TED Blog:Jonathan Haidt on how our moral roots skew our reasoning

Our Righteous Minds were designed to unite us into teams, divide us against others, & blind us to the truth -Jon Haidt http://bit.ly/9N7TyU

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...those who had listened to sexist jokes were much more tolerant with male battering than those who had not.

The results ring true. I have found domestic violence, even street violence is justified in the mind of the offender by disrespect. People in general tend to diminish in importance even dehumanize a party they wish to assault. This has been true in war of all kinds throughout history. Abusive men justify their behavior by diminishing the value of women.

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I very much enjoyed recent exchange on Psychotherapy Brown Bag. I find myself frequently thinking of the implications of our approach to research and how it contributes to our understanding of psychology.

Intuition is, by no means, useless. A half-century ago, Karl Popper (1959) gave an answer to this that today remains powerfully compelling. Intuition, inductive reasoning, and philosophical theories are extremely valuable as the first step of a multi-step process. He termed this step the "context of discovery." His point was that we need creative thought, outside-the-box thinking, and alternative perspectives in order to drive progress, but that our thoughts, no matter how elegant, can not be the end point. We need to follow up this stage with deductive reasoning - testing our theories to see which ones are backed up by facts and which ones are clouded by flawed reasoning.

In this sense, science becomes a series of competing theories, each of which builds upon the past and corrects a variety of prior errors. No theory is pefect, most if not all are eventually overturned by others, and progress continues. Our progress, however, is marked by the evidence supporting our claims, not by the strength of our beliefs in our cause without reflection upon the evidence for its validity.

Not only can our interpretations effect how we see and use a research finding, but the assumptions we bring to the research effects our choice of hypothesis and measurement target. Wood et al.(2009) pre-publication manuscript has gotten much press inappropriately proclaiming that positive affirmations may in fact harm those those most in need, those with low self-esteem. As I stated in an article I wrote about these conclusions, there was I believe an error in one of the basic assumptions of the research. Wood and her colleagues assumed negative feelings after affirmations demonstrated harm. A review of basic theory might have captured what I believe was actually happening, the subjects were beginning a process of extinguishing their conditioned negative emotional response.

It seems researchers have drifted away from embedding their investigations in theory. Few authors seem willing to delve into the grand theoretical formulations as a basis for their research. For that reason, it's difficult to apply the results to much more than the specifics of the research setting. You've been discussing intuition as it impacts research. I think theory serves as a check on intuition.

I think one of the most important recent grand psychological theories was Henriques "Tree of Knowledge", yet I've caught little written about it since 2003 other than my humble attempt. I think this model provides us with a framework for these sorts of discussions. The link between psychology's investigation of the mind and interpreting the meaning of behavior (The Justification Hypothesis) is where data meets intuition, where research interfaces with theory. Ever since studying psychometrics I've integrated the concept of validity and reliability into my thinking about the theoretical interpretation of data. Reliable data that that is consistent wwith the hypothesis of the study, (predictive validity) set in a meaningful context (content and construct validity), give us an opportunity to further our understanding of the meaning of human behavior in it's cultural context (construct validity). Yet I've never seen the concepts applied outside of psychometrics where they certainly seem to belong. Perhaps its again related to researchers reluctance to bringing a theoretical discussion to their research.

Aaron Beck, considered the Father of Cognitive Therapy, is an American psychiatrist and a professor emeritus at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is President of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research that is directed by his daughter, Judith S. Beck, Ph.D.. He is noted for his research in psychotherapy, psychopathology, suicide, and psychometrics, and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), one of the most widely used instruments for measuring depression severity. At age 87, the man is still publishing, building on his pioneering work on the cognitive model of depression. In his latest article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, he recalls his early work:

Caught up with the contagion of the times, I was prompted to start something on my own. I was particularly intrigued by the paradox of depression. This disorder appeared to violate the time-honored canons of human nature: the self-preservation instinct, the maternal instinct, the sexual instinct, and the pleasure principle. All of these normal human yearnings were dulled or reversed. Even vital biological functions like eating or sleeping were attenuated. The leading causal theory of depression at the time was the notion of inverted hostility. This seemed a reasonable, logical explanation if translated into a need to suffer. The need to punish one's self could account for the loss of pleasure, loss of libido, self-criticism, and suicidal wishes and would be triggered by guilt. I was drawn to conducting clinical research in depression because the field was wide open--and besides, I had a testable hypothesis.

