After 25 Posts on this Website, Dr. Mark Foster is Terminated by his Employer
On September 18, 2010, Mark Foster, a family physician in Littleton, Colorado, began his “Letters From the Front Lines” blog for this website. In...
Chapter Eleven: Teetering on the Edge
Frantic, fearful, and desperate to get my life together, I returned to Cambridge in the middle of August to move into my off-campus apartment....
Should the Medical Literature Be Cleansed of All STAR*D Articles?
For some time now, the medical community—and to a certain extent, the general public—has understood that the reports in the medical literature of industry-funded...
April 30, 2011
Bob--
I have found that many patients, and even many physicians, don't appreciate the basic differences between psychology and psychiatry. For most of your readers,...
Anatomy of an Epidemic wins investigative journalism award
Investigative Reporters and Editors recently named Anatomy of an Epidemic as the winner of its 2010 best “investigative journalism” award in the books category. Here...
Chapter Ten: A ‘Victim of Circumstance’
Upon arriving home at the end of sophomore year in college, which had been devoted to hyper-control and a carefully maintained, entirely black-and-white existence,...
April 11, 2011
Dear Bob--
I want to share an email I received from a physician friend, who practices in a hospital-based specialty. He is highly intelligent, naturally...
Chapter Nine: Is It Me Or My Meds?
Subtly and insidiously, my medications, once merely inert composites of chemicals, acquired an agency of their own and took center stage in my life...
STAR*D: Adding Fiction to Fiction
In my five plus years investigating STAR*D, I have identified one scientific error after another. Each error I found reinforced my search for more...
Rethinking Mental Health Care: The Story of the Oregon Symposium and the Foundation that...
Yesterday, I have to confess, I experienced one of the more satisfying days of my journalistic career. Every journalist hopes that his or her...
March 29, 2011
Dear Bob--
Since you posted about my termination last week, I've received a lot of words of support and encouragement, and I wanted to say...
An Introduction: The Story of Bias in the STAR*D Trial and More
The 35-million-dollar Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) study is the largest antidepressant effectiveness study ever conducted. STAR*D enrolled 4,041 depressed patients and...
Letters from the Front Lines
Bob--
I want to share with you a success story that has played out over the last three months.
I have been working with a woman...
March 15, 2011
Bob--
I want to share with you a success story that has played out over the last three months.
I have been working with a woman...
Chapter Eight: “Forget Happiness . . . I’ve Got Control”
At no moment in my childhood-- whether in those weekday hours after school spent exploring the woods with my dog, or on the early...
March 4, 2011
Bob--
I'm going to share with you a case from today that did not involve psychotropics, but I think it illustrates an important point about...
Chapter Seven: Becoming Bipolar, Becoming Empowered
A newfound acceptance of my bipolar diagnosis during the winter of my freshman year at Harvard filled me to the brim with a sense...
Andreasen Drops a Bombshell: Antipsychotics Shrink the Brain
In 1991, Nancy Andreasen began a long-running study of first-episode schizophrenia patients, which involved periodically measuring their brain volumes with magnetic resonance scans. In...
February 14, 2011
Bob--
Recently, I saw a thirty-six year-old Bulgarian man for a follow-up visit. He is my age, with three children almost exactly the same ages...
Chapter Six: A Disease of Dis-Ease, and New Hope for a Cure
On the day I arrived as a freshman at Harvard in the fall of 2001, I dropped my belongings in my dorm room, said...
January 31, 2011
Bob--
Today, I saw an intelligent and sarcastic teenage boy for renewal of his Adderall. He presented with his well-meaning but frustrated father, who is...
Speaking at MGH Grand Rounds, and More
As many readers of this blog may know, I spoke at the psychiatric department’s Grand Rounds at Massachusetts General Hospital on January 13, which...
January 17, 2011
Bob--
About a month ago, I started caring for a fifty-five year old Filipino woman. She speaks English well, though with a heavy accent. She...
Antipsychotics and the Scientific Method
In a recent article in the New Yorker, titled, The Truth Wears Off, science writer Jonah Lehrer discusses an intriguing problem in science. The...
January 7, 2011
Bob--
This is the twentieth letter that I'll be posting on your website. I thought I'd use the occasion to reflect on what I've observed...
