Posts Tagged ‘Australian of the Year’

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Politics and mental health a poor mix

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

The Sydney Morning Herald – September 13, 2011
by Tanveer Ahmed

"Mental health possesses a built-in capacity for abuse that is greater than in other areas of medicine."

Imagine a tribunal where the public could challenge clinical decisions by neurosurgeons or cardiologists. It would be ridiculous. But mental health is different. Unlike other medical specialties, it resembles law or politics: fields where subtle variations in the interpretation of a word can alter the entire trajectory of a patient’s treatment.

That’s why the right to appeal clinical decisions by mental health professionals through a tribunal, announced recently by the NSW government, met with public approval. Mental health possesses a built-in capacity for abuse that is greater than in other areas of medicine. A patient’s psychiatric diagnosis has enormous cultural power in many other fields, from the marketing of antidepressant medications, to general practice, disability claims and legal proceedings.

The contestable nature of mental health is also why there is a constant battle to keep it free from politics. Some of the 20th century’s most despotic regimes used mental health to oppress opponents, coining disorders such as ”delusions of capitalism” in the Soviet Union or ”politically paranoid” in China. But psychiatry has a way of becoming a political football in public discourse regardless of how authoritarian or democratic the society.

Today it is increasingly a tool of progressive politics, used to highlight the human pain apparently caused by harsh policies. In the case of asylum seekers, for example, any emotional distress is automatically viewed through the lens of mental health. Resilient individuals who have escaped harsh circumstances and coped with far-reaching travel are suddenly classified as fragile, undone by bureaucratic delay and limited incarceration. There is no doubt mental illness exists among asylum seekers, but its prevalence is vastly overstated.

In one of the more farcical applications of psychiatry to political debates, a report this month linked inaction on climate change to the possibility of worsening mental health. Released by the Climate Institute, it suggested that increasing natural disasters might be linked to climate change, which might lead to increased costs in mental healthcare. The evidence for every link was slight at best, yet the novelty of the report ensured widespread attention.

It was launched by Professor Ian Hickie, who has been rightly recognised for giving mental health a greater profile, but who has also played politics to do so.

Hickie has done more than any other clinician to promote tick-a-box diagnosis, particularly among general practitioners, who now regularly prescribe antidepressants through questionnaires alone.

"It is disingenuous to suggest, as McGorry has done, that there is no conflict of interest because their organisations are non-profit."

With former Australian of the Year Professor Patrick McGorry, Hickie has made overblown claims about the prevalence of mental health. It is disingenuous to suggest, as McGorry has done, that there is no conflict of interest because their organisations are non-profit. Their bodies shared in $2.2 billion of funding in the federal budget. Their exorbitant claims – such as one in four people will suffer mental illness – are indicative of a blurring of the lines between illness and normal, human responses to adversity.

Another good example of the uneasy relationship between politics and mental health – and how one can colour the other – is the former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, a tireless campaigner in raising awareness for depression who openly admits he uses the term not in its medical context, but as a synonym for emotional distress.

The fiercest critics of this modern therapeutic culture in Western societies have argued that the decline of the political left is at the heart of the trend – in particular, the collapse of any ambition for social change.

Having given up on the notion that human beings could collectively change the world, the argument goes, the left has instead focused on people adapting to their circumstances.

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Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Aborts Controversial Antipsychotic Drug Trial on Kids Amid Protests

Saturday, August 20th, 2011

Drug Trial Scrapped Amid Outcry

The Age
By Jill Stark
August 21, 2011

FORMER Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry has aborted a controversial trial of antipsychotic drugs on children as young as 15 who are “at risk” of psychosis, amid complaints the study was unethical.

The Sunday Age can reveal 13 local and international experts lodged a formal complaint calling for the trial not to go ahead due to concerns children who had not yet been diagnosed with a psychotic illness would be unnecessarily given drugs with potentially dangerous side effects.

Quetiapine, sold as Seroquel, has been linked to weight gain and its manufacturer AstraZeneca, which was to fund the trial, last month paid $US647 million ($A623 million) to settle a lawsuit in the US, alleging there was insufficient warning the drug may cause diabetes.

Professor McGorry, one of the Prime Minister’s key mental health advisers, planned to conduct the trial at Orygen Youth Health in Parkville, listing it on the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry last March. It was to investigate whether the drug would decrease or delay the risk of people aged between 15 and 40 with early signs of mental illness developing a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia.

Last month, psychiatrists, psychologists and researchers from Australia, Britain and the US lodged a complaint with the ethics committee of Melbourne Health, the umbrella health service that includes Orygen.

They argued there was little evidence onset of psychosis can be prevented and it was potentially dangerous to use antipsychotics on people who merely have risk factors for a psychotic illness. They said there was evidence that up to 80 per cent would never develop a disorder.

Professor McGorry insists the decision to scrap the trial was made in June and is unrelated to the complaint, which he said he was only alerted to just over a week ago.

He maintained the trial received ethics approval in July last year but was abandoned due to “feasibility issues” with recruiting participants in European and American sites, which were to form the international arm of the study. He said Orygen had to choose between investing in the drug trial or pursuing another trial using fish oil, which had proven to be useful as an early intervention treatment for schizophrenia in a smaller study. He opted for fish oil because it had less potential for side effects than antipsychotics.

Melbourne Health confirmed the complaint will still be considered by its research ethics committee in September. Yesterday the trial was listed as “prospective” on the clinical trials registry but Professor McGorry said it was being removed.

Earlier this month The Sunday Age revealed a growing backlash against the government’s mental health reforms, with Professor McGorry’s peers claiming his youth early intervention model had been “massively oversold”.

Associate Professor Geoff Stuart of La Trobe University’s school of psychological sciences, who signed the complaint, said questions remained about the trial.

“If these feasibility obstacles can be overcome in future [would] Professor McGorry embark on such a trial again? He was willing to endorse a trial which was exploring the use of antipsychotic medication in an at-risk group. There’s a major ethical issue about medicating four people to supposedly save the fifth when you’re not saving them anyway, you’re just masking their symptoms. We’re talking about kids as young as 15 who could get a full dose of antipsychotics and they’re not psychotic.”

Professor McGorry acknowledged the evidence suggested antipsychotics were not effective as a first-line treatment for the at-risk group. But he said the risks had been exaggerated and he would consider a similar trial on patients for whom other treatments had failed. “I wrote the guidelines which said do not use antipsychotics in ultra-high risk patients, so I’ve never been supportive of it in clinical practice … [but] we should have the freedom to research all available options for this population,” he said.

The controversy over the aborted trial largely centres on “psychosis risk syndrome”, a condition that some mental health advocates want formally recognised. But critics say that could lead to young people being wrongly labelled, stigmatised and medicated for symptoms that may be temporary. They also fear that while Professor McGorry says his Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres prescribe drugs only to those who have experienced a psychotic episode, his willingness to medicate an at-risk group could mean the criteria will broaden. Professor McGorry insists this will not happen.

