Study Shows Mental Health Panel Has Ties to Drug Makers

According to a recent analysis, there are some in the pharmaceutical industry that are involved with the U.S. manual on mental health diagnoses and have financial ties to the panel. Based on the review, 69 percent of those involved in the panel were financially linked, either current or past to the drug companies.

According to a recent story, the study stated that the panels that are most conflicted are those in which the first line of intervention lies in pharmacological treatments. The revision process for the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a long process that takes years to revise.

The process involves much scrutiny because of the manual’s universal use for mental health diagnosis and also affects many decisions that involve insurance claims through litigation cases.

The last rewrite of the manual was done in 1994 and the new one to be published next year will be the fifth edition. This new study comes after the 2006 report in which the same authors found that 57 percent of panelists involved in its revision had pharmaceutical industry connections.

Those parties involved in the process are required to limit the income they receive to $10,000 during the time they are revising the manual. The psychiatric association consequently created a policy that requires panelists to account for their financial interests and report them. These amounts can be seen on their website.

A critic of the report, Dr. John M. Oldham who is the current president of the association, strongly disagrees with the findings and feels it doesn’t account for the level at which the task force and group members have divested themselves from ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

However, co-author of the report Lisa Cosgrove, says the findings tell us that financial disclosures don’t go far enough when limiting actual and potential areas of conflict.