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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1236

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Burgmer M, Driesch G, Heuft G.
[The "Sisi syndrome": a new form of depression?]
Nervenarzt 2003 May; 74:(5):440-4


Abstract:

A new depressive entity called the “Sisi syndrome,” named in reference to the former empress of Austria, was introduced by a drug company in 1998. Their advertising campaign presents information about nosology, symptoms, and recommended therapy. We review the relevant literature about this syndrome and are not able to confirm the statements about it. The lack of scientific proof of it as an independent entity of depression stands in contrast to the widespread media coverage in Germany, which was organized by a public relations company. Therefore, we discuss new kinds of marketing strategies (“disease mongering”) by drug companies and conclude with some preventive recommendations.

Keywords:
Advertising* Antidepressive Agents, Second-Generation/therapeutic use* Depressive Disorder/classification Depressive Disorder/diagnosis* Depressive Disorder/drug therapy Drug Industry* English Abstract Germany Humans Marketing* Paroxetine/therapeutic use* Syndrome

 

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Far too large a section of the treatment of disease is to-day controlled by the big manufacturing pharmacists, who have enslaved us in a plausible pseudo-science...
The blind faith which some men have in medicines illustrates too often the greatest of all human capacities - the capacity for self deception...
Some one will say, Is this all your science has to tell us? Is this the outcome of decades of good clinical work, of patient study of the disease, of anxious trial in such good faith of so many drugs? Give us back the childlike trust of the fathers in antimony and in the lancet rather than this cold nihilism. Not at all! Let us accept the truth, however unpleasant it may be, and with the death rate staring us in the face, let us not be deceived with vain fancies...
we need a stern, iconoclastic spirit which leads, not to nihilism, but to an active skepticism - not the passive skepticism, born of despair, but the active skepticism born of a knowledge that recognizes its limitations and knows full well that only in this attitude of mind can true progress be made.
- William Osler 1909