected instant and complete cure in all three given the headlines.
The lead researcher is reported to have said: "Our follow-up experiments are showing even now that by no means every patient will respond to this therapy." Yes, this is reported in the same article.
It would appear that the media's need to secure attention in an increasingly competitive information landscape has resulted in a desperate bid to be noticed. In doing so the result amounts to little more than abuse of the depressed.
At this stage I consider DBS to be nothing more than experimentation. It may yield valuable data but I do not believe it represents the future in depression treatment. It resembles rather too much some of the abuses previously and currently metered out to the mentally ill.
The sub-headline in one news release by news-medical.net went on to claim: "A study at the University Clinics of Bonn and Cologne gives people with therapy-resistant depression reason for hope." Well I'm all for giving hope to the depressed and to those affected by the depressed but I cannot approve of such sensationalist reporting. The last thing depressed people need is to be given false hope that, on even gentle probing, turns out to be a let-down.
In that same article following the grand claims the very first sentence admits that "The doctors treated two men and a woman with what is known as deep brain stimulation." Can you believe that? Now I've seen plenty of claims to support the use of drugs and various procedures based on scant data but this reaches new lows.
Three people, just two men and a woman. Give me a break. That's not worth the neighbourhood newsletter, much less a prestigious medical journal. "Nevertheless, the results of the preliminary study are so sensational that they have now been published in the renowned journal Neuropsychopharmacology (doi: 10.1038/ sj.npp.1301408)" the article goes on to claim.
This damns the news media and possibly the professional journal, though it is unlikely the editor would agree that the findings were published because of their sensationalism. It is more likely because of the novelty of the procedure and the strength of the reported results.
The treatment itself is rather radical. It involves inserting electrode probes deep into the brain and wiring these to an electrical pulse generator implanted within the chest. This is called deep brain stimulation (DBS). Such major attention itself would likeley have some impact on the subjects and might well result in observations and reports of improved mood.
Interestingly. a little more reading reveals that in "the first few days of the DBS the symptoms of depression improved significantly in two of the three patients." What? Yes, only two of the three. One could have expected instant and complete cure in all three given the headlines.
The lead researcher is reported to have said: "Our follow-up experiments are showing even now that by no means every patient will respond to this therapy." Yes, this is reported in the same article.
It would appear that the media's need to secure attention in an increasingly competitive information landscape has resulted in a desperate bid to be noticed. In doing so the result amounts to little more than abuse of the depressed.
At this stage I consider DBS to be nothing more than experimentation. It may yield valuable data but I do not believe it represents the future in depression treatment. It resembles rather too much some of the abuses previously and currently metered out to the mentally ill.
Labels: depression, mental illness, treatment
posted by Dr Peter Tylee at
7:37 pm
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