Pharmaceutical industry, antidepressants marketing

It is interesting to note that despite the very widespread use and the generally accepted efficacy of antidepressants in pain therapy, at present not all antidepressant drugs are formally approved for the treatment of pain. Thus, the widespread use of these drugs is, to some extent, off-label, and there does not seem to be much effort in the pharmaceutical industry to market antidepressants explicitley as analgesic drugs. 

The use of herbs has also been fueled by the increased awareness of clinical depression and its treatment as a result of the marketing efforts of major pharmaceutical companies. That effort has transformed prescription antidepressants into one of the largest dollar sales category in pharmaceuticals such that the sales for a block buster antidepressant can be more than 2 billion dollars per year. Not surprisingly, then, herbal remedies or phytomedicine has also become a multibillion dollar industry in the United States with an estimated one in ten Americans having used herbal agents within the past year, with or without their physician s knowledge. 

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