It turns out that the book, “Recognition and Treatment of Psychiatric Disorders: A Psychopharmacology Handbook for Primary Care" was totally written by a drug company. SmithKline Beecham put the normal "unrestricted educational grant" qualifier in the preface but a writing company developed the outline and text for the two named authors, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Miami medical school since 2009 and Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg, who was chairman of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine from 1991 until last year. The authors are denying all this but there definitely seems to be a little shady business going on here. The ethical debate will rage on in these matters. The bottom line is that Big Pharma has been behind a lot of these things for quite a long time. I just threw out a New England Journal of Medicine issue left by a drug rep. On the cover it states that it is being "provided as a professional courtesy by Abbott". It turns out his drug was mentioned favorably in one of the studies so his company purchased thousands of issues to give out to doctors like me. The NEJM issue has a different cover than normal as all the other articles are blurred except the one mentioning his product. Guess who gets paid a ton of money for this? You got it. The respected New England Journal of Medicine. And that's not a conflict of interest?
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Lots of us have been complaining about this for years. Good to see you pick up on it. NAMI, the "consumer"-based organization for mental health (actually PHARMA-based and family-oriented, not consumer-based at all) has been taking money from PHARMA -- over half its annual budget -- and promoting those same companies' psych drugs as "the only hope" for consumers, and PHARMA's long-disproven theory of mental illness as a "brain disease" caused by a "chemical imbalance" which is "cured by drugs". Hope you're reading Robert Whitaker these days.
I believe it is called "Prostitution".
You are so righ on this one Doug. Good work!
Warning: The following textbook is an unacknowledged advertisement for Paxil.
http://carlatpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2010/12/nemeroff-and-schatzbergs-textbook.html
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