Early intervention What is it?

EARLY intervention is based on identifying and treating psychosis in its early stages to prevent patients developing full-blown psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia.

Patrick McGorry’s Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres (EPPIC) treat young people who have experienced a psychotic episode with treatments such as psychotherapy, family therapy, medication or a combination. He says early treatment significantly improves the chance of recovery and reduces long-term impairment. But diagnosing psychotic disorders is difficult and McGorry’s critics say there is no reliable diagnostic tool to predict if someone will develop a psychotic illness and there is insufficient evidence intervention can prevent it.

Critics say up to 80 per cent of those with ”psychosis risk syndrome” – which refers to people who only have risk factors such as a family history or a deterioration in mental health – never develop an illness. They fear early intervention will lead to many patients being wrongly labelled as psychotic and medicated unnecessarily.

A recently released literature review by The Cochrane Collaboration found there was insufficient evidence that early intervention could prevent psychosis and that any benefits were not long term. Professor McGorry said it used flawed methodology.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/drug-trial-scrapped-amid-outcry-20110820-1j3vy.html?from=age_sb

August 21, 2011

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‘Former Australian of the Year’ Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Accused of Conflict of Interest

Saturday, August 6th, 2011

Sydney Morning Herald – August 7, 2011

by Jill Stark

”It’s extremely worrying that the government is listening to professional lobbyists who have a massive personal investment in the programs they’re recommending – and they are undoubtedly overstating the evidence. There’s a massive conflict of interest there,” Professor Castle said.

 

Patrick McGorry Photo: Pat Scala

PSYCHIATRISTS, psychologists and patients’ groups say there is a growing backlash against the federal government’s mental health reforms and have accused its expert adviser, former Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry, of a conflict of interest.

Several mental health specialists have told The Sunday Age the focus on early intervention for adolescents and young adults has been ”massively oversold” by the ”McGorry lobbying machine”.

They claim he used his position on the government’s mental health expert working group to recommend funding for programs he founded.

David Castle, head of psychiatry at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said Professor McGorry, – who founded headspace (Australia’s national youth mental health foundation) and the early psychosis prevention and intervention centres – and Professor Ian Hickie, a headspace board member, had overstated the evidence for early intervention for young people at risk of psychosis.

Headspace is a service for 12 to 25-year-olds with mild to moderate problems such as bullying, stress and relationship difficulties. Patients do not require a GP-referral. The early psychosis prevention and intervention centres provide integrated psychiatric, psychological and social support for 15 to 24-year-olds.

Between them, the two services received almost a quarter of the $2.2 billion mental health package in the May federal budget. Both professors McGorry and Hickie were on the government’s mental health expert working group that advised the Prime Minister.

”It’s extremely worrying that the government is listening to professional lobbyists who have a massive personal investment in the programs they’re recommending – and they are undoubtedly overstating the evidence. There’s a massive conflict of interest there,” Professor Castle said.

The row comes after US psychiatrist Allen Frances – chairman of the committee that produced the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, the key psychiatric diagnostic source – described Australia’s investment in early intervention as a ”vast untried public-health experiment”, claiming there was little evidence it had long-term benefits.

The dispute is in part a turf war about where limited funding should go. Some argue traditional GP and psychiatrist-led care has failed teenagers and youths who fall between paediatric and adult services, leading to delays in treatment.

About 14 per cent of children aged four to 17 have mental health problems, with depression and anxiety disorders the most common. About 2 per cent suffer from a psychotic illness.

George Patton, professor of adolescent health research at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, praised Professor McGorry’s work but said his faith in early intervention was not shared by everyone. ”There’s a real groundswell of concern amongst the senior psychiatric community that we are running ahead of the evidence,” he said.

Professor McGorry rejected the claims, accusing critics of being a small minority who are ”disaffected, destructive and irresponsible”, and who are misusing scientific evidence to protect their turf and the ailing traditional mental health model.

”The reforms around early psychosis and headspace advantage patients and families, and have 20 years of solid evidence behind them, with successful upscaling in hundreds of communities worldwide,” Professor McGorry said.

He said there was no conflict of interest as he and Professor Hickie headed non-profit organisations, and while ideally all services would have received more funding, young people had the most acute needs.

Peter Birleson, former director of mental health services at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, disagreed. ”The McGorry machine is distorting things in Australia. There’s people in the UK who look at what’s happening in adolescent and youth psychiatry here and think that it’s completely mad. While McGorry champions the cause of youth and young adults, actually 50 per cent of lifelong mental disorders appear before the age of 14, so there should be a massive shift towards strengthening services to children,” Dr Birleson said.

Professor Hickie said he and Professor McGorry had long advocated for services outside the youth area, and had no more influence than anyone else on the government’s working group.

”People taking cheap shots is disappointing but it’s characteristic of the mental health area. When there’s been very little investment, people end up fighting over the crumbs,” he said.

Louise Newman, past president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said the focus on early intervention was too narrow and could lead to young people being overmedicated, prematurely diagnosed and stigmatised.

However, David Crosbie, chief executive of the Community Council for Australia and former head of the Mental Health Council of Australia, said professors McGorry and Hickie were being targeted for challenging current practice. ”I have nothing but admiration for Pat and for Ian, who are prepared to go well beyond what their roles are to try and make a difference – and it’s a pity that other people in the sector couldn’t support improvements for the greater good of mental health.”

Another supporter, SANE Australia’s executive director, Barbara Hocking, said Professor McGorry had championed services he wasn’t involved with and was instrumental in getting more funding for the sector overall.

Money for the early intervention programs came from cuts to the over-budget Better Access scheme, which provides psychological services through GPs, psychologists and social workers.

The cuts were opposed by the Australian Medical Association, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, and the Australian Psychological Society, which claim people with anxiety and depression now will be priced out of treatment.

Professor Hickie and Monsignor David Cappo, who is also on the government’s working group, opposed the Better Access scheme. Prior to the budget they, along with Professor McGorry, released a blueprint to transform mental health. It listed 30 ”best buys” in mental health – Better Access was not among them.

Ben Mullings, head of the Association of Counselling Psychology, said the government’s working group could not claim to be independent when panellists were direct beneficiaries of funds.

Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council director Isabell Collins said she respected Professor McGorry’s commitment to youth but felt other age groups were being neglected.

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Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry’s Pre Diagnosing Kids Agenda: Voodoo Science & Snake Oil

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

Seroxat Sufferers Please Stand Up
By Bob Fiddaman
June 2, 2011

Two great articles by Kat McCormick from May 2011. It seems McGorry has a growing army of critics, pity the Aussie government can’t see through his crystal ball gazing as many others can – it’s akin to taking a losing lottery ticket up to a paypoint and…well, being paid the jackpot prize.

McCormick’s first article poses many questions, the most pertinent of which are: Are our children really AT RISK or is Patrick McGorry selling us Voodoo Science & Snake Oil?

