Psychiatric manual's update needs openness, not secrecy, critics say Edition is being prepared with strict oversight, officials counter

Whether revisions to the "bible" of mental illness should be carried out in secret might seem like an academic question.

But the issue carries real weight for parents desperate to address children's difficult behavior or people in distress over their mental state. It also speaks to citizens' concerns over news accounts of an overmedicated America and the troubling financial links between the pharmaceutical industry and some psychiatric researchers.

An update is under way for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM, which defines the emotional problems for which doctors prescribe drugs and insurance companies pay the bills. Psychiatrists working on the new manual were required to sign a strict confidentiality agreement.

Critics say the American Psychiatric Association should lift the curtain of secrecy so outside observers can review the scientific debate behind new and revised diagnoses.

READ MORE @ CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Psychiatric Group Faces Scrutiny Over Drug Industry Ties

It seemed an ideal marriage, a scientific partnership that would attack mental illness from all sides. Psychiatrists would bring to the union their expertise and clinical experience, drug makers would provide their products and the money to run rigorous studies, and patients would get better medications, faster.

But now the profession itself is under attack in Congress, accused of allowing this relationship to become too cozy. After a series of stinging investigations of individual doctors’ arrangements with drug makers, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is demanding that the American Psychiatric Association, the field’s premier professional organization, give an accounting of its financing.

The association is the voice of establishment psychiatry, publishing the field’s major journals and its standard diagnostic manual.

“I have come to understand that money from the pharmaceutical industry can shape the practices of nonprofit organizations that purport to be independent in their viewpoints and actions,” Mr. Grassley said Thursday in a letter to the association.

READ MORE @ NY TIMES

Swag from APA Conference

Psychiatrists attending the American Psychiatric Association conference in San Diego last month could stop by the exhibit hall, where reps from 160 companies doled out giveaways. The pharmas spent tens of thousands of dollars on booth space to tempt the docs to use their branded tchotchkes.

Above: The next time you reach for a tissue in the middle of a weepy therapy session, don't be surprised to see this reminder that depression is nothing to sneeze at. Effexor, an antidepressant, not only provides the tissue, but warns on the dispenser about rare side effects like life-threatening serotonin syndrome, sustained increases in blood pressure and "discontinuation symptoms" when people stop taking the drug.

READ MORE and see a slide show of more swag @ Wired News