I decided at first to make a foray into the "deepest" level: the dreams of depressed patients. I expected to find signs of more hostility in the dream content of depressed patients than nondepressed patients, but they actually showed less hostility. I did observe, however, that the dreams of depressed patients contained the themes of loss, defeat, rejection, and abandonment, and the dreamer was represented as defective or diseased. At first I assumed the idea that the negative themes in the dream content expressed the need to punish one's self (or "masochism"), but I was soon disabused of this notion. When encouraged to express hostility, my patients became more, not less, depressed. Further, in experiments, they reacted positively to success experiences and positive reinforcement when the "masochism" hypothesis predicted the opposite (summarized in Beck).

Some revealing observations helped to provide the basis for the subsequent cognitive model of depression. I noted that the dream content contained the same themes as the patients' conscious cognitions--their negative self-evaluations, expectancies, and memories--but in an exaggerated, more dramatic form. The depressive cognitions contained errors or distortions in the interpretations (or misinterpretations) of experience. What finally clinched the new model (for me) was our research finding that when the patients reappraised and corrected their misinterpretations, their depression started to lift and--in 10 or 12 sessions--would remit.

We owe a lot to Dr. Beck. His cognitive model of depression still dominates how I and most of my colleagues write treatment plans for persons suffering with depression. Our goal is to inspire and teach our clients to change their negative self-evaluations, correct distorted memories, and create an expectation of success. The only problem is depression is not that simple.

Try as they might, many clients are able to recognize what they need to do, understand how their thoughts about themselves and their world need to change, are able to state those changes, and diligently practice them. But when they really need to be able to master their fate, when ruminative thoughts spiral downward into the depths of depression, their efforts quickly collapse and they succumb.

So is the Cognitive Model of Depression wrong? No, I think it's incomplete. There is the biomedical model of depression involving errant neurotransmitter levels treated by various anti-depressants. That discussion is beyond this article's purpose. I'm more interested in what we as therapists can do differently in the counseling office. Of course we need to be sure a severely depressed client is referred for a medication review. But I want to know how we might better facilitate our clients attempts to master their mood. To this end, I will review my recent reading on the subject of emotion and argue to include emotion in a new Cognitive Theory.

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Hat tip to Psych Central for an report on a higher than expected prevalence of suicidal thoughts among college students. Researchers surveyed 26,000 students across 70 colleges and universities. Half reported having at least one episode of suicidal thinking at some point in their lives. Fifteen percent of students surveyed reported having seriously considered attempting suicide and more than 5 percent attempted at least once.

Presenting at the 116th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, psychologist David J. Drum, PhD, and co-authors at the University of Texas at Austin reported their findings from a Web-based survey conducted by the National Research Consortium of Counseling Centers in Higher Education. [..] Six percent of undergraduates and 4 percent of graduate students reported seriously considering suicide within the 12 months prior to answering the survey. Therefore, the researchers posit, at an average college with 18,000 undergraduate students, some 1,080 undergraduates will seriously contemplate taking their lives at least once within a single year. Approximately two-thirds of those who contemplate suicide will do so more than once in a 12-month period. The majority of students described their typical episode of suicidal thinking as intense and brief, with more than half the episodes lasting one day or less.

The researchers found that, for a variety of reasons, more than half of students who experienced a recent suicidal crisis did not seek professional help or tell anyone about their suicidal thoughts.
[..]
Both undergraduate and graduate students gave these reasons for their suicidal thinking, in the following order: (1) wanting relief from emotional or physical pain; (2) problems with romantic relationships; (3) the desire to end their life; and (4) problems with school or academics.

Fourteen percent of undergraduates and 8 percent of graduate students who seriously considered attempting suicide in the previous 12 months made a suicide attempt. Nineteen percent of undergraduate attempters and 28 percent of graduate student attempters required medical attention. Half of attempters reported overdosing on drugs as their method, said the authors.

