A former psychiatrist, alarmed by what the profession’s become, reviews the latest farcical use of psychiatrists in a high-profile trial, and then considers the larger situation:
… These days, psychiatric diagnoses are based on the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,’’ published by the American Psychiatric Association. This hefty volume is a main money-maker for the association, upward of a million dollars in annual sales.
… It is … tarnished by many of the specialists being paid to be involved in studies of drugs to treat the illnesses they list as their expertise. The temptation for them to find a drug that will treat a diagnosis they can specify and in which they are the expert is significant.
The current conflict-of-interest investigations – including by Congress – into psychiatrists getting paid to do research that might prove the efficacy of the drugs they use to treat their patients are well documented. If a drug company can link a particular drug to a particular diagnosis, bingo – a blockbuster drug can earn over a billion dollars a year. The lucrative link between a diagnosis and a drug to treat it, when diagnosis itself is culture-bound and often subjective, pollutes the impartiality of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,’’ and opens the courtroom door to the psycho-battles that demean and confuse…
The corruption not only of examining rooms and courtrooms, but also of universities, by ghost-writers, shills, and mercenaries, emerges more and more clearly. University Diaries looks forward, as always, to chronicling it.
July 13th, 2009 at 6:25AM
Along the lines of linking diagnosis and a drug to treat it:
I don’t watch much television – UD doesn’t either.
Recently I had to watch a lot of television and was disgusted by the direct advertising of prescription drugs to the public. "Ask your doctor…"
Talk about pharma-whoring…
July 13th, 2009 at 6:40AM
Those ads were one of the reasons I stopped watching. They’re obscene.