Earlier this week, the Boston Globe’s health blog dived into the issue of conflicts of interest for the latest mental disorder diagnostic manual being formulated. The diagnostic manual is known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and a fifth version of …
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I don’t agree with your second interpretation; these conflicts of interest do have a big impact in term of treatments! that’s why drug makers often don’t even need advertising of a treatment, once they’ve presented the disease as an important health issue, underevaluated thus undertreated, etc. We see this here, in Europe, where the direct-to-consumer-advertising is illegal. Drug companies set up an “information campaign” (ie. adverstising…) about a disease presented as potentially dramatic. Spots run in all the media, papers are published in the medical press and you can be sure all the people will aske for medication…
Just ask the doctor, who will prescribed the drugs the drug reps recommendended…
Conflicts of interest mean corruption and they are never harmless, never innocent.
I agree with the above poster. While the DSM isn’t a treatment manual it provides the categories of disorders that are the subject of research focus where that research focus is on developing new treatments. While there is a move toward studying symptoms rather than the categories in the DSM the move is fairly recent and is a great deal more prevalent in clinical cognitive neuro-psychology than in psychiatry.
I think it is appalling that financial interests are often undisclosed. I think it is appalling that people aren’t required to state them and that their claims aren’t questioned more thoroughly given their financial ties. It undermines psychiatry (and aspects of medicine) as scientifically driven. Of course one could say similar things about clinical psychology…
Disorders don’t make it into the modern versions of the DSM without a pre-existing and significant research base. There is no specific or accepted scientific methodology for creating a “new” disorder.
Pharmaceutical companies are the number one funders of research into mental disorders.
Yes, all professionals should disclose such conflicts of interest. But this article had nothing to do with professionals not disclosing such conflicts. It was merely discussing the 14% increase in ties to the pharmaceutical companies.
so glad to see this here. so much damage can be done by people with little time for facts and medical history, but with a copy of the dsm.
will say more at the debate over ptsd article..
Bravo! Dr Grohol, bravo!