The depressive episodes that accompany bipolar disorder have often perplexed both people who have bipolar disorder and the professionals who want to help treat them. People with ordinary clinical depression — at one time called unipolar depression — often have a few treatment options to choose from, usually starting with psychotherapy or antidepressants.
But using antidepressants in the treatment of depression of someone who has bipolar disorder can have unexpected — and unwanted — effects. Studies of antidepressant use in bipolar disorder have been decidedly mixed.
So it’s always welcome news when a new medication — or a new use for an existing medication — has been approved. Such is the case with Latuda (lurasidone).
Imagine that in a world where thousands of new studies are published every year, and hundreds of studies are conducted on any one condition, that one gleaming, gold-standard study has the ability to completely determine the course of treatment for one condition. For decades.
Virtually across the board of medicine and psychiatry, doctors will constantly and consistently oversell the benefits of a given treatment, and undersell the risks and side effects of it. This may not be as surprising when you look at some of the key factors into how medical and psychiatric treatment is learned and then conducted on patients.