Her article is concise as well as thought-provoking.

McCormick’s second article, ‘Mental Health and the Budget’ focuses on McGorry’s research methods and she writes, “There are several disturbing elements in Patrick McGorry’s research and I’m not the only one to question his motives or methodologies.”

Nope, you sure ain’t sister!

Read article here:  http://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2011/06/is-patrick-mcgorry-selling-us-voodoo.html

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Australian of the Year Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry. a.k.a. The Spin Doctor

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Note:  Should there be any doubt of how highly controversial and dangerous Patrick McGorry’s pre-diagnosing, pre-drugging agenda actually is,  consider that even the former task force chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental disorders (DSM),  has had articles featured in Psychology Today calling “Psychosis Risk” syndrome “dangerous and stigmatizing” and that it will inevitably lead to children being needlessly drugged with psychiatry’s  most powerful psychotropics, antipsychotic drugs.  When even fellow psychiatrists start slamming proposed “mental disorders” at this level,  it is evident that McGorry’s agenda is far more dangerous than anything previously witnessed. http://www.cchrint.org/2010/07/30/austrailan-psychiatrist-patrick-mcgorrys-global-agenda-takes-a-hit-from-former-dsm-task-force-member-psychiatrist-allen-frances/

OnlineOpinion.com

By Melissa Raven and Jon Jureidini
August 9, 2010

Since Professor Patrick McGorry was appointed 2010 Australian of the Year, mental health has had a remarkably prominent public profile.

GetUp has played a major role, with a campaign promoting McGorry’s call for radical reform, particularly in relation to youth mental health, arguing that early intervention should be the norm. Many Australians have enthusiastically responded, donating money, signing a petition, and sending faxes to politicians.

A further impetus came when Adjunct Professor John Mendoza dramatically resigned as Chair of the National Advisory Council on Mental Health (or, as he terms it, “head advisor to the Rudd Government on mental health”) and joined the GetUp campaign. Mendoza endorses many of McGorry’s demands, including a national rollout of headspace youth mental health centres and the Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre (EPPIC).

McGorry and Mendoza are adept at capturing media attention, using emotive statistics and feel-good messages as powerful soundbites. However, few people seem to have critically examined their claims, which have been widely accepted at face value.

We have examined several claims, and found them seriously problematic. Not only is there a high degree of spin in the rhetoric but also there is misrepresentation of evidence.

Two claims are analysed here. In each case the evidence cited to justify the claim, although relevant, does not support it, and other evidence challenges the validity of the claim.

Claim: One third of Australian suicide cases had been discharged inappropriately

According to Mendoza, more than a third of Australians who kill themselves had been discharged too early or without care from hospitals. This claim has been publicised by GetUp on its website and in emails from Mendoza about his resignation distributed to GetUp members.

Mendoza has confirmed to one of us (JJ) that the basis is the 2007 New South Wales Tracking Tragedy report. The introduction of that report does refer to “a third of suicides”:

Other systematic reviews of suicide and previous work of this Committee suggest that around a third of suicides may realistically have been preventible [sic] with more optimal care.

However, the report does not support Mendoza’s claim, because it focuses specifically on 113 cases of suicide by people receiving treatment for depression in community mental health settings, not on suicides in the general population. It is tragic that approximately 38 suicides might have been prevented, but this number is hundreds less than one-third of the 1,776 suicides in the NSW population in that period (2003-2005 inclusive). Furthermore, only 14 (12 per cent) of the 113 people had been discharged (figure 1, p34), appropriately or otherwise.

An earlier Tracking Tragedy report revealed there were about 20 suicides annually in NSW within 28 days of discharge. It concluded that “Suicide death on discharge from hospital is a rare event”.

In the period covered in that report (1999-2003), there were approximately 750 suicides annually in NSW. The 20-odd people discharged within 28 days prior to suicide annually constituted only 2.7 per cent of them. Even if all those discharges were inappropriate, Mendoza’s claim would be wrong by a factor of more than ten. However, the report concluded that only “Between one-quarter and one-third of suicide deaths following discharge from hospital could reasonably be prevented”. Taking the higher of those estimates gives approximately 7 out of 750 (less than 1 per cent), making Mendoza’s claim more than 30-fold wrong.

The “other systematic review” cited in the 2007 Tracking Tragedy report is the 2006 report of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness (in England and Wales). This does not support Mendoza’s claim. Only 27 per cent of suicides had followed any current or recent contact with the mental health system. Twenty per cent of suicides among these patients occurred within three months of discharge (5.4 per cent of total suicides), but only 18-22 per cent of these were judged preventable, representing only about 1 per cent of all suicides in England and Wales.

Unquestionably there is a need to improve discharge planning and follow-up – for many reasons, not just because of the risk of suicide. However, this is not relevant to the majority of suicide cases.

Mendoza has had the unwitting assistance of GetUp in misleading the Australian public. However, when one of us (JJ) explained why Mendoza’s claim is incorrect, GetUp’s response was “we’ll adjust our future communications accordingly”, but inexplicably it “won’t however be removing anything from the website or issuing any correction statements”. GetUp focuses on “giving everyday Australians opportunities to get involved and hold politicians accountable, on important issues”, yet it is unwilling to be held accountable for misleading everyday Australians about mental health, and its website carries information it knows to be incorrect.

Claim: 750,000 young Australians are denied desperately needed mental health services

McGorry has repeatedly claimed there is a hidden waiting-list of 750,000 young Australians who are denied access to much-needed mental health services. His website refers to “the waiting list of 750,000 young Australians currently locked out of the mental health care they and their families desperately need”.

In his submission to the Senate inquiry into COAG health reforms, McGorry explicitly linked the unmet need to insufficient funding for headspace and EPPIC. He made similar claims at a hearing (PDF 442KB). The Senate report (PDF 1.32MB) quoted his testimony uncritically. Others have also echoed his claim uncritically, including Lesley Russell (PDF 93KB) from the Menzies Centre for Health Policy. Furthermore, McGorry’s claim has been implicitly endorsed by the Coalition’s Real Action Plan for Better Mental Health.

McGorry’s 750,000 claim is based on the 2007 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (NSMHW), which found that 671,000 (26 per cent) 16-24-year-olds experienced a mental disorder in the previous year, and only 23 per cent of them accessed treatment. McGorry’s 750,000 figure, encompassing 12-25-year-olds, the focus of headspace, seems a reasonable estimate of people in that age range with untreated disorders.

However, diagnosis, particularly in surveys, is not the same as treatment need, contrary to the usual interpretation. According to Scott Henderson (an architect of the original NSMHW) and colleagues:

having symptoms, even at case level, is necessary but not sufficient to justify treatment … it is irrational to suggest that one in five adults need treatment for a case-level mental disorder. (p204)

Leading US psychiatric epidemiologists have similarly argued that prevalence rates in surveys do not represent treatment need. Robert Spitzer, a key player in the development of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder), published a paper with the title: “Diagnosis and need for treatment are not the same”. The main reason is that many cases are not particularly serious. According to Darrel Regier (Vice-Chair of the DSM-V Task Force) and colleagues: “most episodes of mental illness are neither severe nor long-lasting”.

