Psychiatric "Spin"

On January 2, 2017, I published a short post titled Carrie Fisher Dead at Age 60 on Behaviorism and Mental Health. The article was published simultaneously on Mad in America. On January 4, a response from Carolina Partners was entered into the comments string on both sites. Carolina Partners in Mental Healthcare, PLLC, is a large psychiatric group practice based in North Carolina. According to their website, they comprise 14 psychiatrists, 7 psychologists, 34 Advanced Practice Nurse Practitioners/Physicians Assistants, and 43 Therapists and Counselors. They have 27 North Carolina locations. ...

On October 13, an interesting article was published on the Huffington Post Blog. The author is Jessica Gold, MD, a psychiatry resident at Stanford University; the post is titled Inpatient Psychiatry: Not all Needles, Drugs And Locks. The article is a personal experience/opinion piece, the gist of which is that people who criticize or condemn psychiatry simply don’t understand the complexities and needs of psychiatry’s “patients”, particularly the need for locked wards. ...

On May 7, Allen Frances, MD, posted an article on the HuffPost site. The piece was titled Antidepressants Work, But Only For Really Depressed People. Superficially, the article presents itself as a call to limit the prescribing of the so-called antidepressant drugs to severe cases; but the piece can, I suggest, be more accurately characterized as Dr. Frances’s latest attempt to distance himself, and psychiatry in general, from the pill-peddling frenzy that has characterized the profession for the past thirty or forty years ...

At the risk of stating the obvious, ADHD is not an illness. Rather, it is an unreliable and disempowering label for a loose collection of arbitrarily chosen and vaguely defined behaviors. ADHD has been avidly promoted as an illness by pharma-psychiatry for the purpose of selling stimulant drugs. In which endeavor, they have been phenomenally successful, but, as in other areas of psychiatry, the hoax is unraveling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...

On February 22, Allen Frances, MD, published an article titled: Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry on the HuffPost Blog. The general theme of the article is that psychiatry may have some problems, but it is basically sound, wholesome, and necessary. Here are some quotes, interspersed with my comments: "Psychiatry used to be a biopsychosocial profession that allowed time to get to know the person, not just treat the symptom. But drastic cuts in the funding of mental health services have dramatically reduced the quality of the service they can provide. Psychiatrists are now forced to follow very large panels of patients. Most of the limited time they are allowed with each is spent discussing symptoms, adjusting the meds, and determining side effects. Little time is left to forge a healing relationship, provide support, and teach skills through psychotherapy. And patients usually get to a psychiatrist- if at all- as a last resort, only after other things have failed- and with the expectation by the patient and referral source that the main purpose of the visit is just to prescribe medication." ...

Last month (February 2016), the British Journal of Psychiatry published an online bulletin titled BASH: badmouthing, attitudes and stigmatisation in healthcare as experienced by medical students, by Ali Ajaz et al. Here’s the abstract: "Aims and method We used an online questionnaire to investigate medical students' perceptions of the apparent hierarchy between specialties, whether they have witnessed disparaging comments (‘badmouthing’ or ‘bashing’) against other specialists and whether this has had an effect on their career choice. ...

On November 9, 2015, Allen Frances, MD, posted an interesting article on the Huffington Post’s Blog. The article is titled Why Are So Many College and High School Kids Abusing Adderall. The gist of the article is that the “excessive use of ADHD medication” is a more legitimate target for a war on drugs than the ongoing war with the drug cartels. The Huffington Post article is unusual, in that most of it is written by Gretchen LeFever Watson, PhD. Dr. Frances wrote the introduction, ending with “I have invited Dr Gretchen LeFever Watson, a clinical psychologist and public health researcher, to describe this growing problem.” Dr. Watson wrote the main body of the piece; and Dr. Frances finished up with some brief concluding remarks. ...

On October 13, 2015, Allen Frances, MD, published a post on his Psychology Today blog Saving Normal. The post is titled What Drives Our Dumb and Disorganized Mental Health Policies, and the subtitle is “Naming and shaming the power players.” The article has also been published in Psychiatric Times and the Huffington Post. Dr. Frances is a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University, and was chairman of the DSM-IV Task Force. ...

Ronald Pies, MD, is one of American’s most eminent and prestigious psychiatrists. He is the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Psychiatric Times, and he is a Professor of Psychiatry at both Syracuse and Tufts. I disagree with many of Dr. Pies’ contentions, and I have expressed these disagreements in detail in various posts (for instance, here, here, and here). But there is one area where I have to acknowledge Dr. Pies’ efforts: he never gives up in his defense of his beloved psychiatry, even in the face of the most damaging counter-evidence. ...

On April 25, 2014, Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, then President of the APA, announced that the association had engaged the services of Porter Novelli, a prestigious PR company based in Washington DC and currently operating in 60 different countries. "Mindful of the continuing stigma associated with mental illness and psychiatric treatment, we retained an outside consultant agency (Porter Novelli) to review APA’s communications capabilities, needs, and opportunities. Based on its report, we are now moving forward with an initiative to enact a sophisticated and proactive communications plan that will be directed both internally to APA members and externally to the media, mental health stakeholder groups, and the general public." ...