DSM-5 controversies, Cosgrove-Krimsky on potential COIs, counter statement from APA’s John Oldham and APA May Annual Meeting preliminary program

DSM-5 controversies, Cosgrove and Krimsky on potential COIs, counter statement from APA’s John Oldham and APA May Annual Meeting preliminary program

Post #152 Shortlink: http://wp.me/pKrrB-20e

Update @ March 20, 2012

Medscape Medical News > Psychiatry

APA Criticized Over DSM-5 Panel Members’ Industry Ties

Megan Brooks | March 20, 2012

March 20, 2012 — Two researchers have raised concerns that the upcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) has been unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, owing to financial conflicts of interest (FCOI) among DSM-5 panel members.

In an essay published in the March issue of PLoS Medicine, Lisa Cosgrove, PhD, from the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Sheldon Krimsky, PhD, from the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Tufts University, Boston, say the FCOI disclosure policy does not go far enough and has not been accompanied by a reduction in the conflicts of interest of DSM-5 panel members.

However, John M. Oldham, MD, President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), “strongly” disagrees.

Read on

At DSM5 in Distress, Allen Frances, MD, who had chaired the task force for DSM-IV, writes:

According to this week’s Time magazine, the American Psychiatric Association has just recruited a new public relations spokesman  who previously worked at the Department of Defense. This is an appropriate choice for an association that substitutes a fortress mentality and  warrior bluster for substantive discussion. The article quotes him as saying: “Frances is a ‘dangerous’ man trying to undermine an earnest academic endeavor.”

Frances asks:

Am I A Dangerous Man?

No, but I do raise twelve dangerous questions

Allen Frances, M.D. | March 16, 2012

published in response to:

TIME Magazine

What Counts As Crazy?

John Cloud | Online March 14, 2012

Print edition | March 19, 2012

…The mind, in our modern conception, is an array of circuits we can manipulate with chemicals to ease, if not cure, depression, anxiety and other disorders. Drugs like Prozac have transformed how we respond to mental illness. But while this revolution has reshaped treatments, it hasn’t done much to help us diagnose what’s wrong to begin with. Instead of ordering lab tests, psychiatrists usually have to size up people using subjective descriptions of the healthy vs. the afflicted.

…Which is why the revision of a single book is roiling the world of mental health, pitting psychiatrists against one another in bitter…

Full article available to subscribers

Pharmalot

Should APA Purge DSM Panels With Pharma Ties?

Ed Silverman | March 15, 2012

As publication of the next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, also known as DSM-5, approaches in May 2013, the so-called bible of psychiatrists is generating increasing scrutiny. The reason, of course, is that classification of various illnesses can help psychiatrists determine how to pursue treatment, which can involve prescribing medications that can ring registers for drugmakers…

Read on

Statement from John M. Oldham, M.D.

Mr Silverman’s report quotes from a statement issued on March 15 by John M. Oldham, M.D., President of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), in response to the Cosgrove and Krimsky PLoS Medicine Essay, “A Comparison of DSM-IV and DSM-5 Panel Members’ Financial Associations with Industry: A Pernicious Problem Persists.”

Read Dr Oldham’s statement here in PDF format:

    PDF statement John M Oldham, M.D., March 15, 2012

or full text below:

March 15, 2012

Statement for John M. Oldham, M.D., President of the American Psychiatric Association:

In their article, “A Comparison of DSM-IV and DSM-5 Panel Members’ Financial Associations with Industry: A Pernicious Problem Persists,” which appeared in the March issue of the journal Public Library of Science, and which ABC and other news outlets quoted, Cosgrove and Krimsky question the work of DSM-5’s volunteer Task Force and Work Group members because of publicly disclosed relationships with the pharmaceutical industry. Although we appreciate that Cosgrove and Krimsky acknowledge the commitment the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has already made to reducing potential financial conflicts of interest, we strongly disagree with their analysis and presentation of APA’s publicly available disclosure documents. Specifically, the Cosgrove-Krimsky article does not take into account the level to which DSM-5 Task Force and Work Group members have minimized or divested themselves from relationships with the pharmaceutical industry.

In 2012, 72 percent of the 153 members report no relationships with the pharmaceutical industry during the previous year. The scope of the relationships reported by the other 28 percent of member varies:

• 12 percent reported grant support only, including funding or receipt of medications for clinical trial research;

• 10 percent reported consultations including advice on the development of new compounds to improve treatments; and

• 7 percent reported receiving honoraria.

