The Most Prescribed Psychiatric Drugs
When Xanax hit the U.S. market in 1981, it wasn’t clear it would be a hit. It was a me-too successor to Valium, the anxiety drug that was the most popular drug in America for most of the 1970s. Maker Upjohn figured out a clever way to market its drug: by testing it to treat panic attacks as well as anxiety.
Panic attacks had just been defined as a diagnosis and were assumed to be resistant to Valium-like drugs. But Upjohn ran studies showing Xanax reduced panic attacks; it was the first drug to get an approval for this claim. Xanax sold like hotcakes and became part of the popular lexicon. Panic attacks were popularized too; an affliction once thought to be rare became something nervous mothers joked about.
Almost three decades later, America is still a Xanax nation. It remains the most popular psychiatric drug, topping more recently introduced medicines like the sleeping pill Ambien (No. 2) and the antidepressant Lexapro (No. 3). Doctors write nearly 50 million prescriptions for Xanax or alprazolam (the cheap, generic equivalent) every year–that’s more than one Xanax prescription every second. Upjohn vanished in a series of mergers–it’s buried somewhere inside Pfizer ( PFE – news – people ) now–but the decision its executives made still echoes through our culture, and through the bodies of psychiatric patients…Click here to read more
Source: http://www.forbes.com
A previous article entitled FDA Proposes New Warnings provides information... Anafranil (clomipramine), Antidepressant Medications ve Asendin (amoxapine)
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