{"id":10378,"date":"2011-06-16T20:30:28","date_gmt":"2011-06-17T00:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=10378"},"modified":"2011-06-16T22:33:07","modified_gmt":"2011-06-17T02:33:07","slug":"a-long-awaited-corner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2011\/06\/16\/a-long-awaited-corner\/","title":{"rendered":"a long awaited corner…"},"content":{"rendered":"
I am not an anti-psychiatrist. If anything, I’m the opposite – someone who is appalled at the misdirection that the specialty has taken. So I see the time I spend chasing down the kind of things I write about as my small attempt to get us on track. Psychiatrists are physicians who work to help the mentally ill. Any diversion from that is "off track" in my book. So I’ve been pleased to read the recent writings of Dr. Allen Frances [been <\/strong>there, done that…<\/strong><\/a>] who sees the DSM-5 revision team as off track, and has been willing to admit some of his own mistakes as leader of the DSM-IV revision in 1994. I think his point is well-made and important. <\/div>\n
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It’s not too late to save ‘normal’<\/font><\/u><\/a>
Opinion<\/font><\/strong>
Psychiatry’s latest DSM goes too far in creating new mental disorders<\/font><\/sup><\/a>
LA Times<\/font><\/strong>
By Allen Frances
March 01, 2010<\/div>\n

As chairman of the task force that created the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), which came out in 1994, I learned from painful experience how small changes in the definition of mental disorders can create huge, unintended consequences. Our panel tried hard to be conservative and careful but inadvertently contributed to three false "epidemics" – attention deficit disorder, autism and childhood bipolar disorder. Clearly, our net was cast too wide and captured many "patients" who might have been far better off never entering the mental health system.<\/sup><\/p>\n

The first draft of the next edition of the DSM, posted for comment with much fanfare last month, is filled with suggestions that would multiply our mistakes and extend the reach of psychiatry dramatically deeper into the ever-shrinking domain of the normal. This wholesale medical imperialization of normality could potentially create tens of millions of innocent bystanders who would be mislabeled as having a mental disorder. The pharmaceutical industry would have a field day – despite the lack of solid evidence of any effective treatments for these newly proposed diagnoses…<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
So like many of you who have written me [here[1]<\/strong><\/a>[2]<\/strong><\/a><\/sup> and privately], I didn’t much like seeing Dr. Frances’ name in the Rothman Report I reviewed below [detestable…<\/font><\/a><\/strong>] as part of creating treatment guidelines under the influence of a pharmaceutical company in the late 1990’s. What I would hope he would do is what he’s done in looking back at his time with the DSM-IV. If he made a mistake back then, if he was like so many others who had an unacknowledged conflict of interest [something that was epidemic in that time period], I would hope he would tell us about it honestly. <\/div>\n

As the revelations of all the ways that the pharmaceutical industry co-opted academic and organized psychiatry have become increasingly apparent, the involved parties have either remained silent or spit back defensively. Drs. Nemeroff and Schatzberg attacked POGO<\/font><\/strong> [enter the lawyers…<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a>] when the evidence of the ghost-writing of their 1999 textbook was revealed. But they were silent when Phyllis Vine of MIWatch.org<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a> found their book advertised as a product on the ghost-writing firm’s old web site. To my knowledge, no one implicated in the revelations along the way has stepped up to the plate and said the simple truth – "I did it. I’m sorry." <\/p>\n

If Dr. Frances actually did what that document alleges, he’d do the future of our specialty a huge favor to say it out loud, rather than allow it to linger in the shadows with so much of what has gone on in this last couple of decades. Maybe we could turn a long awaited corner and aim to getting back on track…<\/div>\n
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