Top Selling Psychopharmaceuticals

Posted on February 27, 2006 in Medications Psychotropics

Someone told me that if you pitted a group of business executives against a group of bipolars and asked both groups to spend three minutes brainstorming a list of items you could get in a grocery store, the businessmen would come up with eight items. The bipolars — even out of mania they could put the executives to shame. I partly suspect that they suffer because they read Forbes Magazine.

Forbes presented a list of the twenty best-selling drugs in America. After seeing it mentioned on Derek’s In the Pipeline, I just had to go look. Among the twenty are these psychotropics:

• Zoloft #7
• Seroquel #13
• Effexor #14
• Zyprexa #15
• Risperdal #18

Here’s the fastest growing drugs in America:

• Cymbalta #2
• Abilify #9

What made these lists interesting are how they get the uses for some of these drugs oh so very very wrong. If you look at the descriptions for Seroquel, Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Abilify you would jump to the conclusion that there’s a serious outbreak of schizophrenia sweeping the nation. Many of us bipolars and OCD sufferers take one of these atypical antipsychotics for symptoms that may include hallucinations, delusions, unstable moods, and compulsions.

I get the feeling that the people at Forbes are so busy counting the money they don’t have any idea what the money is coming from.

The old amateur classificator’s box has been brought down from the shelf and stuffed with generalities. Don’t try to understand things, Forbes appears to say, just invest in it because this is where the money can be had. Mushing together and presenting the results on slick paper just increases the mystique of those who just don’t get diversity. Or lack the mind to remember what you can get in a grocery store.

I’m not a figure in a bank account. I’m a human being.

Here is the article from Forbes. Got to love how Forbes sweeps the presentation across several pages so that it can sell more advertising.