Psychiatrists tied to drug makers

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Every psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic criteria for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia has had financial ties to drug companies that sell medications for those illnesses, an analysis has found.

Of the 170 experts who contributed to the manual that defines disorders ranging from personality problems to drug addiction, more than half had such ties, including 100 percent of the experts who served on work groups on mood disorders such as depression and psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.

The analysis did not reveal the extent of their relationships with industry or whether the relations preceded or followed their work on the manual.

“I don’t think the public is aware of how egregious the financial ties are in the field of psychiatry,” said Lisa Cosgrove, a clinical psychologist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, who is publishing her analysis today in the peer-reviewed journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.