There is a strong bias towards treatment of people who most need it. In the NSMHW, only 17 per cent of young people with disorders (PDF 308KB) had severe disorders, 35 per cent moderate, and 48 per cent mild. Furthermore, 51 per cent of young people with severe disorders accessed treatment. And according to Gavin Andrews (another key player in the NSMHW), many cases of mental disorders are transient but the extent of remission is usually underestimated.

The gap between prevalence and help-seeking in young people is largely due to high rates of substance use disorders (particularly mild cases of harmful alcohol use) with low rates of help-seeking (particularly by young men). The relatively low threshold for diagnosis of harmful alcohol use – which has a high rate of spontaneous remission – inflates the prevalence of mental disorders. This was recently discussed in some detail by one of us (MR).

Undoubtedly some untreated young people would benefit from treatment. However, for many of them, GP services would be more appropriate than specialist services like headspace or EPPIC. Indeed, according to Andrews and colleagues, “in Australia as elsewhere, the GP is the key to treatment for most people with mental disorders”.

So most of the 750,000 are not locked out of treatment, and most do not desperately need it. Most choose not to access treatment, and often that choice is appropriate, because the disorders are mild and transient. 750,000 is a gross over-estimate of treatment need, particularly need for specialist services like headspace and EPPIC.

Conclusion

These are only two of a number of inaccurate claims made by McGorry and Mendoza that inflate the scale of problems in the mental health system and exaggerate the benefits of their brand of solution – central to which is massively increased funding for headspace and EPPIC – which they imply is the only alternative to the status quo.

But does it really matter if some of the claims made by high-profile mental health advocates are inaccurate? The system is in crisis, and radical change is needed. McGorry’s plan, resoundingly seconded by Mendoza and many mental health community groups, has the support of the public and politicians, so shouldn’t we capitalise on the momentum?

That is how many people will respond to our critical analysis of these claims. It is essentially how GetUp has responded.

However, we believe it does matter that people have been misled to believe that more than a third of people who kill themselves have been inappropriately discharged from hospital, because this implies that massive resources should be directed towards psychiatric inpatients, who constitute only a small proportion of people at risk of suicide, and it deflects attention from other at-risk groups such as unemployed and elderly men. Such resourcing would have inevitable opportunity costs in terms of funding of other services.

We believe it does matter that people have been misled to believe there is a huge hidden waiting-list of young Australians desperately in need of mental health treatment, because this implies that even more resources should be directed towards a relatively narrow age-band. It matters even more that it is claimed that the treatment required is headspace/EPPIC treatment, and the claim is used to justify demands for greatly increased funding for those services, which would increase the opportunity costs.

We also believe it matters that the important role of GPs in mental health treatment is being ignored and implicitly denigrated. This is likely to lead to further deskilling and under-resourcing of GPs, reducing their capacity to intervene effectively with young people, many of whom have mild and relatively short-term mental health problems.

We are not entirely alone in criticising McGorry’s campaign for mental health reform centred on specialist early intervention in youth mental health. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists’ submission (PDF 157KB) to the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission expressed concern about “investment in age specific community based services that have neither identified transition points nor evidence to support that age specific services provide better outcomes” and cautioned that “there are no simple solutions to reforming the mental health sector”. However, this seems to have been ignored by the NHHRC: its report (which will profoundly influence Australian health policy for decades) endorsed McGorry’s demand for a national rollout of EPPIC and favourably mentioned headspace.

On a different level, we also believe it matters that high-profile mental health advocates are able to mislead by proclaiming authoritative-sounding statistics that almost no one bothers to check, and that misleading claims are incorporated into health policy. This uncritical acceptance is an impediment to evidence-based policy. Worse, when the inaccuracies of claims are pointed out, there is often reluctance to acknowledge the misinformation and attempt to rectify it, as is the case with GetUp.

Read the rest of this article here:  http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10793&page=0

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Australian of the Year Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry accused of misleading public to secure his pre-drugging kids agenda

Monday, August 9th, 2010

For more information about Patrick McGorry’s global agenda, click here: http://www.cchrint.org/2010/06/16/australian-psychiatrist-patrick-mcgorry-wants-his-pre-drugging-agenda-to-go-global/

The Sydney Morning Herald
By Julia Medew
August 9, 2010

LEADING mental health reform figures, including Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry, are misleading the public with dodgy statistics that suit their causes, a prominent psychiatrist says.

Adelaide University Associate Professor Jon Jureidini claimed yesterday that Professor McGorry and National Advisory Council on Mental Health former chairman John Mendoza had exaggerated or misrepresented mental healthcare statistics during the reform debate.

But Professor McGorry and associate professor Mendoza have denied misleading anyone.

Associate Professor Jureidini said Professor McGorry – a world-renowned psychiatrist whose youth-targeted services recently won bipartisan support – had falsely claimed that 750,000 young Australians were ”locked out” of care they ”desperately” needed.

”He’s taken the biggest possible figure you can come up with for people who might have any level of distress or unhappiness, which of course needs to be taken seriously and responded to, but he’s assuming they all require … a mental health intervention,” said Associate Professor Jureidini, who specialises in child psychiatry.

”It’s the way politicians operate. You look at figures and put a spin on it that suits your point of view. I don’t think that has a place in scientific conversations about the need for health interventions.”

Associate Professor Jureidini said although surveys showed about 750,000 young people experienced an untreated mental disorder at some stage every year, many would have mild and transient disorders that did not need treatment.

He also accused Associate Professor Mendoza of incorrectly asserting that more than a third of suicides in Australia involved people inappropriately discharged from hospitals.

He said a more accurate figure was about 1 per cent.

”Nobody would argue with people bringing forward data to support their arguments, but it needs to be done responsibly and accurately, not in a way that exaggerates it,” he said.

Read entire article here:  http://www.smh.com.au/national/mcgorry-misleading-the-public-20100808-11qes.html

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Austrailan Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry’s Global Agenda for “Pre-Psychosis Risk Syndrome” Takes A Hit from Former DSM Task Force Member, Psychiatrist Allen Frances

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Note: The diagnosis being pushed for global implementation, “Pre-Psychosis Risk Syndrome” by “Australian of the Year,” Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, takes a hit from a worthy opponent, Psychiatrist Allen Frances, former Chairiman of the DSM Task force. For more information about Patrick McGorry’s global agenda, click here:http://www.cchrint.org/2010/06/16/australian-psychiatrist-patrick-mcgorry-wants-his-pre-drugging-agenda-to-go-global/

DSM5 in Distress
Psychology Today
by Allen Frances, MD

The DSM 5 Workgroup that first suggested the inclusion of “Psychosis Risk Syndrome” has halfway come to its senses. It has dropped this stigmatizing name in a last ditch repackaging effort to salvage the proposal. The criteria set remains essentially the same, but is relabeled with the equally awkward title: “Attenuated Psychotic Symptoms Syndrome”. The suggestion remains just as dangerous and stigmatizing, whatever it is called.

