Bias found in mental health drug research presented at major psychiatric meeting

Medical Express.com

When thousands of psychiatrists attend their field's largest annual meeting each year, the presentations they hear about research into drug treatments report overwhelmingly on positive results.

That's the finding of a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology by two young psychiatrists from the University of Michigan and Yale University, who analyzed the presentations given at two recent meetings of the American Psychiatric Association.

Of 278 studies presented at the 2009 and 2010 APA meetings that compared at least two medicines against each other for any psychiatric illness, they found that 195 had been supported by industry, and 83 funded by other means. The authors then evaluated the studies without knowing which kind of support each one had.

Of the industry-supported studies, 97.4 percent reported results that were positive toward the medicine that the study was designed to test, and 2.6 percent reported mixed results. No industry-sponsored studies with negative results were found.

The entire article is here.

The journal article can be purchased here.

The Ethics Committee: Part 2

As part of our mission, the Ethics Committee educates members about ethics through home study continuing education courses.  For the Certificate in Ethics Education, the committee created six courses totaling 21 credits to help psychologists create a broad knowledge base on ethics education.  This video explains the Certificate of Completion in Ethics Education.

Additional information about the Certificate of Completion in Ethics Education can be found here.

The actual courses can be found by reading PPA's Home Study CE Page.

An article on this certificate will soon be published in The Pennsylvania Psychologist.

The Ethics Committee: Part 1

This post is the first of several that will describe what we do as part of the Ethics Committee.  In the distant past, one role of the committee was to adjudicate ethics complaints lodged against PPA members.  We no longer conduct ethics investigations.  The Pennsylvania Psychological Association refers individuals with ethics complaints to the State Board of Psychology and/or the American Psychological Association.

As a committee, there are plenty of other goals and activities related to ethics and ethics education.  The Pennsylvania Psychological Association provides our mission via the bylaws.  Part of our mission is:

The committee shall provide information to the membership and to the public about the formal ethical principles and the evolving standards of practice of psychologists. Such information shall be distributed regularly and proactively as well as in response to inquiries.

PPA, through its Ethics and other committees, works to help members understand and fulfill their ethical mandates.

Continuing Education

• PPA’s Continuing Education Committee sponsors workshops and home study ethics CE courses. Also, Ethics Committee members and PPA staff sometimes present ethics CE programs for agencies or local psychological associations in the state. Using mostly articles published in the Pennsylvania Psychologist, PPA offers a certificate of completion to psychologists who complete a sequence of home study ethics courses.
• Members of PPA’s Colleague Assistance Committee often present at CE programs to promote self-care and provide referrals for psychologists in distress.
• Members of PPA’s Child Custody Committee often present at CE programs to promote high ethical standards in psychologists who provide services to divorcing families. In addition to having its own e-group, where committee members can consult with each other on issues related to custody, its members have participated in several interdisciplinary conferences with attorneys, judges, psychiatrists, and other professionals involved in child custody determinations.

Publications

• Members of the Ethics Committee regularly write or solicit articles for PPA’s publication, the Pennsylvania Psychologist.  Many of these are then placed in the “Members Only” section of the PPA Web site and have been combined into home studies or online CE courses. Members of other committees, such as the Colleague Assistance, Forensic and Criminal Justice, or Child Custody Committees, may also write articles on ethics related to their specific concerns.
• PPA publishes Pennsylvania Law, Ethics, and Psychology (Knapp, VandeCreek, Tepper, & Baturin, 2010) which reviews the laws and ethics codes relevant to Pennsylvania psychologists. It is now in its fifth edition and is often used in ethics courses in psychology doctoral programs.

We also view this blog as an extension of our goal to educate the public and our members about ethics and ethical principles.

More to follow.