Thursday, May 29, 2008

Current Prescriptions Of Psychotropic Drugs Are Irrational For The Patients But Very Rational For The Big Pharma

UK psychiatrist David Healy has attacked current prescription habits of psychiatrists which are strongly influenced by the pharmaceutical propaganda in the fourth 2008 issue of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

Commenting on a paper by Harvard investigators on the psychology of risk and prescriptions of psychotropic drugs, Healy denounces a real crisis in psychiatry at present. In part this stems from the lack of independent studies. Allied to this is a lack of independent access to what data there are and an unsophisticated interpretation of the data that are available, based on conceptual models that seem increasingly inadequate. It is important that clinicians understand the dynamics that impinge on their judgment as it is almost certainly the case that pharmaceutical companies engineer clinical perceptions based on side effect profiles. The basic company position is that clinicians have no thoughts in their minds other than those put there by us or our competitors, and in order to plant a message or dislodge those of competitors companies employ all their sophisticated means.

READ MORE @ MEDICAL NEWS TODAY