Preventing Precaution

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
August 14, 2013 | 1 Comment

Comments

  1. A few interesting little things I noticed but didn’t include in my original post.
    The reason I found this particular discussion on Mumsnet was down to a Google search for the keywords ‘Panorama ssri’s pregnancy’.
    No matter the combination of related keywords, RCPsych tend to dominate the first page with their response, either from their own website, or one of the many others that carries their statement or at least parts of their statement. Their SEO guys rock!
    You don’t have to go off the first page of results to the see a pattern emerge. I see it as a two pronged approach.
    1. A general ‘scientific/expert’ defence that is carried out by Lundbeck and RCPsych. To me this appears to be coordinated, with both citing evidence from ‘recent well designed trials’ (as opposed to all those old badly designed ones that Professor Piling is reviewing), and both also go on to reassure women that the risks are very low, uncertain even, before finishing with the very real risks to mum, baby and family if depression goes untreated. I have found this argument replicated dozens of times since the panorama program from both Lundbeck and RCPsych.
    2. The womens rights approach. Mumsnet isn’t the only place this argument has been added. Still on page one of my search is the Daily Mail. Slightly different readership demographics and so a slightly different approach to the issue, with the rights of women with mental health problems to have children taking centre stage here.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2347383/Common-antidepressants-double-risk-child-born-heart-defect-taken-early-pregnancy-expert-warns.html

    Best rated comment. 102 likes
    actually zenia, some of us are unable to control our serotonin production in the body and need the medication to function…granted being depressed isnt a great thing to bring a baby into but are you seriously telling me because i was born with a disability i do not deserve to be a mother?? having a disabilty such as depression is something that is hard enough without being told your not good enough to be a parent i have been taking my medication through out my pregnancy but have been very closely monitored via the hospital and i have done everything i can to protect my daughter to ensure nothing will hurt her so grow up you silly silly women or child which ever you are. being a mother is any ones right not something you have to earn through perfect genes the next time you feel your perfect enough to comment on such matters firstly

    “2nd best rated..100 likes
    Yay something else for depressed mums to feel guilty about. I am of course being sarcastic.

    Back on to mumsnet and some other things I noticed.
    That particular thread wasn’t the only one on mumsnet talking about panorama, just the only one to appear in my google search. I didn’t spend much time looking but found a few others. One was in the antenatal section, as you would expect and had a mere 8 replies. http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/antenatal_postnatal_depression/a1793102-panorama
    Another was in the chat area
    http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/a1793060-Panorama-pregnancy-and-pills-anyone-watching
    Here you can read an interesting set of posts by opensesame74. You can follow her through this discussion and then to the feminist one. One thing I noticed was how quick she got an appointment to see her cardiologist at GOSH. Sometime between her first post at Tue 02-Jul-13 18:51:13, and her post at Wed 03-Jul-13 14:08:05, she managed to secure an appointment, go see her cardiologist and log on again to share the good news. Impressive…the NHS should use this to show how good the health service is.

    And yet another was an official post of a guest blogger added by Kate at Mumsnet HQ.
    http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/bloggers/a1794554-Guest-blog-pregnancy-and-antidepressants-a-womans-right-to-choose
    This discussion…OP and responses, reads very like the one in the feminist section, covers all the same points, but the language is much softer and it carries the impression of being an officially sanctioned part of mumsnet, with a nice graphic, pale blue background and a long, well written guest post. Of course it is cross linked to the unofficial harsh version by NiceTabard.
    Once again the star of this discussion is edam, who gives me some hope.

    Its not hard to find evidence of a link between pharma marketing departments and websites like mumsnet. I obviously can’t prove anything without GCHQ or Prism type powers, but I can show how plausible it is.
    If you want a peek at how pharma think about websites such as mumsnet, you can go to the pharma marketing society website…even mumsnet gets a mention!
    http://www.pmsociety.org.uk/article/trust-reputation-and-social-media-in-healthcare-the-patients-view-report
    Some interesting stuff here, there is even a list of software to help you identify, listen, engage and respond to influential people on these social networking platforms.
    If you had the time to read all that, and have digested the different strategies pharma marketing use to engage with these social networking sites, then take that back with you to mumsnet and do an internal search for popular antidepressants to see how often they are discussed… you get some interesting results.
    Citalopram – About 2,570 results (0.16 seconds)
    Celexa – About 122 results (0.11 seconds)
    Effexor – About 90 results (0.14 seconds)
    Venlafaxine – About 377 results (0.29 seconds)
    Seroxat – About 490 results (0.19 seconds)
    paroxetine – About 206 results (0.14 seconds)

    And there you have a plausible link with Lundbeck… Like I said, it proves nothing but it is interesting.

Leave a Reply