From the survey, the authors found that suicidal thoughts are a frequently recurring experience akin to substance abuse, depression and eating disorders. They also found that relying solely upon the current treatment model, which identifies and helps students who are in crisis, is insufficient for addressing reducing all forms of suicide behavior on college campuses.

The authors suggest a new model for dealing with the problem of student suicidal tendencies in order to address the entire continuum of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. By focusing on suicidal thoughts and behaviors as the problem, rather than looking only at students in crisis, interventions can be delivered at multiple points, they said.

Furthermore, information from the survey can help match students who are at risk or who have already experienced suicidal thoughts and behaviors with the appropriate treatment. This will reduce the numbers of students entering the suicide continuum in the first place as well as reduce the progression from thoughts to attempts, they said.

Here is a good example of research that has a helpful policy driving message. People with a history of periodic suicidal thinking are in need of treatment. Focusing solely on those who ask for help at the time they are at greatest risk set up an identifiable population who could be treated well in advance of imminent risk. Conceivably, this could significantly decrease the number of successful suicides.

Finally, researchers have gotten beyond finding the "one cause" or "sure-fire cure" for the various forms of mental illness. It has always been futile to find a particular biological cause. Clinicians practicing in the field have been aware of the complexity of development. It makes much more sense to look in several directions at once, for resilience, risk factors and biologically based vulnerabilities to particular symptom clusters.

Mental illness is caused by a complicated combination of developmental and environmental stressors and biological strengths and weaknesses. Now, perhaps we can move beyond looking for the magic pill and focus on helping people.

Psychiatry Weekly

There is a growing consensus in the field of psychiatry that many of the psychiatric illnesses, and almost certainly depression, are the product of different biological mechanisms in different patients," says Dr. Husseini Manji. "Just as hypertension and elevated blood pressure can be caused exclusively by defects in the heart, blood vessels, or kidneys, many psychiatric illnesses may have diverse causes." Dr. Manji notes that it is also not uncommon to have two patients who both meet DSM-IV criteria for depression but share no symptoms in common--one may sleep too much while the other sleeps too little, one may eat too much while the other eats too little, etc.

"It is increasingly clear that a one-size-fits-all philosophy of treatment is severely limited," Dr. Manji says. "Our group has become increasingly focused on identifying biomarkers--everything from genes and proteins to brain imaging--that are associated with particular subtypes of psychiatric illness. Accurate subtyping has a host of implications, diagnostically, but, more importantly, in terms of tailoring treatment to each individual patient."

SAMHSA released incidence statistics for depression over the the years of 2004 and 2005. Statistics were sorted by age and state and included all individuals who experienced at least one major depressive episode (MDE) in the past year. Youths aged 12 to 17 had a higher rate of incidence at 8.88 percent. Adults aged 18 or older were measured at 7.65 percent.

But thats not all. The data demonstrates a confusing variation in the rate by state.

Among 12 to 17 year olds, rates of past year MDE were among the highest in Idaho (10.37 percent) and Nevada (10.28 percent) and among the lowest in Louisiana (7.19 percent) and South Dakota (7.40 percent)

Rates of past year MDE among adults aged 18 or older were among the highest in Utah (10.14 percent) and Rhode Island (9.88 percent) and among the lowest in Hawaii (6.74 percent) and New Jersey (6.81 percent)

Certainly, it is unlikely that the differences reflect any real differences in incidence of depression by state. It is more likely that the differences relate to a complex pattern of access to services. It is interesting to note that the least populated states tended towards the highest incidence. Where as the most populous also tended towards higher incidence.

I wonder if this suggests that the western states by virtue of their sparse highly mobile population have better access to services. Higher population states may have some differences in access based on availability of funding for MH services via insurance and state supported entitlements, and based on the length of waiting lists for available providers. From experience, heavily urbanized areas with a high proportion of poor also have limited access to insurance to pay for MH services.

Hallucinations and odd ideas are much more common than the psychosis the text books would have us believe. For too long, Some of us may have suspected this all along. I've seen well meaning psychiatrists diagnose as schizophrenic, and medicate with powerful anti-psychotics, people who were experiencing one or both. Sometimes these experiences are signs of a history of abuse, neglect or trauma. Sometimes it's a product of odd beliefs within a family where such experiences are common and expected.

