Psychiatric "Spin"

On November 1, Psychiatric News published 50 Years After: Will We Realize JFK’s Vision for Mental Health Care? Psychiatric News is an APA publication, and the piece was written by APA’s President, Jeffrey Lieberman, MD. Dr. Lieberman begins by reminding us that in 1963, President Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act (CMHA) into law. Dr. Lieberman points out that the CMHA: "…was intended to set the foundation for contemporary mental health policy, one premised on the establishment of community-based care as an alternative to institutionalization." ...

On October 23, Psychiatric News (the APA’s media outlet) ran an article titled ‘60 Minutes’ Interviews APA President on Schizophrenia. The article was written by Mark Moran, a Psychiatric News reporter. The piece opens with a quote from Jeffrey Lieberman, MD (President of the APA): "'60 Minutes' showed a genuine interest beyond simply producing what was expected to be a popular segment and indicated a desire to do follow-up reporting on psychosis and violence." ...

 I’ve recently read an article called Safeguarding a Generation of Children from Over-diagnosis and Prescription of Psychotropic Drugs. It’s written by Dave Traxson, who works as an Educational Psychologist in the UK, and is posted on the DxSummit website, an online platform for rethinking mental health, a forum in which the concepts underlying pharma-psychiatry are questioned and challenged. Here are some quotes from the article: "I view the trend towards mass medication of children with mind altering and potentially toxic drugs and ‘drug cocktails’ as a form of psycho-economic imperialism. By that I mean that young peoples’ developing minds are being colonized, using biochemicals, for huge commercial profit and in effect, increased social control. This has resulted from carefully constructed ‘business plans’ in boardrooms which some years ago saw the population of children in the western world as a great market expansion opportunity. The pharmaceutical companies have reaped the huge financial rewards of this rich and very bitter harvest ever since." ...

There’s a new article on Psychiatric News titled Change, Challenge, and Opportunity: Psychiatry Through the Looking Glass of Research. It’s dated October 17, and was authored by Steven Hyman, MD, and Jeffrey Lieberman, MD. Thanks to Mental Health Law on Twitter for the link. Dr. Lieberman is President of the APA. Dr. Hyman was Director of NIMH from 1996 to 2001, and is now the Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute. The Broad Institute is affiliated with Harvard University, and Dr. Hyman is a Harvard Distinguished Service Professor. ...

I recently came across an APA article titled Change, Challenge, and Opportunity: Psychiatry in the Age of Health Care Reform. It was co-authored by Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, and Howard Goldman, MD, PhD, and dated October 3. The article discusses the implications of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) for psychiatry, and also reviews progress of the 2008 Mental Health Parity Act. The latter mandated that insurance coverage for “mental illnesses” be essentially on a par with coverage for general medical problems, but the act has not yet been implemented in its entirety. The authors also point out that there are provisions in the ACA that focus on reform of the actual health care services, as well as the reform of health care insurance. ...

On September 30, the Wisconsin State Journal posted an article online. It’s called County Executive Joe Parisi proposes new mental health program for county school district, and was written by Andrea Anderson. [Thanks to S. Randolph Kretchmar on Twitter for the link.] The gist of the article is that Joe Parisi, the County Executive of Dane County, Wisconsin, is proposing to allocate $90,000 each to two school districts “…to treat student mental health…” ...

Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, has written a guest post, In the Wake of the Navy Yard Shooting: A Way Forward, on EverydayHealth. Everyday Health Inc. is a media company which operates for-profit websites on health and related matters. It’s been confirmed that the Navy Yard shooter had been taking trazadone, an antidepressant of the serotonin antagonist and reuptake inhibitor (SARI) class, and the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs has indicated that it plans to investigate to what extent the drug might have been a causative factor. ...

On September 12, Jeffry Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, posted an article on Psychiatric News titled IPS to Feature Patrick Kennedy, Celebrate Community Psychiatry. The article is a preview of an APA conference scheduled for October 10-13 in Philadelphia: “Transforming Psychiatric Practice, Reforming Health Care Delivery.” Dr. Lieberman tells us that he is very excited about the conference, and that the theme is particularly relevant "…given the changes we are experiencing in the profession and some of the exciting program events that I hope will support APA’s goal of being in the forefront of changes in the profession under health care reform." ...

It’s that time of the month, and Dr. Lieberman has written another post, Change, Challenge and Opportunity: Psychiatry in Age of Reform and Enlightenment, on the APA’s website, Psychiatric News. He tells us that these are changing times, and that he, for one, is choosing to see these changes as positive. He leads with a quote from Bob Dylan: "The line it is drawn, The curse it is cast The slow one now, Will later be fast As the present now, Will later be past" ...

BACKGROUND Those of us on this side of the debate, who criticize psychiatry for medicalizing and drugging virtually every problem of human existence, sometimes ask the question: If all these problems are truly illnesses of the brain, then why are they not being treated by neurologists? The standard psychiatric response to this question has been: neurology deals with nervous system illnesses that result in problems of movement, sensation, physical pain, etc.; psychiatry deals with nervous system problems that result in disordered thinking, feeling, and general behavior. Psychiatry has never produced the proof that these latter problems are caused by illnesses of the brain/nervous system, but that’s a separate issue. ...