UMass Boston Study Reveals Financial Links Between Mental Health Guide Advisors and Pharmaceutical Companies

From the University of Massachusett Press Release

Experts on mental disorders who serve on a leading medical manual’s advisory panel have undisclosed financial ties to drug companies, according to a new study written by a team of UMass Boston and Tufts University professors and graduate students.

Lisa Cosgrove of UMass Boston’s Department of Counseling and School Psychology in the Graduate College of Education, Tufts University Professor Sheldon Krimsky, and UMass Boston graduate students Manisha Vijayaraghavan and Lisa Schneider authored the study, which was published April 21 [2006] in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, a leading medical journal in Europe.

A number of UMass Boston students participated in this first-of-its-kind study, according to Cosgrove. Over a year and a half, the team researched the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) panel members and their financial ties to pharmaceutical companies.

Before this study, no one had looked at the financial ties between the DSM panel members and the drug companies, according to Cosgrove.

But wait, there's more:

The study examined 170 DSM panel members and revealed some startling results. According to the findings, all of the members for panels on mood disorders, schizophrenia, and other psychotic disorders have financial ties to drug companies. Most drugs are prescribed for these two categories of mental illness, the study states.

According to the study, of the 170 panel members, 56 percent had one or more financial ties to companies in the pharmaceutical industry

In 2004, antidepressants and antipsychotics were the fourth- and fifth-leading class of drugs, generating a total of over $34 billion in sales worldwide, according to the findings.

“Nowhere in the DSM is there a conflict-of-interest policy,” Cosgrove said. One hundred percent of the panel experts on mood disorders and schizophrenia had financial ties to drug companies, she said. “It’s so outrageous,” she said of the findings.

“Probably what the general public isn’t aware of is in order for drug to be approved by the FDA, there must be a disorder for it to be approved,” Cosgrove said.

A marketing of disorders and psychiatric disorders exists because the drug companies have a vested interest in them, she said.

To quote a pair of famous lines from a movie:

"I am shocked that there is gambling going on in this establishment."
"Here are your winnings, Inspector"