Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T05:56:30.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Co-opting psychiatry: The alliance between academic psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2011

Joanna Moncrieff
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The Editorial present the arguments that an alliance between academic psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry is harmful through a critical review of the academic literature and media coverage of activities of the pharmaceutical industry. The industry and the psychiatric profession both gain advantages from promoting biomedical models of psychiatric disturbance and pharmacological treatment. This confluence of interests has lead to the exaggeration of the efficacy of psychiatric drugs and neglect of their adverse effects and has distorted psychiatric knowledge and practice. Academic psychiatry has helped the industry to colonise more and more areas of modern life in order to expand the market for psychotropic drugs. Persuading people to understand their problems as biological deficiencies obscures the social origin and context of distress and prevents people from seeking social or political solutions. Psychiatry has the power to challenge the dominance of the pharmaceutical industry and should put its efforts into developing alternatives to routine drug treatment. Psychiatry needs to disengage from the industry if it wants to make genuine advances in understanding psychiatric disorder and help reverse the harmful social consequences of the widening medicalisation of human experience.

Type
Editorials
Information
Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 192 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

References

REFERENCES

Berenson, Alex (2006). Eli Lilly said to play down risk of top pill. New York Times, 17 December 2006.Google Scholar
Angst, J., Gamma, A., Benazzi, F., Ajdacic, V., Eich, & Rossler, W. (2003). Toward a re-definition of subthreshold bipolarity: epidemiology and proposed criteria for bipolar-II, minor bipolar disorders and hypomania. Journal of Affective Disorders 73, 133–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ban, T. (1996). They used to call it psychiatry. In The Psychopharmacologists, Vol. 1 (ed. Healy, D.), pp. 587–620. Altman (Chapman and Hall): London.Google Scholar
Breggin, P.R. (1993). Toxic Psychiatry. Fontana: London.Google Scholar
Collier, J. (2007). Inside big pharma's box of tricks. British Medical Journal 334, 209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craddock, N. & Owen, M.J. (2005). The beginning of the end for the Kraeplinian dichotomy. British Journal of Psychiatry 186, 364–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dazzan, P., Morgan, K.D., Orr, K., Hutchinson, G., Chitnis, X., Suckling, J., Fearon, P., McGuire, P.K., Mallett, R.M., Jones, P.B., Leff, J. & Murray, R.M. (2005). Different effects of typical and atypical antipsychotics on grey matter in first episode psychosis: the AESOP study. Neuropsychopharmacology 30, 765–774.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dinan, T.G. (2004). Schizophrenia and diabetes 2003: An expert consensus meeting. British Journal of Psychiatry, Suppl. Apr., 47, s53–s54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Editor (2005). Corrigendum for Calton, British J Psych 187 (2) 195. British Journal of Psychiatry 187, 390.Google Scholar
Fisher, G., Sheeky, K., Launier, K. & Lallanilla, M. (2004). Drug maker withheld Paxil study data. ABC News, 9 December 2004.Google Scholar
Friedman, R.A. (2006). Uncovering an epidemic–screening for mental illness in teens. New England Journal of Medicine 355, 2717–2719.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hamilton, C. (2003). Growth Fetish. Allen & Unwin: Sydney.Google Scholar
Healy, D. (2006). Manufacturing consensus. Culture Medicine and Psychiatry 30, 135–156.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Heres, S., Davis, J., Maino, K., Jetzinger, E., Kissling, W. & Leucht, S. (2006). Why olanzapine beats risperidone, risperidone beats quetiapine, and quetiapine beats olanzapine: an exploratory analysis of head-to-head comparison studies of second-generation antipsychotics. American Journal of Psychiatry 163, 185–194.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jacyna, L.S. (1982). Somatic theories of mind and the interests of medicine in Britain 1850-1879. Medical History 16, 233–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaptchuk, T.J. (2001). The double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial: gold standard or golden calf? Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 54, 541–549.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kessler, R.C., Coccaro, E.F., Fava, M., Jaeger, S., Jin, R. & Walters, E. (2006). The prevalence and correlates of DSM-IV intermittent explosive disorder in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry 63, 669–678.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kirsch, I. & Moncrieff, J. (2007). Clinical trials and the response rate illusion. Contemporary Clinical Trials 28(4), 348–351.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koran, L.M., Chuong, H.W., Bullock, K.D. & Smith, S.C. (2003). Citalopram for compulsive shopping disorder: an open-label study followed by double-blind discontinuation. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 64, 793–798.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lehtinen, V., Aaltonen, J., Koffert, T., Rakkolainen, V. & Syvalahti, E. (2000). Two-year outcome in first-episode psychosis treated according to an integrated model. Is immediate neuroleptisation always needed? European Psychiatry 15, 312–320.Google Scholar