Mind Hacks

Psychosis is the mental state in which delusions and hallucinations are prominent, and is usually linked to diagnoses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

[...]Recent research has indicated that the experiences previously thought to be diagnostic of madness, actually occur in many people who never become distressed or impaired. It may be the extent and impact of these experiences, rather than just their presence, that is important.

Weight is something which is distributed throughout the population, with some people being heavier than others, and some being considered so overweight as to need medical treatment.

In the same way, psychosis-like experience is thought to operate on a continuum, and those with the more frequent or intense experiences being more likely to end up being treated by mental health professionals because they are distressed or impaired.

One of the factors known to impact on how distressed and impaired people become is how they evaluate and make sense of strange experiences.

Knowing that odd ideas or hallucinations are common (studies estimate about 10-20% of the population report them at some point) can significantly reduce distress in some people, and makes others less likely to stigmatise or react badly.

Weird is the new normal. Spread the word.

I'm very excited about a new venture I'm hosting at ePsyQ.com. I've had an interest in research for a long time, but my work in direct practice and management always came first. Now I've found a passion for online building, and frankly find it far more entertaining than television.

My interest was piqued by an article from NIMH I tripped over a couple weeks ago.

A long-term, large-scale study has found that an Internet-based intervention program may prevent some high risk, college-age women from developing an eating disorder. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), was published in the August 2006 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The researchers conducted a randomized, controlled trial of 480 college-age women in the San Francisco Bay area and San Diego, Calif., who were identified in preliminary interviews as being at risk for developing an eating disorder. The trial included an eight-week, Internet-based, cognitive-behavioral intervention program called "Student Bodies," which had been shown to be effective in previous small-scale short-term studies. The intervention aimed to reduce the participants' concerns about body weight and shape, enhance body image, promote healthy eating and weight maintenance, and increase knowledge about the risks associated with eating disorders.

The online program included reading and other assignments such as keeping an online body-image journal. Participants also took part in an online discussion group, moderated by clinical psychologists. Participants were interviewed immediately following the end of the online program, and annually for up to three years thereafter to determine their attitudes toward their weight and shape, and measure the onset of any eating disorders.

What an exciting prospect, therapeutic value in online education and support! There was now some concrete hope that most people who don't have access to health care, could seek out the information and support they need to contain a budding issue. Perhaps we finally have a media to provide the dream of "primary prevention". The gears in my head have been turning ever since. The past week has been a flurry of activity building the site and developing ideas. It's finally time to roll out the idea and look for support and input from the online health community.

ePsyQ.com Professional Health Services Directory is a community of healthcare providers dedicated to developing the service and research potential of the Internet. ePsyQ.com provides a base of operations for web based research and services in the healthcare sciences.

Here is the idea. ePsyQ.com intends to drive healthcare providers to the site by providing basic web based services such as health news, top site ranking for healthcare sites, to generate interest in both participating in web based services and research, as well as referring clients for participation as subjects. The user may participate in any combination of services offered. The services on this site are moderated. If you wish to join this effort, let us know. Please click "Contact Us".

There are currently four basic parts of ePsyQ.com.

1. Top Health Sites by ePsyQ.com lists and ranks health care web sites by category. You are welcome to suggest new categories. Health site administrators may submit their site for consideration. You will be expected to paste the required html script in your main page template. While we are designed to primarily serve health care professionals, students, and serious researchers, we invite those who maintain websites with health information from reputable sources or any source that has been subject to outcome research of a caliber recognized by the scientific community. Alternative medicine that is paid for by some insurance companies is a good example of what is acceptable.

Types of sites that will not be accepted include:

- Herbal "medicine" that fit a food supplement definition.
- Sites selling drugs and/or medicine.
- Sites promoting health care solutions that do not meet prevailing community standards.

2. ePsyQ.com Health News lists syndicated health news by category. You may submit requests for particular news sources and category ideas.

3. ePsyQ.com Professional Services Directory provides a free directory of health care services. If you want to build your practice or sell your special service, here is the place to list it for free. Services offered for the general public or targeted for the health care provider are welcome to list their service.

