Just in case you had any doubts that there are a great deal of politics and money involved in healthcare, look no further than some the entries posted by psychologist Bruce Levin over at the Huffington Post. Furious Seasons has the full coverage.

I feel profession bashing is too easy to do, and you have to take as good as you give. For instance, psychologists shouldn’t be proud of their own professional association’s tortured stance on, well, torture, flip-flopping like a fish out of water over the past year. Which has been heatedly opposed by many of its own members (resulting in Sharon Brehm’s (PDF) and Beth Shinn’s resignations, among many others).

Nor should they be proud of their continued push away from their roots in psychology and behavior to wanting to prescribe all those wonderful psychiatric medications. The same medications Bruce Levine says has corrupted the field of psychiatry.

I hope he and other psychologists see the irony here, because we, as a profession, are sadly doomed to repeat the mistakes of other professions if we learn nothing from them. Yes, psychiatry has been in bed with pharmaceutical companies, and yes, arguably both have misled the public about the our true understanding of how psychiatric medications work in the brain (the answer still being, we still don’t really know). But now psychology is getting into bed with these same companies, so what, if anything will the profession do to help ensure it remains free of the inevitable influence found in such relationships?

Dr. John Grohol is the founder & CEO of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 30 Oct 2007
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