Why the halfway reversal by the Workgroup at this late date? The “Psychosis Risk” proposal has stimulated widespread opposition (even I am told from within the Workgroup itself). The arguments against it are simply overwhelming. The false positive rate in predicting psychosis would be between 70-90%, meaning that between two and nine youngsters would be misidentified for every one accurately identified. The treatment most likely to be used would be antipsychotic medications. These have no proven efficacy in preventing psychosis, but most definitely have terrible side effects- especially enormous weight gain and its life threatening complications. These medications are overprescribed to those least able to resist- the young and those who are most financially disadvantaged.

Finally, the name “Psychosis Risk” was filled with ominous threat and stigma. Having a label that suggests one is at risk to soon develop a psychosis would cause the mislabelled person much unnecessary worry, unnecessarily reduced ambitions, and create great risk of discrimination in getting work or insurance – thus further exacerbating the risk side of the already totally unbalanced risk-benefit ratio.

As an early intervention strategy, everything that could possibly be wrong was wrong with “Psychosis Risk Syndrome”. An extremely inaccurate diagnosis would lead to widespread treatment with an ineffective but dangerous medication. To top it off, the writing of the criteria set is remarkably vague and internally inconsistent. That “Psychosis Risk” was an obvious nonstarter finally got through to the DSM 5 Work Group.

Seemingly, this should have been an end of story moment and we could all breathe a sigh of relief. The obvious and correct next step would be to withdraw the proposal for official recognition and instead relegate Psychosis Risk to where it belongs- in the DSM 5 appendix of suggestions that require further research. Instead, the Work Group is trying to save the suggestion by changing its name and ditching some of its overly ambitious claims.

The idea is to avoid the criticism regarding the high false positive rate by withdrawing claims that the “patients” described are likely to go on to psychosis and that the risk syndrome diagnosis can help to prevent this outcome. But the diagnosis now rests on a new set of equally questionable assumptions, that-1) the people described would have come for treatment anyway; 2) there will be no increase in overall diagnosis, just more accurate diagnosis;
3) inappropriate antipsychotic use can be contained by physician education; and, 4) the new name will carry less stigma.
.
The Work Group has always been well intentioned, but is as dead wrong in its new claims as it was in its old. Were this diagnosis to be made official- however renamed – it would certainly be used (and probably widely misused) to diagnose youngsters who previously would have avoided diagnosis and treatment. Particularly given the imprecise writing of the criteria set, it will mislabel many teenagers- especially those who are using substances, but also those who are creative or eccentric, and/or have difficult relationships with their parents. The experts on the Workgroup might make these mistakes infrequently, but they can’t responsibly make suggestions that are usable only by experts like themselves. Once official, the diagnosis will be misused in ways they never imagined or would accept and will lead to even greater misuse of antipsychotics. And the Work Group can’t rely on the wonders of physician education to clean up the mess they will be making. Most of the physician education will come from the very drug companies that have already shown themselves remarkably adept at furthering the overprescription of antipsychotics to children and teenagers.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201007/psychosis-risk-syndrome-just-risky-new-name

More information on Patrick McGorry and Pre Psychosis Risk Syndrome: http://www.cchrint.org/2010/05/21/meet-the-psychiatrist-pushing-for-a-brave-new-world-of-pre-drugging-kids%E2%80%94patrick-mcgorry/

http://www.cchrint.org/2010/06/16/australian-psychiatrist-patrick-mcgorry-wants-his-pre-drugging-agenda-to-go-global/

http://www.cchrint.org/2010/06/29/pre-crime-try-pre-diagnose-and-pre-drug-psychiatrists-target-infants-as-mental-patients-2/

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INFOWARS.COM — Madhouse Medical Tyranny: When Health Becomes Sickness

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

INFOWARS.COM
By John Galt
July 2, 2010

Dictatorships know that the battle for complete control is ultimately won or lost in the minds of the target population.  As the oppression advances, it tends to move from propaganda mind control to the direct intervention into the mind via pharmaceuticals.  We are now seeing the overt global coordination of the psychiatry profession to convince every resident of planet Earth that all clear thinking, healthy living, and wholesome innocence is some kind of disorder that needs to be corrected (suppressed) with drugs to render zombie-like those whose instincts afford them the ability of discernment.

We have seen this before — the role of the medical establishment in dictatorships such as Nazi Germany is well documented. It is the pre-Endgame, if you will, before the final culling takes place.  The proof that we are being led by a medical tyranny to soften us up for population reduction is of course not something to make light of.  However, it is absurd, because it is a manufactured attempt to re-define the natural human condition.  So, let us get up to speed on our mental disorders as a gallows humor descends.

Independent Thinking

This disorder is naturally a wide-ranging one, as each unique human being tends to have opinions.  Some of the more deviant forms of individuality are questioning authority and anxious distress, which includes symptoms like the “fear that something awful may happen.”  Like the fear that individuality will be declared a mental disorder by a scientific dictatorship?

Emotions

The natural highs and lows that come with being a sentient human being experiencing the joys and sorrows of life apparently need to be eradicated.  Happiness tests should be given to children to be sure that they feel elated at all times, and perfectly at peace with their indoctrination. If not, be sure to take your happy pills each day.

Healthy Eating

Concern for your own well-being is apparently in direct opposition to the goals of those who wish to keep the population fat, dumb, and toxic.  Mike Adams gives a run-down on the latest crazy thinking associated with eating broccoli, taking vitamins and minerals, drinking purified water, and avoiding known toxins.

Pregnancy

The act of experiencing the emotions of childbirth is definitely something that needs strong legislation.  Instead of thinking about creating life, and the family bonding process, it is much healthier instead to focus on the increasing numbers of disorders surrounding the most natural of processes and how the medical establishment can keep mothers worried sick about their babies.

And Now: BEING BORN

The Psychiatric Dictatorship has begun in earnest to target infants as mental patients.  The amniotic world and the newly born are now under surveillance by agents of the medical elite such as John H. Gilmore, Director of the UNC Schizophrenia Research, for signs of schizophrenia.  Unfortunately, Gilmore is not an isolated mad scientist; this is a global initiative.  The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International recently covered the story of “Australian of the Year,” Patrick McGorry, who would like Australia to lead the world in treating mental illness.  Consulting fees and research grants are raining down on pre-detection initiatives from all of the major pharmaceutical peddlers.