4. The Forums at ePsyQ.com provide an online virtural committee structure:

Building a Creative On-line Community

A synergistic idea is only as good as how widely it gets disseminated. It also depends on the means there is to create and maintain a community of creativity. I hope this site will provide a beginning. What ideas do you have to spread the word?

Building an On-line Resource Infrastructure

I have found a wealth of free open source software that works on my Unix based host site. The Directory software is only one example. The top site software, and the news aggragating software is also free. I have another program that can build online classes, presumably like Power Point. I have yet to try that one out.

Right now I'm looking for a utility that will build a PHP language based form for data input to a MySQL database. So far I've not found something that will build online research tools. Anyone have ideas for a program or the expertise in programming?

Eventually, this project will need a dedicated server with up-to-date PHP and MySQL software. Can anyone donate a site?

What other ideas, programs, or services could we use to build this community?

Online Service Development

Education and support for eating disorders has been researched. What other ideas are there? Education is the most obvious and probably the easiest form of service that could be provided. How might support be accomplished?

Volunteers Needed!

I need help. I'm starting with a community of ONE! I have an interest in mental health services, especially psycho-education. I need more ideas and people who wish to participate.

Needed:
1. Forum moderators
2. PHP programmers
3. Eventually, this project will need a dedicated server with up-to-date PHP and MySQL software. Can anyone donate a site?
4. Publicity Committee and Chair
5. More ideas and energy!

How can you help?

Ideas!?

What did I miss?

Join me in this exciting venture. Participate as little or as much as you'd like. I look forward to hearing from you!

UPDATE: Click Here.

Today, perusing the various RSS news I get daily, I tripped over this article, in ScienceDaily. A search of the University of Manchester web site produced no mention of this work. A Google search found the apparent original source, a press release by the U of M.

The article is a particularly disturbing example of the press distributing prepublication reports of results before the academic community has an opportunity to review the study. Even a simultaneous release of what appears to be a literature review would be better. Paul Hammersley, a nurse researcher at the U of M, makes some rather surprising assertions. It appears that the intent of this press release is publicity seeking by the U of M, perhaps in search of research funds. Here is the excerpt:

EurekAlert

University of Manchester researcher Paul Hammersley is to tell two international conferences, in London and Madrid on 14 June 2006, that child abuse can cause schizophrenia.

[...]Mr Hammersley, Programme Director for the COPE (Collaboration of Psychosocial Education) Initiative at the School of Nursing Midwifery and Social Work, said: "We are not returning to the 1960s and making the mistake of blaming families, but professionals have to realize that child abuse was a reality for large numbers of adult sufferers of psychosis." He added: "We work very closely in collaboration with the Hearing Voices Network, that is with the people who hear voices in their head. The experience of hearing voices is consistently associated with childhood trauma regardless of diagnosis or genetic pedigree." Dr Read said: "I hope we soon see a more balanced and evidence-based approach to schizophrenia and people using mental health services being asked what has happened to them and being given help instead of stigmatizing labels and mood-altering drugs."

Hammersley and Read argue that two-thirds of people diagnosed as schizophrenic have suffered physical or sexual abuse and thus it is shown to be a major, if not the major, cause of the illness. With a proven connection between the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia, they say, many schizophrenic symptoms are actually caused by trauma.

Their evidence includes 40 studies, which revealed childhood or adulthood sexual or physical abuse in the history of the majority of psychiatric patients and a review of 13 studies of schizophrenics found abuse rates from a low of 51% to 97%. Psychiatric patients who report abuse are much more likely to experience hallucinations – flashbacks which have become part of the schizophrenic experience and hallucinations or voices that bully them as their abuser did thus causing paranoia and a mistrust of people close to them.

Genes may still have a role to play but other evidence Hammersley and Read cite shows that genes alone do not cause the illness. A recent study compared 56 adoptees born to schizophrenic mothers with 96 adoptees whose biological parents did not have the illness. The families were observed extensively when the children were small and all the adoptees were assessed for psychiatric illness in adulthood. It was found that if there was a high genetic risk and it was combined with mystifying care during upbringing, the likelihood of developing schizophrenia was greater - genes alone did not cause the illness.

