Home
Parenting Tips Newsletter
Resources
Letter from the author
Contact
Biopsychiatry Illuminated
THE CANDLELIGHT PROJECT
by Bob Collier
|
3 November 2003 Issue 66 This week, some excerpts from a very informative article I discovered called 'Psychiatry and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex'. It sheds some candlelight on the origins of the alliance between psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry and on its relationships with other organisations. "In the early 1970s the APA [American Psychiatric Association] was in financial trouble. It was losing membership and its total income was $2 to $4 million per year, compared to its current income of over $21 million. The newspapers and journals were operating in the red instead of generating huge surpluses through drug company advertising. In general psychiatry was losing badly in the competition with psychologists, social workers, counselors, family therapists, and other nonmedical professionals who charge lower fees for psychotherapy patients. Psychiatric journals and newspapers were filled with gloom, lamenting that psychiatrists could no longer easily fill their workweeks. At the same time, psychiatry was coming under increasing criticism about psychosurgery, electroshock, and the newly publicized drug-induced disease, tardive dyskinesia. A turning point was the conflict over whether or not to divest from drug company influence. In April 1974 the American Journal of Psychiatry reported that "the matter of APA's relationship with industry, especially the pharmaceutical companies, was becoming a concern for some members of the board of trustees, who felt that "APA's relationships with pharmaceutical companies were going beyond the bounds of professionalism, were compromising our principles, and in some instances were involving members in conflicts of interest." These doubts were being raised about a degree of involvement that looks petty by today's standards. In response to the doubters, APA formed the Task Force to Study the Impact of the Potential Loss of Pharmaceutical Support. Its very title suggests the fear that independence from the drug companies struck in the hearts of the leadership. The task force concluded that many local APA member organizations as well as various training programs would fold without the "lifeblood" support of the drug companies. Continued support for seminars at the national conventions also was found acceptable, provided that it was not credited directly to individual drug companies. The floodgates of drug company influence were opened and would grow wider each year. Nowadays dozens of seminars are supported by the drug companies, and the individual names of the companies are honored conspicuously with advertisements in psychiatric journals and newspapers prior to the meetings. A lonely voice, Robert Seidenberg, clinical professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York, Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, protested the APA's decision to cozy up to the drug companies in a November 2, 1979, letter to Psychiatric News. He calls the policy of drug company dependence "the nadir of ethical behavior." Still struggling to make ends meet, in 1980 the APA board of directors threw ethical caution to the winds and "voted to encourage pharmaceutical companies to support scientific or cultural activities rather than strictly social activities as a part of the Annual Meeting program. . . . " In other words, give us more than coffee and entertainment; give direct support to our major professional and scientific activities. In the following years, APA went on to develop a Political Action Committee (PAC) and special departments aimed at influencing Congress, state legislators, the media, and the public to hold psychiatry in higher esteem and to support its economic interests. Many of these promotional efforts are now supported by drug companies. Some of the motivation for psychiatry's new political thrust was expressed by the speaker-elect in his report published in the October 1984 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. The PAC, he tries to explain, was not "buying votes," but trying to better public policy. Meanwhile, he compares the rivalry between psychiatrists and psychologists to Star Wars, lamenting "an oversupply of competitive practitioners" that resulted in "a galaxy of turf wars." Whatever function APA had ever fulfilled as a professional organization was now superseded by its function as political advocate for the advancement of psychiatric and pharmaceutical business interests. Continually reiterated is the conviction that only a medical or biological image can enable psychiatry to compete economically." "Finally, there is the growing family movement, led by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), with a rapidly expanding membership surpassing 100,000. It and its state affiliates consider all severe psychosocial disorders to be biochemical in origin and advocate lobotomy, electroshock, and drugs. It resists the growing movement of psychiatric survivors and supporters of patients' rights in general. APA and NIMH [National Institute of Mental Health] work hand-in-glove with NAMI. They lobby Congress together and meet the press together. NAMI leaders have direct access to the leadership of APA and NIMH, and they help plan national campaigns on behalf of biopsychiatry. NAMI recently published a letter it received from outgoing NIMH director Lewis Judd in which he spoke of the "dedication and shared purpose which has forged a unique and strong relationship and collaboration between NAMI and NIMH." With no apparent awareness of the inappropriateness of handing a federal agency over to a self-serving parent lobbying group, Judd declared, "NIMH, in a very meaningful sense, is NAMI's Institute." He then went on to repeat their shared but wholly unproven credo: "During the last 15 years, we have unequivocally established that mental illnesses are brain related disorders, which often involve strong genetic influences." The public's false impression of breakthroughs in biological psychiatry