Read entire article:  http://www.infowars.com/madhouse-medical-tyranny-when-health-becomes-sickness/

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Australian Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry Wants His Pre-Drugging Agenda to Go Global

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010


“Australia is a place that can actually change the world in mental health, provided we get the right government support to do so.” — Patrick McGorry

By CCHR International
June 16, 2010

A Public Service Announcement on Australian TV features Australian of the Year, psychiatrist  Patrick McGorry,  claiming that nearly half the population will experience mental ill-health during their lifetime. Considering that after World War II, psychiatrists claimed that one in 20 people had a mental disorder, and now it’s every second one of us, that’s a damning 1000 percent failure rate for psychiatrists in reducing “mental illness.” Let’s get real; the reason psychiatrists claim more people are mentally ill is because they can keep  inventing new ways to label them mentally ill—but the press and governments are  starting to catch on, evidenced by all the controversy surrounding psychiatry’s upcoming edition of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)—better known as psychiatry’s billing bible. Yet of all the proposed “mental disorders” ranging from overeating to kids throwing tantrums, no proposed model of mental disorder is more  insidious and dangerous than that of Patrick McGorry, who promotes diagnosing people before they develop a so-called mental disorder—drugging them before they become “mentally ill.” Yet the Australian government has bought into it hook, line and sinker—despite the fact McGorry’s plan is so outrageous, even his peers, such as psychiatrist Allen Frances, former Chair of the DSM task force, have called it ”the most ill-conceived and potentially harmful.”

Make no mistake, the pre-drugging agenda is Patrick McGorry’s baby—his dream for a new paradigm in mental health, one that has the power to diagnose and drug people before they become mentally ill—welcome to the Brave New World of Patrick McGorry. And he isn’t stopping with Australia; his plan is to go global. As he recently stated, “Australia is a place that can actually change the world in mental health, provided we get the right government support to do so.”[1]

The fact that McGorry’s agenda is so controversial—it even has other psychiatrists protesting it—has not deterred the Australian government from funding this “ill-conceived” plan. A recent letter to Citizens Commission on Human Rights states, “The Australian Government is providing $25.5 million over four years from 2010-2011 to expand Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centre (EPPIC) model,” developed by McGorry who founded EPPIC and the Orygen Youth Health in Victoria, Australia.

The Australian Government has already been criticized for massive expenditure on psychotropic drugs increasing more than 660 percent during the last decade—with a whopping 3,100 percent increase on antipsychotic drugs (with at least 15 Australian deaths in the under 19 year olds as a tragic consequence of this).  This can only get worse when under McGorry’s plan, with an enormous client base that can be prescribed drugs despite the fact they are not yet  “mentally ill.” It’s called prodrome (prodromos meaning the forerunner of an event)—referring to “a period of prepsychotic disturbance” that may or may not develop into psychosis or “schizophrenia”[2]—in other words, the crystal ball theory.

Australia Meets the US in Pre-Drug Scam

McGorry’s plan for Australia to “lead the change” in world mental health is happening—to the detriment of those who may be forced to undergo drug treatment based on a psychiatrist’s hunch that they might, one day, become ill. In the U.S., on May 13, 2009, the Department of Health and Human Services convened a Technical Expert Panel (TEP) discussed “emerging evidence around psychopharmacological interventions for first episode schizophrenia” citing the research efforts of McGorry and others.[3]

The push for pre-diagnosing and pre-drugging has even those within the psychiatric profession calling foul; Dr. Richard Warner, professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, counters the idea that science drives McGorry’s pre-disorder assessment, stating, “Given the expected number of false positives, the potential for harm is significant.”[4]

However, as Anthony Pelosi, honorary professor, Department of Psychiatry, Hairmyres Hospital, wrote in a counter to McGorry in the British Medical Journal last year, “this has not stopped their skillful lobbying of politicians, journalists, patients, and carers with upbeat messages about the prevention.”

“Skillful lobbying” is right.

In 2006 McGorry and other researchers, including psychiatrist Michael Berk, Karen Hallam, Craig McNeil, Linda Kaler and psychologist Melissa Hasty reported in the Medical Journal of Australia, “Evidence increasingly indicates that earlier identification may allow for appropriate pharmacological and psychosocial treatments….”[5]

Could they have a Pharma incentive behind this agenda? Berk is financially linked to AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen-Cilag, Lundbeck, Organon, Novartis, Mayne Pharma, Servier, Sanofi-Synthelabo, Solvay, and Wyeth and Pfizer.[6] Hallam disclosed received speaker fees from Janssen-Cilag; McNeil received consultancy fees, speaker fees and travel assistance from Eli Lilly, Janssen-Cilag and Sanofi-Aventis; and Hasty and Linda received financial assistance to attend conferences from or Janssen-Cilag, maker of the antipsychotic Risperdal (resperidone).[7]

McGorry has received grant support from Eli Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Bristol Myers Squibb, Astra-Zeneca, Pfizer, and Novartis.[8] He is a paid consultant for, and has received speaker’s fees from all or most of these companies.[9] Studies published in the British Medical Journal in 2005 and 2008 declared McGorry’s “early intervention studies have received partial support in the form of investigator-initiated unrestricted research grants from Janssen-Cilag.”[10]

The U.S. has already begun adopting the “early intervention” fad, which looks more like a trade in children’s lives and a business opportunity for increased pharmaceutical sales. In March 2010, the Department of Health & Human Services Substance Abuse & Mental Health Service Administration Center for Mental Health Services announced $16.5 million in funding for “Mental Health Transformation Grants,” including the “Early Detection and Intervention for the Prevention of Psychosis Program (EDIPPP).”[11]

EDIPP is the American sister of McGorry’s EPPIC.  It was originally bankrolled by a $14.4 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. According to investigative journalist Evelyn Pringle, “The founder of RWJF, Robert Wood Johnson, was chairman of Johnson & Johnson for over 30 years, from 1932 to 1963, as a member of the drug maker’s founding family. Throughout the years, the majority of the Foundation’s money has come from investments in J&J stock.”

In an article in Behavioral Healthcare, in 2008, the Mid-Valley Behavioral Care Network (MVBCN), an intergovernmental Medicaid government insurance-managed healthcare organization situated in Oregon, was recommended to study EPPIC used at Orygen and EDIPPP.

Based on EDIPP and EPPIC, the MVBCN developed the Early Assessment and Support Team (EAST) in 2001.  In 2003, the Oregon state legislature allocated $4.3 million to disseminate early psychosis intervention statewide.  By March the following year, new programs had begun in 12 counties.[12]

EDIPPP also replicates the “Portland Identification and Early Referral,” or “PIER,” a treatment research program at the Main Medical Center, in Portland, Maine.[13] People typically are referred to PIER by high school guidance counselors, pediatricians, or other clinicians who attended presentations about PIER’s work, says Pringle. “Virtually every person entering the PIER program is prescribed antipsychotics, such as Risperdal or Invega, marketed by Johnson & Johnson,” she added.

