Let’s dissect this advertisement, shall we?
1) Do you have a a specific diagnosed mental disorder?
2) Do you have a drinking problem on top of it?
3) Are you willing to go off your medication for 12 weeks, during which time you’ll be seen up to 10 times by the study? Even though you have a diagnosed disorder that could be very bad to have unmedicated?
4) Want up to $600? Call us!
Please tell me I’m not the only person who sees glowing bright problems here. There’s got to be a better way to do clinical trials like this, than remove people from their needed medications!
I find the idea that study subjects might be taken off their medication if they’re already on it troubling, since it doesn’t seem to give the people running the study a true “control” — it gives them people who were previously medicated and were taken off those medications, which in my experience with bipolar people can be quite bad.
I had a friend who was in a depression study in Boston, which worked well for her since she was an uninsured freelance reporter who could not afford therapy or medication, and she was medicated and received counseling for the duration of the study. Then she was simply cut off, and unable to obtain medications on her own.
Well, you could say that anyone with bipolar disorder and a drinking problem is not currently on a successful treatment program. Since those are the qualifications for the study, they are not taking medication away from anyone who has stabilized their symptoms with medication. They are offering medication to people who are not manageing their symptoms. Of course, I haven’t seen their protocol, but I believe that being on medications would disqualify one for the study. If they took subjects who were both medicated and unmedicated at the start, they would be adding an uncontrolled variable to their study. i.e. some of the subjects would be feeling the affects of ther previous regimen waning while the new regimen is kicking in.