Blog Carnival Edition for December 12, 2006
I want to thank everyone for your overwhelming response to this edition of our carnival. I personally visit each and every entry submission, and where warranted, comment on the entry. Thus unlike other carnivals where your entries simply get listed, you know your submissions are being read (at the very least, by me!). However, this also means my carnival posts tend to run long. We’ve received almost 20 entries in this edition! Unfortunately I had to eliminate entries that are not directly related to mental health, which is unrelated to the quality of the post.
This edition will be particularly lengthy. If you need to find a particular topic, you can hit the [Ctrl] + [F] keys to “find” the word you are looking for without scrolling down paragraphs of text. Read more
Review: Omax3 Website
Those of you who are familiar with mental health research have noticed a long standing interest in supplemental therapies and alternative therapies to traditional treatments like psychotherapy and medication therapy. For example, St. John’s Wort has long been used in Europe and has been studied as a treatment for depression. More recently, the role of essential fatty acids in depression and bipolar disorder has gaining attention.
Omax3.com is a product website of Cenestra Health, a limited liability company (LLC) based in New Haven, Connecticut. My preliminary search found that the company was created by 2 doctors from Yale, although I did not find the identities or the exact credentials of these physicians (if they were physicians - Ph.D. scientists are often referred to as “Dr.” as well). The company website offered no clue. The Omax3.com website suggests that these were clinicians, as the About Us link stated that these clinicians were not satisfied with what was currently available on market in terms of omega 3 products, and set out to create their own. Read more
Seroquel Approved to Treat Manic and Depressive Episodes in Bipolar Disorder
Seroquel or quetiapine fumarate (manufactured by AstraZeneca) has received US FDA approval to treat both depressive and manic episodes associated with bipolar disorder. The benefit of one medication that can treat both the depressive and manic symptoms is that patients can adhere to (comply with) the medication regimen more easily. On the other hand, patients’ symptoms may still require additional medications if Seroquel could not adequately manage the constellation of symptoms of someone suffering from bipolar disorder. Even depressed patients can sometimes be on multiple medications besides an antidepressant. Read more