Pharmaceutical Industry

Several of my recent posts have been about fundamental issues. Here's something a little lighter.   On the coast of Maine near the Machias Estuary, the Atlantic Ocean pounds the cliffs and beaches. The scenery is wild and beautiful, and there are lots of seagulls. One spring a seagull was born named Jimmy Brady. He was a fine little seagull, but his brothers picked on him something terrible, and he grew up feeling nervous and very unsure of himself. He thought he was ugly, and when it came time to jump off the cliff and fly, Jimmy just couldn’t do it. He didn’t believe that a seagull, as horrible and klutzy as he believed himself to be, could ever soar over the waves as a seagull should. ...

I have written frequently on this website about the hand-in-glove relationship between psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical companies. It is my general position that the business-first orientation of the pharmaceutical companies, coupled with their willingness to pay large sums of money to co-operative psychiatrists, has been, and continues to be, a corrupting influence. I have recently come across two articles by Carl Elliot, MD, PhD. “How to Get Away with Academic Misconduct at the University of Minnesota,” and “And That’s the News from the Department of Psychiatry." ...

A regular commenter to this website has drawn my attention to a bill that has been proposed in the Connecticut state legislature. The bill would require public school and homeschooled children to be assessed by mental health practitioners at grades 6, 8, 10, and 12. The bill, sponsored by Senator Toni Harp and Representative Toni Walker, is in response to the recent Sandy Hook murders. And so it starts. Given the built-in vagueness of the DSM, and the inclusiveness bias of the mental health business, the outcome of these screenings (should the bill become law) is predictable: more and more parents disempowered with regards to their parenting responsibilities; more drugged children, and, tragically, more mass murders. ...

Last Saturday our local newspaper ran an article called “Mental Health Needs Reform.” It was written by a psychologist, and the main thrust of the piece was that if “serious mental health care reform” is not implemented, we will see more mass murders similar to those at Aurora and Newtown. The article contained several unwarranted assumptions, and recommended that mental hospitals “rebuild facilities for treating those patients.” My position, of course, is that there are no mental illnesses, and that cold-blooded killers are not sick in any meaningful sense of the term, but are, rather, individuals who have not internalized an age-appropriate respect for the lives and welfare of other human beings. ...

In the wake of the Connecticut mass murders of last month, a great deal of attention, official and otherwise, is being focused on the “mentally ill.” Politicians of all persuasions are proclaiming that we need more funding for the so-called mental health services, and predictably, the various practitioners and centers are lining up with their hands outstretched. The spurious logic, of course, is never identified, or if it is, it gets lost in the rhetoric. Mental illness is presented (and accepted) as the proximate cause of the violence. If one were to ask a mental health practitioner why an individual was so crazy and acted so brutally, the reply would be: Because he has a mental illness. But if one were to press the matter and ask: How do you know he has a mental illness? the only possible response is: Because he is so crazy and acted so brutally. The only evidence for the so-called illness is the very behavior it purports to explain. ...

There is an interesting article in last month’s issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. The article, titled Psychiatry beyond the current paradigm, was authored by Pat Bracken, an Irish psychiatrist, and 28 other British and Irish psychiatrists. The gist of the piece is that the current psychiatric paradigm, which the authors describe as “applied neuroscience,” is not supported by the evidence and needs to be abandoned. Here are some quotes: ...

Until now, I’ve pretty much steered clear of DSM-5. My reason for this is that the upcoming revision represents, to my mind, a distraction from the central issue, i.e., that the whole notion of mental illness is spurious, destructive nonsense. My position is that the purpose of DSM is to expand psychiatric turf and to legitimize the pushing of mood/behavior-altering pharmaceuticals. In the US (and I believe in most developed countries) you can’t prescribe a drug without a diagnosis. And the APA has never neglected its primary mission in this area. ...

We’ve known for years that drug companies give gifts to physicians. The gifts have taken many forms – pens, vacations, meals, free samples, etc… Physicians always insisted that these gifts didn’t influence their prescribing practice – that they always prescribed strictly in the best interests of their clients. Two trends have been exposed in recent years which demonstrate just how depraved this hand-in-glove relationship has become. Firstly, the “thought leader” ruse. Here’s how it works. A drug rep, usually an attractive young, perfectly groomed female, approaches a physician, usually male, and tells the physician that he has been identified as a thought leader in his area, and that they would like to recruit him to give presentations to groups of physicians and other healthcare workers. The physician, of course, will be paid generously for his time. He says “sure,” and the dance begins. The drug rep arranges the “training” sessions. The drug company provides the script and the refreshments. The mark – I mean the physician – delivers the script, in which the merits of the drug company’s product are lauded to the detriment of competitors. At the end of the session, the physician receives a check and goes away contented. Over the next few months more such sessions will be organized and the physician begins to think of his “speech” checks as regular income. He will also receive “coaching” from the drug rep if his presentation seems to lack the kind of conviction that the drug company feels warranted. (After all, they are paying the piper). ...