Conflict of Interest

Can.you tell I have a cat just by looking at me? Can you tell I have a mental illness just by looking at me?I began to change in my early teens, be it hormones and my shifting brain chemistry, or the stress of my parents seperating. Something stressor from the outside flipped on the switch to a new life filled with major mood swings out of my control.Low self extreme kept me from meeting or caring about being social. I only went to school because I had to. Luckily one day two high school girls came to my 8th grade health class and talked to us about everything from Stress to Smoking to Sex even Suicide. They asked us to write thrm a question about these topics and others. I wrote “I want to die"It was the first time I admitted to myself or anyone else that I had these thouhts constantly. When class was over the girls kindly asked if I would like to talk to the counselor.That day was just the beginning of my journey towards understanding mental illness, and ultimately accepting mental Wellness. Over the next few years I spent time in psychiatric hospitals, tried medication that would hopefully be the missing puzzle piece of chemistry my brain needed. Most of the medications tried their best but caused the worst. I never once stopped taking the medication I was prescribed, for I never wanted to feel so completely out of control again. I realized I was accepting my chemical imbalance and each day I began to understand myself and my issues in a much lighter, hopeful way.The support I recieved on my journey towards wholness helped me acknowledge I was a person not a problem. My mother was my life support at times. She learned all she could about mood disorders and educated our family so as not to judge me, but be very proud. I also met some peers within the mental health community that I still keep in touch with regularly. It was a blessing to know I was not alone in the issues I faced. And that I would be accepted by my peers, for they had experienced similar challenges.I knew I had a message and a story to tell. I wanted to share my experience From Hell to Hope with students. That is where my journey began. So , with a father whose son has schizophrenia, and I, with my rapid cycling moods we have spoken to over 4,000 high school students since 2006.My hope is to stop stigma, treating people badly because they seem different. I want to promote education of mental illness so people suffering and their loved ones will believe recovery is real. ...

In their Fall 2013 issue, the Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics published a symposium of papers by members of the Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. The symposium was called Institutional Corruption and Pharmaceutical Policy. The symposium focuses on pharmaceutical products generally, but all the material is relevant and important in the context of psychiatric drugs. In this post I will highlight one of these papers: Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs, by Donald W. Light, Joel Lexchin, and Jonathan J. Darrow. ...

On April 11, 2014, journalist Alan Schwarz (brief bio here) published an article in the New York Times on this topic, titled Idea of New attention Disorder Spurs Research, and Debate. Alan has written extensively on the rising rates of the condition known as ADHD, and on the abuse of the drugs that are used to “treat” this condition. He has drawn a good deal of criticism from psychiatry’s believers. ...

In 2006, Laurence Jerome, a Canadian psychiatrist, and two colleagues wrote a paper titled What We Know About ADHD and Driving Risk: A Literature Review, Meta-Analysis and Critique. It was published in the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in August, 2006. The primary result of the meta-analysis was: "Current data support the utility of stimulant medication in improving driving performance in younger ADHD drivers." The study is lengthy and well-referenced, but in keeping with standard psychiatric practice, it conceptualizes and presents ADHD as a "…common psychiatric disorder…" with symptoms of "…inattention, impulsiveness and hyperactivity…" In other words, they present ADHD as something that a person has rather than as something that a person does. The problem with this approach is that it creates the impression that meaningful or significant correlations/effects have been found, where in fact all that has happened is an elucidation of the terms used. For instance, the authors refer to a study by Fried et al. (2006) and state: ...

I have written on Dan Markingson’s death in an earlier post, and I encourage readers who are not familiar with the case to have a look. It is generally accepted by those of us on this side of the debate that psychiatry does more harm than good, and is organizationally and individually responsible for a great many deaths worldwide every day. These deaths, however, are seldom laid at psychiatry’s feet. Coroners return verdicts of suicide, homicide, heart attacks, choking, etc… Occasionally psychiatric practice is mentioned as a contributory factor, but not often. ...

Justina Pelletier is the 15-year-old girl who is at the center of a dispute between her parents and the Psychiatry Department at Boston Children’s Hospital. Justina, who lived with her parents in Connecticut, had been diagnosed with mitochondrial disease, a rare and debilitating illness, and had been receiving treatment for this from Mark Korson, MD, Chief of Metabolism Services at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. In February of last year, Justina’s parents took her to Boston Children’s Hospital with flu-like symptoms. Dr. Korson had recommended an admission to Boston Children’s so that Justina could be seen by Alex Flores, MD, a gastrointestinal specialist who had recently transferred from Tufts to BCH. ...

INTRODUCTION An NBC online News article dated October 15, 2010, carried the noteworthy title New blood test may help detect schizophrenia. Thanks to Francesca for the link. The article was written by Natasha Allen, a freelance medical journalist. The gist of the article is that there is a new blood test called VeriPsych which “researchers say” is 83% accurate in discriminating people who are “schizophrenic” from people who are not. ...

In DSM-5 – Dimensional Diagnoses – More Conflicts of Interest? which I posted on December 23, 2013, I drew attention to the fact that David Kupfer, MD, in his position as head of the DSM-5 Task Force, was vigorously promoting a dimensional model of assessment while at the same time was positioning himself to benefit financially if such a system were to be adopted by psychiatry generally. ...

Joel Yager, MD, is a Professor of Psychiatry, University of Colorado at Denver School of Medicine. He started his career as a US Army psychiatrist in 1969, and has held a wide range of clinical and teaching positions in the intervening years. He has received numerous awards, including lifetime achievement awards from the National Eating Disorders Association (2008) and from the Association for Academic Psychiatry (2009). He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers, many of which are concerned with the training of psychiatrists. ...

I recently read The NIMH-CATIE Schizophrenia Study: What Did We Learn? by Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, and T. Scott Stroup, MD, MPH. The article was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry 168:8, August 2011. Here are two quotes: "When the CATIE study was designed in 1999-2000, the prevailing opinion of researchers and clinicians alike was that the newer (second-generation) antipsychotic drugs were vastly superior to the older (first-generation) antipsychotic drugs in efficacy and safety. This largely reflected the results of studies sponsored by the manufacturers of the new drugs…, marketing messages of pharmaceutical companies and the hopes of many who wanted better treatments." ...