Orshe

In apologizing for his high-profile sex scandal, golfer Tiger Woods said today that he has been in intensive therapy for 45 days and will be returning for more sessions starting tomorrow. His reference to his affairs and “repeated irresponsible behavior” prompts us to take a closer look at a condition that many call sex addiction.

Here’s a quick drug-news roundup:

Sure, docs are seeing a lot of patients these days. But writing 96,685 prescriptions to Medicaid patients over the course of 21 months — that’s about 150 scripts a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year — is still enough to catch the attention of the feds.

Yes, the headline we just wrote for this post sounds a little like those cheesy “one simple rule” online ads. But that’s our headline and we’re sticking to it.

Anyway: In her health column this week, the WSJ’s Melinda Beck lists 20 health-related things to be thankful for. Most are improvements in public health — rising life spans, decreasing malnourishment among the world’s children, that sort of thing.

For people in their late teens and early 20s, taking an antidepressant may actually increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors, at least during initial treatment. So it’s important that those patients are carefully monitored.

So Omnicare, a big pharmacy that specializes in providing drugs to nursing-home patients, will pay $98 million to settle allegations that the company “solicited or paid a variety of kickbacks,” according to this statement from the feds.

The WSJ story gets into all the details, but one wrinkle in particular caught our eye: Omnicare was accused of soliciting and receiving kickbacks from J&J in exchange for recommending the company’s antipsychotic drug Risperdal.

Sometimes it seems like everybody has financial ties to the drug or device industry. As it turns out, it’s only a little more than half of everybody.

A survey conducted in 2006-07 and published this week in the journal Health Affairs found that 53% of academic research faculty in the life sciences at top schools reported financial ties to industry.

About 1 in 5 patients become depressed after a heart attack, but doctors don’t always pick up on the symptoms because they can be difficult to distinguish from the physical effects of heart disease, such as fatigue and sedentary behavior. (Read more about heart disease and depression in the WSJ.)

Pregnant women should consider psychotherapy as an alternative to antidepressants, but those with more severe or recurrent bouts of depression should remain on their meds during pregnancy, according to a new report from two big physicians’ groups.

But there’s an alternative treatment for the sickest depressed women, the guidelines say: electroconvulsive therapy, often called shock therapy.

The mental health records of the Virginia Tech gunman unveiled yesterday don’t reveal much at all about why he killed 32 fellow students and himself. The records (online here and here) depict Seung-Hui Cho as a fairly ordinary depressed and anxious student and don’t give any clue about the rampage he would go one just a year and a half later.