Very quietly, under our very noses, most of the newer antidepressants have gone generic, the latest being Celexa (citalopram). Before more details, here is a little generics review for those of you who have not been keeping up with this ferociously litigious area of psychopharmacology.

Dr. Gitlin, to begin with, my readers would be interested in your impressions of the new kid on the block, Cymbalta (duloxetine).

Eight or nine years ago I had a couple of young adults become highly agitated and violent in the week after I started an SSRI (paroxetine in both cases). One beat up his girlfriend badly despite the lack of any history of violence previously.

When Prozac first appeared, it was a wonder drug--effective, well-tolerated, and safe in overdose. And, said Eli Lilly, only 1.9% of patients in the clinical trials suffered sexual dysfunction as a side effect. Clinicians weren't so sure about that figure.

Anybody who watched the recent World Series between the Red Sox and the Cardinals got a pretty good education in Viagrology, Levitrology, and Cialisology. Between footage of men shopping at Victoria's Secret and couples soaking in outdoor tubs, it was a challenge to fit in a few double plays and home runs.

Marlene Dietrich once observed that "in America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact." While that may be true, sex is never terribly easy to discuss, no matter what your longitude and latitude.

Index to The Carlat Report Volume 2, 2004.

Dr. Morgentaler, as a urologist with particular expertise in male sexual dysfunction, what kind of advice might you have for psychiatrists in terms of helping us to differentiate psychogenic from organic sexual problems?

If you've seen the new movie “Kinsey,” you already know that the famed sex researcher first made his name writing about the decidedly un-sexy topic of gall wasps. He was fascinated by these creatures because of the marked variability among individuals--a theme that later emerges in his work on human sexuality.

Rarely have we been exposed to a more bewildering array of data and opinions as over the past year on the subject of antidepressants in children. Ever more definitive meta-analyses and databases are published on a weekly basis. Researcher-clinicians of impeccable credentials look at the same data and deliver opposite opinions.