The remarkable American Psychiatric Association (until recently ruled by Alan Schatzberg) makes money two ways:
1.) Publishing, and regularly revising with an eye toward broadening the categories under which people can be considered mentally disordered, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
2.) Making the people who work for the APA devising these broader categories sign confidentiality agreements so that the APA can without hindrance from the scientific community enlarge the number of Americans who must buy psychotropic drugs.
Now, as Allen Frances notes, the APA has gone a step further, loosing its lawyers to stalk bloggers who use the letters DSM in their blog’s name. It’s all part of protecting psychiatry’s, and pharma’s, enormous investment in retaining ownership of the who’s mentally disordered franchise.
January 5th, 2012 at 12:40AM
You’ve had experience with copyright trolls, but the APA is taking this too far. They look like authoritarian thugs who can brook no outside dissent or examination. If it’s “science” then it is in the public domain.
January 5th, 2012 at 11:53AM
aj, that’s an interesting question as many kinds of “evidence” based psychotherapies (the kind backed by insurance companies,prof. organizations, universities, and conservative govt agencies) are now exclusive properties with massive fees for training and ongoing “supervision”.
January 8th, 2012 at 4:38PM
[…] How the American Psychiatric Association makes its money. What a disgusting organization. Freud, who was horrified by psychiatry and set out to create an alternative for its barbaric methods, would be shocked to see how people are still enslaved by it. […]
February 27th, 2012 at 8:10AM
[…] Margaret Soltan, an English professor at George Washington University, wrote: “It’s all part of protecting psychiatry’s, and pharma’s, enormous investment in retaining ownership of the who’s mentally disordered franchise.” […]