Monday 26 September 2011

Pandora's box, panaceas and pain-killers

More views of - or at - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


26 September 2011

* May contain spoilers *

One of the Festival's screenings featured (in large quantities, at one point) boxes of Tralin® - as that is a brand name, I needed to look it up to be sure what it is, and have just got around to doing so:


For the benefit of anyone else who may have seen Kosmos and wanted to know, I can report that Tralin® is a brand name for sertraline, which, as a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (or SSRI), is - as some may have guessed - commonly used (to try) to treat depression.

However, as is so often the case with medications (e.g., in low does, some anti-depressants are used for seeking to alleviate insomnia), it is also used for anxiety disorders (such as social anxiety disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder (or OCD)), and an eating disorder) bulimia nervosa.



Some may recall that Richard Brook, the previous Chief Executive of MIND, resigned from (a committee of) the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) regarding, essentially, the question of what was being done to research a possible link between taking sertraline and an increased risk, to the person taking it, of suicidal thoughts and, of course, suicide itself in some cases.


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