[...]Finally, they argue, if patients believe their illness is an unchangeable genetic destiny and that it is a physical problem requiring a physical solution, they will readily accept a drug prescribed to them when in fact they require other therapy. Worse, those who buy the genetic fairytale are less likely to recover, and that parents who do so are less supportive of their offspring. They recommend that all patients be asked in detail about whether they have been abused, anti-psychotic drugs no longer be doled out automatically and psychological therapies offered more often. MORE

Since I couldn't find the formal research article referring to the 40 research articles, I "googled" Mr. Hammersley's name. In the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2003, volume 182, number 6, pages 543 to 547, there was an article written by Hammersley et al investigating the relationship between childhood abuse, hallucinations and, curiously, bipolar disorder. In this article the authors conclude that there is a relationship between childhood sexual abuse and auditory hallucinations in bipolar disorder patients in outpatient therapy that warrants further investigation. It would seem that Hammersley has since decided to forgo that investigation.

Reading the article in detail, I find some information that would seem to contradict the conclusions of both reports. The authors cite several articles showing an association of childhood abuse and other early trauma with unspecified "serious disorders". The authors notes "evidence of a specific association between childhood sexual abuse and positive symptoms, particularly in hallucinations. Even though most of the evidence reviewed by the report did not specify schizophrenia as the "serious mental illness", later the authors assert that their review finds an "apparent association between hallucinatory experiences and childhood sexual abuse in people with schizophrenia". No explanation is offered for this discrepancy.

In the study of bipolar disorder, the authors collected "spontaneous reports of trauma" of 96 participants. This would seem to grossly underestimate the prevalence of abuse. In my clinical experience, unless solicited with a direct question, clients are unlikely to allege abuse by their parents or something as broadly defined as "trauma".

The authors speculate that trauma leads to hallucinations by two possible mechanisms, the mis-attribution of mental events to an alien or external source or to negative automatic thoughts in persons with low self-esteem. While the first example may well be associated with schizophrenia, it seems unlikely that the latter would be. Cognitive slippage has been associated with schizophrenia, but misjudgment due to low self-esteem could refer to almost any person seen in a psychiatric setting.

Inexplicably, the authors miss the most obvious conclusion of the literature review, one that could also explain their data. Most persons seeking treatment in a mental health setting may have a history of trauma. In fact, that has been my own clinical experience. My career has spanned the period where medications have dramatically improved and are much more likely prescribed. In the late 1970's and early 1980's, anti-depressants, usually tricyclics, were used less widely and anti-psychotics frequently produced extra-pyramidal side effects that were quite uncomfortable and routinely required anti-cholorgenic medications to control them. In those early days, it was not uncommon to see otherwise healthy individuals with purely Axis I disorders from good homes and family relationships in a hospital and outpatient setting showing major mental illness. I have often wondered if persons with a purely Axis 1 disorder are effectively treated with medication alone by their family physician, and are never seen in a mental health setting. Now I seldom see people without an underlying personality disorder and complex trauma filled histories. The large majority of clients I've seen from a variety of settings in the last twenty years come from multi-problem families with a very high incidence of childhood abuse, repeated trauma, parental chemical and domestic abuse.

The "diathesis-stress" model of etiology of mental illness has been widely accepted for a long time. I believe that most chronic chemical dependency and serious and persistent mental illnesses are associated with a history of trauma or childhood abuse. But I would never assert that trauma "causes" either. Things are never that simple. Factors related to genetic inheritance and experiences in childhood as well as significant events in adults seem to contribute significantly in varying degrees in all the clinical histories I collect. A constitutionally sensitive child requires much less environmental stress to produce symptoms. Whereas I'm frequently amazed how resilient some people are despite horrible childhood abuse and repeated trauma.

A press release on a provocative topic without a readily available, rigorously reviewed research report is at best unwise, at worst, could lead to unfortunate consequences. I can only hope that some confused person with schizophrenia doesn't stop her medication and/or accuse her parents of sexual abuse because of this ill-advised press release.

UPDATE: The primary author, Paul Hammersley, has commented and I have replied, click here to read more.