Additionally, since there were no disclosure requirements for journals, symposia or the DSM-IV Task Force at the time of the 1994 release of DSM-IV, Cosgrove and Krimsky’s comparison of DSM-IV and DSM-5 Task Force and Work Group members is not valid. In assembling the DSM-5’s Task Force and Work Groups, the APA’s Board of Trustees developed an extensive process of written disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. These disclosures are required of all professionals who participate in the development of DSM-5. An independent APA committee reviews these disclosure documents, which are updated annually or whenever a member’s financial interests change. Individuals are only permitted to serve on a work group or the Task Force if they are judged to have no significant financial interests.

The Board of Trustees’ guiding principles and disclosure policies for DSM panel members require annual disclosure of any competing interests or potentially conflicting relationships with entities that have an interest in psychiatric diagnoses and treatments. In addition, all Task Force and Work Group members agreed that, starting in 2007 and continuing for the duration of their work on DSM-5, each member’s total annual income derived from industry sources would not exceed $10,000 in any calendar year. This standard is more stringent than requirements for employees at the National Institutes of Health and for members of advisory committees for the Food and Drug Administration. And since their participation in DSM-5 began, many Task Force members have gone to greater lengths by terminating many of their industry relationships.

Potential financial conflicts of interest are serious concerns that merit careful, ongoing monitoring. The APA remains committed to reducing potential bias and conflicts of interest through our stringent guidelines.

A number of stories followed the publication of the Cosgrove and Krimsky PLoS Medicine Essay. Links for selected reports in this March 14 Dx Revision Watch post:

Cosgrove, Sheldon: 69% of DSM-5 task force members report pharmaceutical industry ties – review identifies potential COIs

Full text of Essay available here on PLoS site under “Open-access”:

A Comparison of DSM-IV and DSM-5 Panel Members’ Financial Associations with Industry: A Pernicious Problem Persists

Or open     PDF here

Long article from Sandra G. Boodman for Washington Post

Antipsychotic drugs grow more popular for patients without mental illness

Sandra G. Boodman | March 12, 2012

Adriane Fugh-Berman was stunned by the question: Two graduate students who had no symptoms of mental illness wondered if she thought they should take a powerful schizophrenia drug each had been prescribed to treat insomnia.

“It’s a total outrage,” said Fugh-Berman, a physician who is an associate professor of pharmacology at Georgetown University. “These kids needed some basic sleep [advice], like reducing their intake of caffeine and alcohol, not a highly sedating drug.”

Those Georgetown students exemplify a trend that alarms medical experts, policymakers and patient advocates: the skyrocketing increase in the off-label use of an expensive class of drugs called atypical antipsychotics. Until the past decade these 11 drugs, most approved in the 1990s, had been reserved for the approximately 3 percent of Americans with the most disabling mental illnesses, chiefly schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; more recently a few have been approved to treat severe depression.

But these days atypical antipsychotics — the most popular are Seroquel, Zyprexa and Abilify — are being prescribed by psychiatrists and primary-care doctors to treat a panoply of conditions for which they have not been approved, including anxiety, attention-deficit disorder, sleep difficulties, behavioral problems in toddlers and dementia. These new drugs account for more than 90 percent of the market and have eclipsed an older generation of antipsychotics. Two recent reports have found that youths in foster care, some less than a year old, are taking more psychotropic drugs than other children, including those with the severest forms of mental illness…

Read on

Financial Times

New autism diagnostic criteria may encourage symptomatic approach to drug use

Anusha Kambhampaty in New York, Abigail Moss in London | March 15, 2012

MedPage Today

DSM-5 Critics Pump Up the Volume

John Gever, Senior Editor | February 29, 2012

…In a conversation with MedPage Today, APA President John Oldham, MD, and DSM-5 task force chairman David Kupfer, MD, defended their handling of the revision and argued that many of the criticisms were off-base.

For starters, Kupfer said, the proposed revisions were still open to change or abandonment. The DSM-5 will assume its near-final form in June or July, he said – meaning that the APA’s annual meeting in May would provide another forum to debate the changes.

“[The proposals] are still open to revision,” he said. “The door is still very much open…”

[Ed: A third and final stakeholder review and comment period is anticipated in “May at the latest.”  Benedict Carey reported for New York Times, January 19, “The revisions are about 90 percent complete and will be final by December, according to Dr. David J. Kupfer…chairman of the task force making the revisions.”]

Read full Medpage Today article

Psychiatric News Volume 47, Number 4, February 17, 2012 publishes the preliminary schedule for the APA’s May annual meeting:

    PDF

APA’S 165TH ANNUAL MEETING, PHILADELPHIA, MAY 5-9, 2012
Preliminary Schedule