Dear Liz,

Yes, I’ve heard of the supplement. It’s not new. And while I am an advocate first for the least invasive therapies demonstrating safety I also strongly advocate for education.

Your readers might also be interested in some of the following links as a point counterpoint discussion of your posting:

http://www.quackwatch.org/search/webglimpse.cgi?ARCHID_1=1&ARCHID_2=2&ARCHID_14=14&ARCHID_18=18&ARCHID_16=16&ARCHID_20=20&ARCHID_15=15&ARCHID_13=13&ARCHID_3=3&ARCHID_19=19&ARCHID_8=8&ARCHID_12=12&ARCHID_17=17&ARCHID_4=4&ARCHID_10=10&ARCHID_5=5&ARCHID%3D11=11&ARCHID_6=6&ARCHID_9=9&ARCHID_10=22&ARCHID_7=7&ARCHID_21=21&query=truehope&rankby=DEFAULT&errors=0&age=&maxfiles=50&maxlines=30&maxchars=10000&cache=yes

http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/Thought_Disorders/schizo/articles/empowerplus.asp

http://www.circare.org/FOIA/ATIPindex1.htm

To the best of my knowledge there has not been any double-blind study of this supplement.

At $21.95 for the book the author Autumn Stringam stands a chance to make a few bucks and the reporter Pat Capponi has something to write about but didn’t indicate her experiences with the supplement as a “psychiatric survivor” which in and of itself says much to me.

Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com.

I first heard of and started researching their product about 6 years ago. I never ended up trying it because I couldn't get any doctor I was seeing to agree to monitor me while I tried it. They all insisted they would only help me if I took what they prescribed.

I am now off all psych drugs (hopefully to NEVER go back on again) and am trying to find my own mix of supplements that are acceptable to me.

I'll admit I had forgotten about EMPower. I'm not sure I could afford it at this point though. Being on the rather strict finances that disablity forces you into, I have to be real careful what I invest in. Right now I am doing fairly well on the supplements I am taking.

I think I would still like to try their product though.

I posted a message earlier about my son's experience with a vitamin/supplement treatment from www.truehope.com. I saw from a search that you had an article about this intervention earlier. However, this very important link was missing from the posts that followed. We learned about this treatment from a Discover Magazine article:
http://discovermagazine.com/2005/may/vitamin-cure. Not every treatment works for every person, but this gave me my son back. And it's a lot safer than the many psychiatric meds he tried. We were in the midst of researching the VNS implant when we found this. I understand skepticism, but I've lived with the positive results of this treatment for my son.