It is very important for people to be aware how much medical information can be distorted by the press. A good example is the recent release of information on anti-depressant drugs I posted on. Well meaning journalists misinterpreted the results and misinformed the public that only half people taking anti-depressants benefited from them. In fact, the truth was the response to medications was "robust" and referred only to initial attempts at a first prescriptions. The study also did not measure the effects of using anti-depressants in conjunction with psychotherapy known to greatly improve treatment.

Here is an article from the Daily Mail quoted by The Corpus Callosum about a similar debacle called "disease mongering". Note the guidelines for journalists and use them in critically reading the articles included in this blog and DtoD Forum.

Drug companies are inventing diseases to sell more of their products, it has been claimed. Scientists have accused major pharmaceutical firms of "medicalising" problems like high cholesterol or the symptoms of the menopause in a bid to increase profits.

Here is some advice for journalists and readers from a researcher.

First, journalists should be very wary when confronted with a new or expanded disease affecting large numbers of people. If a disease is common and very bothersome, it is hard to believe that no one would have noticed it before. Prevalence estimates are easy to exaggerate by broadening the definition of disease. Journalists need to ask exactly how the disease is being defined, whether the diagnostic criteria were used appropriately, and whether the study sample truly represents the general population (e.g., patients at an insomnia clinic cannot be taken to represent the general public).

Journalists should also reflexively question whether more diagnosis is always a good thing. Simply labeling people with disease has negative consequences [21]. Similarly, journalists should question the assumption that treatment always makes sense. Medical treatments always involve trade-offs; people with mild symptoms have little to gain, and treatment may end up causing more harm than good.

Finally, instead of extreme, unrepresentative anecdotes about miracle cures, journalists should help readers understand how well the treatment works (e.g., what is the chance that I will feel better if I take the medicine versus if I do not?) and what problems it might cause (e.g., whether I might be trading less restless legs for daytime nausea, dizziness, and somnolence).

These same principles apply to articles you read on mental health. Uninformed authors and readers can misconstrue what they are reading to the point that one can conclude they are sick when they really aren't or that they are not sick when they are in need of treatment. Reader beware, when in doubt, consult with an expert. See you physician, psychiatrist or counselor. Remember physicians probably know the least about psychotropic medication. Counselors see a lot of clients taking medications, but don't have the medical training to give medical advice. Complicated or risky regimes of psychotropic medications need a regular consultation with a psychiatrist.

NewMood is a large study of depression and we are looking for the general public to help us with this research. Anyone can take part whether or not they have ever suffered from depression. We will use questionnaires, sent out by post, to ask about personality and life experiences.

This website has shorter online versions of some of the tasks in the study. Try them out - they're fun!

Mentally ill more likely victim than perp

Researchers at the university's Feinberg School of Medicine say more than one-fourth of individuals with severe mental illness were victims of violent crime during 2004 -- a rate nearly 12 times that of the general population. Depending on the type of violent crime, prevalence was six to 23 times greater among people with severe mental illness than among the general population, said lead author Linda Teplin, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Feinberg.

In addition, Teplin said the annual incidence of violent crime in people with severe mental illness who live in the community is more than four times higher than that in the general population.

Here is two rather disturbing bits of information. Persons with mental illness are as vulnerable to predators as we thought they might be.

Secondly, we have statistics that say persons with mental illness are four times more likely to commit crimes than the average population. I remember hearing years ago that persons with mental illness were no more likely to commit a crime than the average person. What has changed? Research methods? Or is diagnosis spreading appropriately into the Correctional system? I suspect it's the latter.

Not only have I seen a higher proportion of chemical abuse but criminal records among my more recent clients. It is part and parcel to working in an urban center. I'm also convinced, the same sorts of treatment can be just as helpful, at least for those who have a functioning conscience. But we must be aware as both providers and consumers, there are people who do not have a adequate conscience that we can not trust in our treatment settings.

I posted an article about brainwave anamolies and schizophenia. It seems that there is a dramatic
difference between people with schizophrenia and others in one particular range of brainwaves that are
known to indicate processing of sensory information. As far fetched as it sounds on first glance,
this stuff makes sense and may lead to a whole new type of medications for treatment.
Brain wave anomaly may explain schizophrenia