Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14594

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Key Findings On Psychiatric Drug Research
Dallas News.com 2008 Oct 26
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-cmapbox_26tex.ART.State.Edition1.4a86d1f.html

Full text:

Documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News concerning a proposed list of psychiatric drugs that can be used by foster children show Texas researchers and mental-health officials also:

• Discussed the need to defeat a bill in the Legislature that would have banned the use of psychiatric drugs in foster children younger than 5. They indicated the bill would prevent children from getting the medical treatment they need. The bill never made it past a legislative committee.

• Reduced information on child suicide risks in one of their published papers, at the request of a prestigious medical journal. “Please drastically prune this section,” an editor of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry wrote, in an effort to shorten the report. “Even the detailed discussion of risk factors for suicide is out of place in a paper reporting a medication algorithm.”

• Accepted complaints and feedback on an adult psychiatric drug list from Eli Lilly and Janssen, two pharmaceutical companies that donated grant money to the research protocols. The changes the representatives requested prompted one longtime mental health advocate to question “the influence of the pharmaceutical industry in our processes overall.” A state official who responded to the advocate said they took all drug company suggestions with a grain of salt.

• Considered incentives to get children enrolled in drug plan trials, including offering them gift certificates to Blockbuster and McDonald’s. It’s unclear whether the incentives were ever offered.