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Medications and their Web Sites

© Ian Chovil

In an earlier column I went over the use of medication in the treatment of schizophrenia. Medication is the foundation of all treatment of schizophrenia and is so important you would expect the pharmaceutical companies to have web sites on their antipsychotics. They do to some extent, but the drug companies have never been allowed to market and advertise their prescription products to patients or the general public. This is fairly true around the world although it is beginning to change.

The Schizophrenia Digest, http://www.schizophreniadigest.com , a Canadian magazine for consumers and family members probably wouldn't exist if the pharmaceutical companies didn't take out full page ads about schizophrenia. You occasionally see television advertisements for a prescription medication these days as well. They list all of the possible side effects from the medication which must scare off a lot of people, but even these advertisements are raising public awareness of common serious medical illnesses that often go untreated because the public has no awareness of them. I look forward to the day they start advertising antipsychotics on television. I think the stigma of schizophrenia will literally disappear when that happens.

I can see some of the rationale in not advertising to patients but I don't think it outweighs the advantages of an informed public. In the early 90s several major magazines did front page articles on Prozac, a new SSRI antidepressant. Eli Lilly must have been very pleased. I was just starting on antipsychotics at that time, unconvinced I had schizophrenia, and after reading the Maclean's magazine article on Prozac I was sure this was the drug that would solve all my problems. They described my symptoms and Prozac would cure them. Eventually I did try Prozac but it didn't have any effect whatsoever, even after six weeks. In fact three different classes of antidepressants had no effect at all and I had to reevaluate my conclusion that I had been misdiagnosed.

If pharmaceutical companies are allowed to advertise to some degree why aren't they using the internet? Zeneca's site for Seroquel http://www.seroquel.com/ was the first one I discovered. Eli Lilly has a site on their product Zyprexa http://www.zyprexa.com/ designated only for a United States audience, but by simply stating you live in the U.S. you can access the site. Janssen took a very different tact, with two different sites, one American http://www.mentalwellness.com/ and one international http://www.futur.com/index.htm . The first is a very useful web site for people with schizophrenia in the U.S., with information on just about everything, how to live on a limited budget, how to find a support group in your area, how to apply for disability benefits, etc. The second is targeted to psychiatrists and other mental health workers with summaries of research that is Risperidone friendly, so to speak. All the pharmaceutical companies advertise and market their products to physicians who may prescribe their product.

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