Erick Turner has published an important piece in CNS Drugs entitled “Publication Bias, with a Focus on Psychiatry: Causes and Solutions.” It should be required reading for any medical student, non-medical helping professional, or practicing prescriber. Rather than being an unbiased reflection of the underlying data, the psychiatric literature is instead sort of a funhouse mirror – the published results are consistently, overwhelmingly, positive – no matter what the actual data are. The implications are enormous. Note that the methodology in such trials is often deliberately constructed to bias such trials in favor of the sponsor’s drug – even so, publication strategies are used to minimize any bad news resulting from such trials, and to maximize the impression that the drug is effective.
Read MoreJudith Shulevitz, the science editor for The New Republic recently wrote an interesting article on loneliness.It caught my eye because it started with a nod to Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, the psychoanalyst who was immortalized in Joanne Greenberg’s fictionalize memoir of her recovery from psychosis, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. Ms. Shulevitz goes on to describe the field of loneliness studies from a psychological to a neuroscience perspective.
Read MoreI made my escape from the glitz of Las Vegas and a national conference on behavioral health this past month and flew into the surprisingly fresh-and relatively boring-air of Los Angeles. I could even see the hills!
The purpose of this personal transformation back to reality was to attend the Third Annual Symposium on Mental Health and the Law at USC’s Gould School of Law. This stimulating forum was organized by Elyn Saks, the director of the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics.
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