Posted on 04/23/2006 7:36:36 PM PDT by neverdem
CHICAGO - Most of the experts who prepared the world's leading medical guide to mental illness had undisclosed financial relationships with drug companies that presented potential conflicts of interest, according to a new report published Thursday in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
The study is the first to document extensive monetary connections between drug companies, psychiatrists and other scientists responsible for the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
The DSM, as it's commonly called, defines all the mental illnesses recognized by psychiatry and outlines the criteria used to determine whether a person has one of these conditions.
The manual is of enormous importance to pharmaceutical firms, as the Food and Drug Administration will not approve a drug to treat a mental illness unless the condition is in the DSM. Drug companies then can market approved medications to physicians and consumers. The broader the criteria for a disorder, the more people who might be candidates for treatment.
"This is one of the most important medical documents we have in this country, yet the public doesn't have relevant information about the experts involved in developing and revising it," said Sheldon Krimsky, a Tufts University professor and co-author of the new paper.
His study found that 56 percent of 170 panel members responsible for overseeing the latest version of the manual, the DSM-IV, had some type of financial tie to the drug industry — including getting research grants from drug companies (42 percent), serving as consultants (22 percent) and participating in speakers bureaus (16 percent). These relationships weren't revealed publicly.
The risk is that financial relationships might directly or indirectly bias panel members to make decisions favorable to the drug industry. Relationships formed after the DSM-IV's publication also can be problematic in that panel members could appear to be...
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
This article reminds me of the ties between our local physicians and pharmaceutical representatives. Every time I visit my various doctors, I see drug company reps coming in with a suitcase of samples.
This is why the medical establishment is lowering the levels at which patients are told they have (fill in the blanks: diabetes, high cholesterol, etc.)
Probably just golf ball salesmen ...briefcases full of golfballs...
I don't see anyone complaining when an antibiotic saves thier life, when cardiac drugs allow people to live normally and when a severly depressed spouse avoids suicide and continues to be a happy member of the family.
STFU about the drug companies unless you want to go back to herbs and aspirin.
I refuse to engage in any further conversation with a poster who tells me to, quote, "STFU".
Not withstanding the various drug recalls, new black box warnings, Vioxx, etc. under the purview of the FDA, The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the NIH recommended the lower numbers after the results of prospective, double-blind studies showed lower morbidity and mortality rates with the new lower numbers.
Congress passed a law recently that all of the data from big pharma drug trials now have to be disclosed to the FDA.
I wish that I could believe it will make a difference.
Science is a public event and our Committee (on our section of the DSM) published the proceedings all our meetings for all the world to read.
Having said that, the DSM is, unlike the US Constitution, a living, breathing document and as such subject to continuous revision. The forces driving revision lately have focused mostly in the Psycho-Sexual Disorders Section. These forces have been quite successful: Transseuxalism is no longer a body image psychosis, contrary to signficant expert opinion, and homosexuality is not aberrant unless dystonic.
The DSM is not perfection and clearly its goals of clarity in mental health are subject to political influence. But, it just so happens, of its many flaws, funding sources are not the bugaboo of the DSM.
This article makes the DSM sound like it might be pushing drugs. But the DSM doesn't prescribe treatments, I didn't think; it's DIAGNOSTIC.
I can certainly see how bad science can result in unnecessary treatments would certainly benefit the drug companies, but, seriously, it would also equally benefit psychotherapists. Should be now complain that the people writing the psychotherapist's bible are now duplicitous because they make money as psychotherapists?
Besides, it's not like the DSM is being widely read by millions of mental-health hypochondriacs (you talk about your self fulfilling prophecies!)... It's read by doctors, not patients. If you wanna have hissy fits, look at the way doctors began to be heavily lobbied during the Clinton administration, or the inexcusably advertisements trying to push PRESCRIPTION drugs all the time on TV!
>> I refuse to engage in any further conversation with a poster who tells me to, quote, "STFU". <<
LOL! That;s the most compliant I've ever seen a FReeper!
I apologize for the "STFU ".
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