Both PIER and EDIPPP are promoted in McGorry’s 2002 book, Implementing Early Intervention in Psychosis: A Guide to Establishing Early Psychosis Services.”[14] The book’s foreword is written by Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, Professor of Psychiatry, Chairman Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.[15] Lieberman has taken consulting fees and research grant support from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Upjohn Pharmacia, Novartis, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Hoechst AG, & AstraZeneca. He’s on the Speakers Bureaus for Astra Zeneca, Janssen, Eli Lilly and Pfizer.[16]

Lieberman is also the Vice President (North America) of the McGorry instigated group International Early Psychosis Association (IEPA), which was officially incorporated in Victoria in 1998.[17] McGorry is currently Treasurer of the Association.[18] Lieberman is a member of the psychiatric-pharmaceutical company front groups, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD).

Between 1999 and 2003 IEPA received unrestricted education grants from Janssen-Cilag and AstraZeneca.[19] EIPA’s conferences are supported by Janssen-Cilag, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.[20]

The IEPA lists the “who’s who” of Pre-Psychosis Risk Syndrome (the official label given pre-psychotic symptoms) and many of its board or members disclose manufacturers of antipsychotics as companies they’ve received financing from.

On July 29-30, the First international Youth Mental Health Conference is being held in Melbourne, with keynote speakers, including McGorry. The conference is described by one advocate as an “important and innovative event, attracting the best in the business/industry to discuss the emerging issues of youth mental health.”[21]

It couldn’t have been more adequately stated: business and industry. Herein you see McGorry’s pitch again that Australia is a global leader in this latest psychiatric fad. His invitation online states, “This is an important event for Australia and the mental health field. We expect this to be the first of many similar conferences, bringing together innovators, practitioners, researchers, young people and families to showcase the best of youth mental health innovation from around the globe.”[22] [Emphasis added]

There’s no doubt that this conference, like his Australian award, will be used to demand more funding to increase the business stakes and drive more income into psychiatry’s pre-drugging efforts.  Despite the government already allocating $103 million to McGorry, including the $25 million to further research EPPIC, he continues to call for another $800 million in funding for programs for youth mental health over the next four years.[23]

McGorry recently stated, “You have to be able to give something of yourself to people, if you are going to help them.”[24] McGorry’s brand of “helping” entails stigmatizing children with psychiatric labels that have no basis in science or medicine and then drugging them. That does not qualify as “help.” It’s betrayal. If this agenda to pre-diagnose, and pre-drug is allowed to take hold, we will truly have entered a Brave New World; Patrick McGorry’s.

[1] http://sydney.edu.au/medicine/museum/mwmuseum/index.php/McGorry,_Patrick

[2] http://www.mentalhealth.com/mag1/scz/sb-prod.html

[3] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “ASPE Technical Expert Panel on Earlier Intervention for Serious Mental Illness: Summary of Major Themes,” The Lewin Group, 13 May, 2009.

[4] Richard Warner, MB, DPM, is director of Colorado Recovery in Boulder, Colorado, and professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, “Early intervention in psychosis: Future or fad?” Centre for Addiction and Mental Health website, http://www.camh.net/Publications/Cross_Currents/Winter_2007-08/futureorfad_crcuwinter0708.html.

[5] http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/187_07_011007/ber10341_fm.pdf

[6] http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/187_07_011007/ber10341_fm.pdf

[7] http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/187_07_011007/ber10341_fm.pdf

[8] http://www.mhanet.ca/documents/2008/Research-Colloquium/0920%20-%20Keynote%20MCGORRY.pdf

[9] http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a695

[10] http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/187/48/s108; http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a695

[11] http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tracking-the-American-Epid-by-Evelyn-Pringle-100602-668.html

[12] http://www.behavioral.net/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=9B6FFC446FF7486981EA3C0C3CCE4943&nm=Archives&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=64D490AC6A7D4FE1AEB453627F1A4A32&id=BFCD36BFD75E447CA63F662A633F41FB&tier=4

[13] http://www.opednews.com/articles/Tracking-the-American-Epid-by-Evelyn-Pringle-100602-668.html

[14] http://books.google.com.au/books?id=lyLfMPsnvJ0C&pg=PA136&lpg=PA136&dq=Portland+Identification+and+Early+Referral+McGorry&source=bl&ots=lEp9tdT8ZV&sig=_zlnHeFk8oqxTHSjbvLf0XQmlY4&hl=en&ei=lP0RTKThLMWPcMnSzNAH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

[15] http://69.5.18.33/ahrp/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=345

[16] http://69.5.18.33/ahrp/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=345

[17] http://www.iepa.org.au/ContentPage.aspx?pageID=10

[18] http://www.headspace.org.au/about/headspace-board/

[19] http://www.iepa.org.au/ContentPage.aspx?pageID=59

[20] http://www.iepa.org.au/ContentPage.aspx?pageID=59

[21] http://www.iymhconference.com.au/why-attend/

[22] http://www.iymhconference.com.au/

[23] Mental Health Update, GetUp! Action for Australia, 21 Apr. 2010, http://www.getup.org.au/blogs/view.php?id=1936&dc=1086,21560,1

[24] http://sydney.edu.au/medicine/museum/mwmuseum/index.php/McGorry,_Patrick

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Meet the Psychiatrist Pushing For A Brave New World of Pre-Drugging Kids—Patrick McGorry

Friday, May 21st, 2010

By CCHR International
May 21, 2010

One of the most controversial proposed disorders for the upcoming revision of psychiatry’s billing bible of mental disorders, (the DSM-5) is Psychosis Risk Syndrome (PRS) a “mental disorder” that, if voted into DSM, would confirm the allegations that psychiatry is manufacturing a Brave New World for itself—heavily backed by Big Pharma—of drugging children before they develop a “mental illness.” Already criticized for the millions of children being needlessly drugged and the lack of scientific criteria to substantiate any mental diagnosis as a legitimate medical condition, some psychiatrists now want the power to pull out their crystal ball and predict the onset of a psychosis and drug it before it has even occurred. And perhaps the strongest proponent is Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry.

Even psychiatrist Allen Frances, former chairman of the previous DSM task force expressed alarm over the proposed diagnosis and its repercussions should it be legitimized, stating, PRS “stands out as the most ill-conceived and potentially harmful.” The Syndrome fails badly on all 3 counts, he says:

“1. It would misidentify many teenagers who are not really at risk for psychosis;

2. The treatment they would most often receive (atypical antipsychotic medication) has no proven efficacy; but,

3. It does have definite dangerous complications.”

Frances adds: “Drug company marketing would influence parents and clinicians to be especially alert to any strangeness in teenagers.” False positives could be as high as 70-90 percent.[i] This can only lead to greater numbers of children and adolescents being harmfully drugged—already one of the major criticisms against psychiatry and a point of contention among many psychiatrists today.

Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, speaking at the APA convention in New Orleans, as a cheerleader for “early intervention” (i.e. pre-drugging) is undeterred. Despite the unpredictability and risk of the drugs prescribed to treat PRS, McGorry wants to go full steam ahead, increasing the number of children being placed on extremely dangerous and even lethal drugs. It should come as no surprise that McGorry is a paid consultant for, and has received speaker’s fees from AstraZenecca, Janssen-Cilag, Eli Lilly, Novartis, Sanofi, Bristol Myers Squibb and Pfizer.[ii]

The theory of PRS wasn’t McGorry’s. He credits Dr. Ewen Cameron, the Canadian psychiatrist who became infamous in the 1980s after it was revealed he had performed cruel and brain-damaging experiments on his patients in the 1950s and 1960s with funding from the CIA.[iii] However, McGorry tested it in a world-first trial. Another study he conducted in 2002 was funded with an unrestricted grant from Janssen-Cilag and supported by pharmaceutical company-funded groups NARSAD and the Stanley Foundation, as well as several Australian agencies. McGorry and colleagues predictably found that risperidone (Risperdal)—made by Janssen—reduced the risk of “transition to psychosis” in young people.[iv] Risperdal has been linked to Type 2 diabetes.

  • In Australia, McGorry’s Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Center’s (EPPIC) preventive treatment center for young people, PACE, receives drug company funding from Janssen-Cilag. Much of the policy development embodied in the Australian Clinical Guidelines has come out of EPPIC research programs. As Richard Gosden, Ph.D., a highly respected Australian author and academic stated: “This may have paid off handsomely for the company…. It may not be coincidental that a half page of the Clinical Guidelines is dedicated to dosage recommendations for using risperidone in first-episode psychosis. The Clinical Guidelines do not extend these dosage recommendations to include other schizophrenia drugs and the recommendations for risperidone give the appearance of an official endorsement of the drug.” [v]

McGorry’s theory has psychiatry’s skeptics and even psychiatrists aghast:

  • One respected American research group equated the practice of pre-drugging children to “performing mastectomies on women who are at risk of—but do not have—breast cancer.” [vi]
  • Honorary Professor Anthony Pelosi from the Department of Psychiatry, Hairmyres Hospital, East Kilbride, stated, “So far, evidence from randomized trials does not support the use of psychological therapies or drugs as preventive interventions.”[vii] Further, “After teachers, college counselors, and families were encouraged to refer young people with possibly prodromal [early] symptoms directly to the same clinic for the same care plans…almost 90% were receiving unnecessary ‘preventive’ interventions.” [viii]
  • Fellow Australian psychiatrist Niall McLaren says the diagnostic criteria for PRS “has no scientific validity whatsoever…it can never be reliable and…will have huge unforeseen consequences.” Essentially, it means “putting large numbers of teenagers and young adults under the long-term supervision and control of psychiatrists” and that “supervision” includes the “aggressive, indefinite prescription of antipsychotic drugs.” It is the “clearest example I know of pseudoscience.  Not since [lobotomies] has psychiatry stumbled so far from the principle of Primum, non nocere. First, do no harm.” [ix]
  • Dr. Richard Warner, professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, counters the idea that science drives McGorry’s pre-disorder assessment, stating that the screening instrument he uses “is not that accurate in routine use.” Further, “McGorry speculates that a variety of interventions may be effective in preventing schizophrenia in high-risk cases…. Given the expected number of false positives, the potential for harm is significant,” stated Dr. Warner. [x]
  • Dr. Jerald Block, a US psychiatrist writing in Bioethics Forum, reported that “preventive pharmacology” (which McGorry, et al. practice) is “ethically questionable territory” because the treatments given “frequently have side effects and complications” and “you are potentially harming people.” The symptoms used to identify them as at risk of schizophrenia are “also remarkably common…adolescence is a period of life that is normally marked by tumultuous changes in personality.” [xi]
  • Melissa Raven, psychiatric epidemiologist and policy analyst, adjunct lecturer in Public Health at Flinders University, South Australia, and David Webb, board member of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and working with the research/policy office with the Australia Federation of Disability Organizations, were published last month, writing: “McGorry’s campaign is part of a wider push to promote the medicalization of mental health (for which psychosocial wellbeing is a better term).” “Further doubts must be raised about McGorry’s agenda when you see the substantial funding his organization (Orygen Youth Health) receives from the pharmaceutical industry and also from the US Stanley Foundation, which is notorious for its particularly aggressive approach to the detention and mandatory treatment of people labeled with psychiatric disorders.” He has “personally received funding from many manufacturers of antipsychotics, frequently reports no conflicts of interest, particularly in his many recent Medical Journal of Australia articles, including a supplement on early intervention that repeatedly advocates the use of antipsychotics.” [xii]

Psychosis Risk Syndrome is nothing more than psychiatrists with conflicts of interest drumming up more business at the risk of teenage lives, while increasing the profits for the pharmaceutical industry they serve.

[i] Allen Frances, M.D., “DSM5 ‘Psychosis Risk Syndrome’–Far Too Risky,” Psychology Today, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dsm5-in-distress/201003/dsm5-psychosis-risk-syndrome-far-too-risky.

[ii] http://www.mhanet.ca/documents/2008/Research-Colloquium/0920%20-%20Keynote%20MCGORRY.pdf; http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a695.

[iii] Richard Gosden, Ph.D., “Pre-Psychotic Treatment for Schizophrenia: Preventive Medicine, Social Control, or Drug Marketing Strategy?” Ethical Human Sciences and Services, Vol 1, No. 2, Summer 1999, pp. 165-177, http://sites.google.com/site/richardgosden/ehss.

[iv] Arch Gen Psychiatry, Vol 59, Oct. 2002, http://www.meb.uni-bonn.de/psychiatrie/zebb/literatur/mcgorry.pdf.

[v] Richard Gosden, Ph.D., “Pre-Psychotic Treatment for Schizophrenia: Preventive Medicine, Social Control, or Drug Marketing Strategy?” Ethical Human Sciences and Services, Vol 1, No. 2, Summer 1999, pp. 165-177, http://sites.google.com/site/richardgosden/ehss.

[vi] http://www.ministryoflies.com/pdf-articles/Yale-Lilly.pdf.

[vii] Anthony Pelosi, “Head to Head, Is early intervention in the major psychiatric disorders justified? No,” BMJ 2008;337:a710, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a710.

[viii] http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/aug04_1/a710.

[ix] Niall McLaren, M.D., “Psychosis Risk Syndrome (PRS),” 14 May 2010 (soon to be published).

[x] Richard Warner, MB, DPM, is director of Colorado Recovery in Boulder, Colorado, and professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado, “Early intervention in psychosis: Future or fad?” Centre for Addiction and Mental Health website, http://www.camh.net/Publications/Cross_Currents/Winter_2007-08/futureorfad_crcuwinter0708.html.

[xi] http://www.ahrp.org/cms/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=386; http://ww.bioethicsforum.org/ethics-of-preventive-psychopharmacologic-treatments.asp.

[xii] David Webb, Melissa Raven, “McGorry’s ‘early intervention’ in mental health: a prescription for disaster,” Online Opinion, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10267.

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