Posts

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." ...

In November, Joanna Moncrieff, MD, a British psychiatrist who works as a Senior Lecturer in psychiatry at University College London and a practicing consultant psychiatrist, started her own blog. What’s remarkable about this blog is that it is highly critical of psychiatry. Dr. Moncrieff marshals important facts and arguments in this area, and it is probably safe to say that her popularity among her peers is in decline. The facts that she adduces, however, are indisputable, and her qualities of honesty, courage, and integrity are evident in everything she writes. ...

I have just read a very interesting and insightful article on this topic. It’s called After DSM-5: A Critical Mental Health Research Agenda for the 21st Century. It was written by Jeffrey Lacasse, PhD, and is a guest editorial published in Research on Social Work Practice. Here are some quotes: "At times, it has seemed that the APA has behaved very much like a corporation seeking profit and influence rather than a scientific organization charged with the crucially important task of defining mental disorders." ...

Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, is the President of the APA, and every two weeks or so he writes psychiatric propaganda articles on Psychiatric News (the APA’s online bulletin). On December 26, his piece was titled APA Successful in Attaining Higher Work Values for Psychiatry. Here’s the first paragraph: "In an ideal world, value and price would be closely aligned. This alignment doesn’t occur, however, when the value of a service or good isn’t understood. One only has to look at the huge disparity between the salaries of teachers compared with entertainers and sports figures to appreciate this incongruity; or between compensation in the financial-services industry and medicine. For too long, this has especially been the case for psychiatric services. Mental illness is a health care disparity, and mental health care has been stigmatized and undervalued, as have been the physicians who provide it. The result has been inappropriately low reimbursement rates for psychiatric treatment and a corresponding lack of access to mental health care for too many patients." ...

As my regular readers know, I am a big fan of Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, eminent President of the American Psychiatric Association. I study his bulletins on Psychiatric News avidly, not only for the insights they provide in the areas of human frailty and self-deception, but also for their literary qualities of obfuscation and semantic distortion. It is, therefore, with some alarm that I confess that I missed the good doctor’s epistle of December 13. This was pointed out to me by a reader, who was also kind enough to say that without my clarificatory commentary, he is simply unable to fathom Dr. Lieberman’s insights and erudition. ...

Yesterday, December 26, at 8:25 p.m., the following comment was posted on my December 16 post on the Murphy Mental Health Bill. "Read the article in today's Wall Street Journal (12/26/13), 'A Mental-Health Overhaul', and you cannot help but be in favor of the Murphy Bill. It is a huge misrepresentation to say it is about 'coercive tactics'. Take the bill piece by piece and debate it. If you have experienced the mental healthcare system you would recognize that this legislation is badly needed and long over due." ...

BACKGROUND On November 20, JAMA Psychiatry (formerly Archives of General Psychiatry) published an interesting letter. It was headed: Failure to Report Financial Disclosure Information, and was signed by Robert D. Gibbons PhD, David J Weiss PhD, Paul A. Pilkonis PhD, Ellen Frank, PhD , and David J. Kupfer MD. The letter is an apology for failing to disclose a financial interest in an article, Development of a Computerized Adaptive Test for Depression, that had appeared in Archives of General Psychiatry a year earlier (November 2012). The article described a computerized questionnaire for depression (the CAT-DI) and was generally positive with regards to the potential usefulness of the test in clinical settings. In the article, the authors had clearly stated that they had no conflicts of interest, but that: ...

BACKGROUND On December 8, I received the following question from a reader: (The subject matter is the controversial CAFÉ – Comparisons of Atypicals in First Episode of Psychosis - study. This was the study in which Dan Markingson committed suicide.) "It appears that there was no head-to-head with a control group taking a placebo pill. Nor was there a control group featuring 'old' types of 'antipsychotic'. If that was the case then it is very poor study. If you are just looking at 3 'new' subtypes of a 'new' class - then what on earth can you hope to show from the data." ...

It is no secret that pharma-psychiatry has come under considerable criticism in recent years. In general, they do not respond to these criticisms, but instead they continue to beat the same old drum: mental illness is becoming increasingly prevalent; we need more mental health screenings; we need more funding for “treatment”; and we need wider coercive powers to ensure that these sick people take their drugs. They are also using the school shootings to generate alarm about “untreated” mental illness, and are calling in support from various quarters, including politicians. ...

There’s a new entry on the Tell Your Story section of my website. The author, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells how during his teenage years, his social skills were poor, and he met the criteria for schizoid personality disorder, the essential features of which are social isolation and emotional detachment. Here are two quotes: "By the end of this project I had developed solid social skills, created an interesting circle of friends and no longer met the criteria for 'schizoid personality disorder'. This is without any psychiatry, medication, or even the knowledge that I was 'suffering' from something that many consider a 'disorder'." ...