is based on the repetition of these unfounded slogans. NAMI is not content to support its own viewpoint. As already noted, it personally attacks critics of biopsychiatry and advocates of psychosocial approaches. It lobbies against the funding of psychosocial research, most vehemently opposing any project that implicates parents in the problems of their offspring. Thus it has tried to stop funding of relatively noncontroversial studies indicating that the improvement of communication in families helps in the recovery of their mentally disabled members. NAMI has helped to develop and direct several high-profile media campaigns whose hidden agenda is convincing the public that the children of NAMI parents have diseases that cannot be blamed on the parents. It has cofounded the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, which funds research in psychiatry. Research investigators thereby become dependent for their livelihood on funding from an organization that compulsively opposes psychosocial viewpoints and vehemently supports biopsychiatric ones. Like the APA and its local branches, NAMI and some of its state organizations actively solicit and obtain support money from the drug companies. The fall 1990 issue of the Journal, the official publication of California Alliance for the Mentally Ill (CAMI), expresses gratitude for "generous financial contributions" from Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly, and Upjohn. Earlier we noted that Sandoz has given NAMI parents "scholarships" to pay for the newly approved and dangerous neuroleptic Clozaril (clozapine) for their offspring. The March 1990 issue of NAMI's national journal Advocate has an ad for Clozaril, plus an article describing the Sandoz scholarships, promoting the drug, and providing phone numbers to make it easier for physicians to get started using it. However, pressure on Sandoz more recently has caused the company to make it somewhat easier and cheaper to prescribe the drug." The health insurance industry is one of the 'major players' that I haven't looked at yet. This is what the article says about it: "Health insurers play a largely unexplored role in reinforcing the psychopharmaceutical complex. They tend to reimburse well for drugs, electroshock, and psychiatric hospitalization. On the other hand, they pay relatively little or nothing for psychotherapy and other forms of social rehabilitation, such as halfway houses, crisis centers, and residential homes, which ultimately can be more effective and less costly. Private practitioners, including psychologists and other nonmedical therapists, increasingly find themselves pressured by health insurers to give or to encourage drugs rather than to lose reimbursement for the treatment of specific patients. One colleague of mine, a psychologist, has been told by an insurance company to give one of his patients drugs for anxiety or the patient's coverage for the treatment will be terminated. The practice of psychotherapy has been vastly curtailed by insurance company policies and successful psychosocial innovations for severely impaired people have withered from lack of support." More about the American Psychiatric Association: "The APA's Division of Public Affairs and Joint Commission on Public Affairs have the task of increasing business. They publish a "Fact Sheet" to help psychiatrists sell themselves to the public. The Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (GAP) is a private group made up of leaders in the field. In 1987 GAP published Speaking Out for Psychiatry: A Handbook for Involvement with the Mass Media, in which they reprint the "Fact Sheet." Here are the estimates for how many Americans are in need of psychiatric services: Anxiety disorders: 11.1 million Depression: 9.4 million Schizophrenia: 1.5 million Substance and alcohol abuse: 25.5 million Emotional and developmental problems in children: 12 million These five estimates add up to 59.5 million Americans, and that's not including some of the more popular diagnostic categories, such as eating disorders, sexual dysfunctions, and organic brain disorders. Even assuming some inevitable overlap among the groups, 59.5 million potential consumers is a lot of business, more than enough to keep busy a mere forty thousand psychiatrists! Indeed, GAP's estimate that 15 to 25 percent of the elderly have "significant" mental illness would be enough to keep the entire profession occupied. Perhaps not having added up its own figures, GAP estimates that a mere one in five Americans need psychiatric treatment; but that's 20 percent of the population, or approximately fifty million Americans. Not content with 20 percent of Americans, NIMH has recently decided that one in five Americans suffers a mental problem in any six-month period. A Washington Post staff writer passed this on as the gospel truth in the June 27, 1989, Health magazine supplement." The article 'Psychiatry and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex' was written by Dr. Peter Breggin. You can read the complete article here: http://www.sntp.net/fda/big_money.htm For more information on this subject and psychiatry and drugs in general get yourself a copy of Toxic Psychiatry : Why Therapy, Empathy, and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock, and Biochemical Theories of the New Psychiatry by Peter R. Breggin, M.D., the book from which this information was excerpted. Learn more here: http://www.breggin.com/prbbooks.html Peter R. Breggin, M.D. founded The International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP) as a nonprofit research and educational network concerned with the impact of mental health theory and practices upon individual well-being, personal freedom, and family and community values. For 25 years ICSPP has been informing the professions, media and the public about the potential dangers of drugs, electroshock, psychosurgery, and the biological theories of psychiatry. Dr. Breggin's website is at: http://www.breggin.com/ |
ADHD-Report.com: The concerned
parents' guide to childrens' attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD/ADD)