Lewis, B.E. (2003). Prozac and the post-human politics of cyborgs. Journal of Medical Humanities 24, 49–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lieberman, J.A., Tollefson, G.D., Charles, C., Zipursky, R., Sharma, T., Kahn, R.S., Keefe, R.S., Green, A.I., Gur, R.E., McEvoy, J., Perkins, D., Hamer, R.M., Gu, H., Tohen, M. & HGDH Study Group (2005). Antipsychotic drug effects on brain morphology in first-episode psychosis. Archives of General Psychiatry 62, 361–370.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Melander, H., Ahlqvist-Rastad, J., Meijer, G. & Beermann, B. (2003). Evidence b(i)ased medicine-selective reporting from studies sponsored by pharmaceutical industry: review of studies in new drug applications. British Medical Journal 326, 1171–1173.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moncrieff, J. (1999). An investigation into the precedents of modern drug treatment in psychiatry. History of Psychiatry 10, 475–490.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moncrieff, J. (2006). Why is it so difficult to stop psychiatric drug treatment? It may be nothing to do with the original problem. Medical Hypotheses 67, 517–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moncrieff, J. & Cohen, D. (2006). Do antidepressants cure or create abnormal brain states? PLoS Medicine 3, e240.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moncrieff, J. & Crawford, M.J. (2001). British psychiatry in the 20th century—observations from a psychiatric journal. Social Science and Medicine 53, 349–356.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moore, S. (2007). First time mental-health screening identifies need. The Press Republican, 28 January 2007.Google Scholar
National Institute for Clinical Excellence (2004). Depression: Management of Depression in Primary and Secondary Care. Clinical Practice Guideline Number 23. National Institute for Clinical Excellence: London.Google Scholar
Newcomer, J.W. & Haupt, D.W. (2006). The metabolic effects of antipsychotic medications. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 51, 480–491.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Olfson, M., Blanco, C., Liu, L., Moreno, C. & Laje, G. (2006). National trends in the outpatient treatment of children and adolescents with antipsychotic drugs. Archives of General Psychiatry 63, 679–685.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paykel, E.S. & Priest, R.G. (1992). Recognition and management of depression in general practice: consensus statement. British Medical Journal 305, 1198–1202.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pharmaceutical Marketing (2000). Practical Guides: Medical Education, Parts I and II. Pharmaceutical Marketing. Retrieved June 4, 2007, from http://www.pmlive.comGoogle Scholar
Rose, N. (2004). Becoming neurochemical selves. In Biotechnology, Commerce and Civil Society (ed. Stehr, N.), pp. 89–128. Transaction Publishers: New Brunswick (N.J.).Google Scholar
Scull, A. (1994). Somatic treatments and the historiography of psychiatry. History of Psychiatry 5(17 Pt.1), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stagnitti, M. (2005). Antidepressant Use in the US Civilian Non-Institutionalised Population, 2002. Statistical Brief #77. Medical Expenditure Panel, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: Rockville.MD.Google Scholar
Steen, R.G., Mull, C., McClure, R., Hamer, R.M. & Lieberman, J.A. (2006). Brain volume in first-episode schizophrenia: systematic review and meta-analysis of magnetic resonance imaging studies. British Journal of Psychiatry 188, 510–518.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swazey, J. (1974). Chlorpromazine in Psychiatry. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Waddington, J.L. & Youssef, H.A. (1996). Cognitive dysfunction in chronic schizophrenia followed prospectively over 10 years and its longitudinal relationship to the emergence of tardive dyskinesia. Psychological Medicine 26, 681–688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whittington, C.J., Kendall, T., Fonagy, P., Cottrell, D., Cotgrove, A. & Boddington, E. (2004). Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in childhood depression: systematic review of published versus unpublished data. Lancet 363, 1341–1345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed