McGorry to feature on ABC's show One Plus One?

I saw a promo on ABCTV about an upcoming special on the show One Plus One with Jane Hutcheon featuring Prof. Patrick McGorry. I think they were seeking people for the audience or a forum. Unfortunately I can't find anything at the ABC's website about this to verify the details. 
http://www.abc.net.au/news/abcnews24/programs/one-plus-one/ 

While I would never advocate that anyone personally bother the professor, I do hope that whatever this show is to be that it isn't a festival of back-slapping from a collection of associates and admirers. There are many elements of McGorry's work that deserve criticism, and there are many critics. I hope these perspectives will be well-represented in the upcoming show. 

Great to hear Martin Whitley on the radio

Are children over-diagnosed? Life Matters. ABC Radio National. 17 June 2013.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/overdiagnosed/4757096

Nice work, Tony.

My amazement has grown over the way that journalists at the ABC's current affairs TV program Lateline have firmly challenged the inappropriate use of anti-psychotic drugs by Australian doctors and psychiatrists. In fact a very good argument could be made that there is no appropriate application of these dangerous and harmful drugs, but I think it would be too much to expect that this argument should be found on Australian TV.

In 2011 Tony Jones interviewed the powerful Irish-Australian psychiatrist Professor Patrick McGorry. At the time I thought this interview was informed but too soft, and the findings of research that has been done since this interview has shown that much of what McGorry claimed about the effectiveness and evidence-base of the interventions he has been advocating for many years was wrong. In 2012 Tony Jones appeared to be quite personally inflamed when he reported about elderly dementia patients having their lives shortened in Australian nursing homes because of the widespread over-prescription of anti-psychotic drugs.

The last couple of editions of Lateline have examined the issue of a 600 per cent increase in the use of the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel in just five years by Australia's Department of Defence, presumably for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers. Allegations have been made that this drug is being used instead of proper and expensive psychological interventions, is being prescribed in dangerous high doses and is being prescribed inappropriately to treat insomnia symptoms of PTSD. Last night Tony Jones was steadfast in asking questions, recounting evidence and seeking answers in an interview with a clearly very irritated senior person in the Australian Defense Force, our Commander Joint Health and the ADF Surgeon General. The interview was a pleasure to watch. I am sure that there are heaps of journalists who would not have had the confidence to question the practices and administration of a qualified doctor and senior bureaucrat on an issue about the rights or wrongs of medical/psychiatric clinical practice. I am sure that many journalists would simply defer to authority, or be too intimidated to be seen questioning that great sacred cow of Australian popular culture; the "mental health" industry. Not Tony Jones. A good journalist should be hot on the inside, cool on the outside, filled to the brim with all the relevant facts, and able to recognize the truth beyond personal agendas. I think Mr Jones approaches that ideal. Nice work Tony.

Another speculative thought about the interesting case of "Doc" Evatt

A couple of years ago I was amazed to be apparently the first person in the world to identify the fascinating, formidable and not bad looking for a pollie late Australian politician H. V. Evatt as a synaesthete, based on biographical information written by others but not previously analysed in terms of synaesthesia. Evatt was a controversial and enigmatic character, and his coloured days of the week synaesthesia was perhaps one of the least amazing of his characteristics. Synaesthesia certainly wasn't the only interesting thing going on inside the brain of the ALP leader. By all accounts he suffered from a dreadful mental decline for an unknown period of time before his death, which seems like an especially cruel fate for a man who displayed a powerhouse intellect since he was a school-boy. Biographers have put forward a number of theories about the cause of his death and decline. Some wrote of atherosclerosis, some offered convincing evidence that epilepsy was treated as a definite or speculative diagnosis by Evatt's doctor. As you'd expect, some who don't like his politics have asserted that he was simply crazy as a loon. Asperger syndrome has been offered as an explanation of his personality, which is really an empty assertion as that label is itself little more than a description of behaviour. Eccentric behaviour has been noted by a biographers and commentators - a terror of flying, stuffing newspapers under his clothes as insulation against hot weather, sloppy dressing accompanied by a "strine" accent, a cruel manner at times, sleeping few hours a day (as appears to be common among political leaders), and meeting guests fully dressed but lying in bed. In not sure exactly during which period in Evatt's life he liked to go nude, a behaviour admired by another colourful past ALP leader, Mark Latham. Our nation came that close to having a nudist PM, that long ago? That's something to consider. I could be accused of anti-intellectualism in my suspicion that there was something interesting behind Evatt's life-long habit of collecting achievements, but when I read in one biography pages upon pages of description of the academic prizes, positions and honours amassed by Evatt since his earliest school-days, I couldn't help wondering about the powerful driving forces and motivations.  Even his nick-name is an academic achievement. He had a doctorate in law. 

Perhaps the oddest behaviour noted by biographers is the being in bed fully clothed. Why? Sleeping in clothes? An odd attempt to hide physical collapse caused by absence seizures? Some other medical problem causing fainting? I was monkeying about on YouTube, as you do, viewing one of my favourite genres of videos - the medical freak-show, when I came across an episode of the TV series Mystery Diagnosis. There were two interesting medical cases in the episode, but it was the case of swallow syncope in long-suffering patient Martha Bryce that made me think of Evatt. If Evatt had this illness or something like it. it would explain a lot of his eccentricities and also the tragic mental decline. This rare medical condition as an explanation would encompass both the seizure-like and the circulatory symptoms that Evatt appeared to have. If he had it way back in the 1950's in Australia I think most likely it would have been misdiagnosed or not medically understood and not treated effectively. I imagine it would slowly but surely destroy the brain and the mind if untreated, and no one would understand what was happening. What a horrible fate. Could there be any link between synaesthesia and neurally-mediated syncopes? God only knows, but I do know that I, a multi-synaesthete, have experienced some memorable episodes of this type of fainting. 

Rare diseases and medical conditions deserve a greater share of research funding, recognition and donations. Individually these conditions are indeed rare, but as a group rare medical conditions and disorders are not rare at all - many people have one or more rare or uncommon medical issue, but it is the common deadly diseases that get all the attention. 

http://www.swallowsyncope.com/

An apology diminished

I hate the way that considerations of mental health and psychiatry have made their way into just about everything that Australian government agencies do. In Canberra today a historic apology to those affected by forced adoption has been made, and right in the middle of the speech there was talk about access to mental health services. It wasn't appropriate. The presence or absence of mental health issues and whether or not affected people seek the services or psychiatrists or psychologists is not a measure of what happened, nor are these things a measure of how serious the issue is. I am so fed up with hearing about mental health in discussions and speeches that are about other things. It's like listening to a tedious a religious person who can't help but bring God or Jesus into every discussion.

We live in a secular society, so we no longer have to put up with such nonsense, but what has happened is that psychiatry has replaced religion in the lives of many Australians, so everyone is now compelled to listen to frequent and inappropriate references to mental health issues and therapies seeping into every corner of public and private life. Mental health is the new religion, and we are made to feel obliged to strive for a new kind of perfection of the soul. A state of perfect mental health has replaced moral perfection as the ideal. It is an idea with some merits but I still believe morals are more important than health, even though I'm an atheist and thus don't hold a religious view of morality. I suspect that it might be the amorality of the new religion that is the reason why so many find it personally attractive. We no longer have to deal with old-style moralizing attitudes but the new flock are just as tedious as the Bible-bashers of old, because all religions have zealots, and zealots insert their views into life at every opportunity, regardless of appropriateness. Winston Churchill defined the fanatic as one who ".... can't change his mind and won't change the subject". This is why we have today had to listen to a description of mental health service provision by the government inserted into a historic apology, an annoying and probably in the eyes of some an insulting distraction. Enough already!

You thought the Gillard Govt had mental health all sorted?

WRONG!

Australia needs Better Access to psychological treatment
a petition to the Hon Julia Gillard MP initiated by
Dr Ben Mullings
Change.org
http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/australia-needs-better-access-to-psychological-treatment

Alliance for Better Access
http://betteraccess.net/

Prof McGorry's pet theory loses battle with reality

I've only just found out about the online publication in late November of last year of a study by former Australian of the Year and influential psychiatrist Prof. Patrick McGorry and his research team, which tested the prof's pet theory that elevated risk for developing psychosis can be identified in young people and treated in an early intervention to prevent a conversion to mental illness.The subjects of the trial were 115 young clients of a PACE clinic in Melbourne. Two supposedly effective forms of intervention were tested: the neuroleptic antipsychotic drug risperidone and cognitive therapy. McGorry's team had planned a couple of years ago to trial a different antipsychotic drug, but that trial was abandoned after complaints from other mental health experts. In this trial only a low dose of the drug risperidone was trialed. Three different combinations of drug or placebo and talking interventions were trialed (check the details for yourself), one being only placebo with "supportive therapy". No significant difference in results was found between the three groups. The supposedly effective interventions apparently weren't found to be any more effective than placebo and a nice chat, and as any true expert in the field of trying to predict risk for developing psychosis could have predicted, a large majority of the youths that had been labelled as being at "ultra-high risk for psychosis" did not become psychotic within the year that the trial was run. Call that ultra-high risk? I certainly don't! The sky isn't falling Henny Penny, and your interventions don't work!

Patrick D. McGorry, MD, PhD; Barnaby Nelson, PhD; Lisa J. Phillips, PhD; Hok Pan Yuen, MSc; Shona M. Francey, PhD; Annette Thampi, MRCPsych; Gregor E. Berger, MD; G. Paul Amminger, MD; Magenta B. Simmons, BA; Daniel Kelly, Grad Dip (Psych); Andrew D. Thompson, MD; and Alison R. Yung, MD (2012) Randomized Controlled Trial of Interventions for Young People at Ultra-High Risk of Psychosis: Twelve-Month Outcome. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Submitted: March 16, 2012; accepted September 13, 2012. Online ahead of print: November 27, 2012 (doi:10.4088/JCP.12m07785).
http://article.psychiatrist.com/dao_1-login.asp?ID=10008115&RSID=3876442436586

Thank you Neuroskeptic for the interesting blog post about the trial:

Neuroskeptic (2012) Neither Drugs Nor Therapy Prevent Psychosis. Neuroskeptic. December 15th 2012.
http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/neither-drugs-nor-therapy-prevent.html

It's like watching tennis - Prof. Allen Frances criticizes new govt child mental illness screening program

Like night follows day, American Emeritus Professor Allen Frances, a psychiatrist and also a veteran of a past DSM revision, has volunteered his two-bob worth on the subject of the Gillard Government's upcoming program of mental health screening of three-year-olds, "The Healthy Kids Check", and true to form, he isn't being kind. According to Prof. Frances "There's absolutely no evidence at all that we can predict accurately who will go on to have a mental disorder", so it would appear that a program that aims to identify mental illness in little ones who aren't even old enough to go to big school would be a foolish enterprise indeed. Add to that the probability that the screening will do harm: "A label like 'autism' can be obviously devastating, but even less severe labels can have a dramatic effect on expectations, on the way the child feels about himself, his role in the family. I would be very cautious about labels, especially in young children, especially because they're so likely to be wrong."


The ABC are claiming that the Healthy Kids Check will be voluntary, but I have my doubts that parents will not be financially coerced by the federal government into submitting their young children to examination. In March 2012 the Australian parenting magazine Web Child reported that parents risk losing a Centrelink payment if they omit to "take their four year old for a mandatory health assessment." Is this the same assessment as the Healthy Kids Check?


All of the media stories that I have read about the planned program indicate that it is not limited at all to identifying mental illness, but is in fact very much geared to identifying supposed signs of autism, which is considered to be an incurable developmental disability or alternately a form of neurodiversity. In Australia mental health and early intervention are some of the biggest fads of the decade, so apparently to give this intrusive program appeal it is being sold as a form of mental health early intervention leading to recovery, a spin on the subject that is sure to offend many people who identify themselves as autistic but not mentally disordered.


Prof Frances is currently appearing in Perth, along with the Irish-Australian psychiatrist professor whom he has often spoken out against, Prof Patrick McGorry, at the Asia Pacific Conference on Mental Health. Clinical Professor Jon Jureidini and the federal Minister for Mental Health and Ageing Mark Butler will also be speaking at this conference.


Hall, Eleanor (2012) Expert warns against child mental health checks. PM. ABC Radio National. June 11th 2012.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-11/expert-warns-against-child-mental-health-checks/4064474

Asia Pacific Conference on Mental Health. http://www.rfwa.org.au/aspac2012/news/?post=6

Roberts, Felicity (2012) Don't miss out on family payment. Web Child. Match 20th 2012. http://www.webchild.com.au/read/news/dont-miss-out-on-family-payment

Loner littlies to be labelled (in Australia)

See my post about this at my other blog:
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/loner-littlies-to-be-labelled.html
Preschoolers to get mental health checks.
ABC News. June 10, 2012.http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-10/preschoolers-to-get-voluntary-mental-health-checks/4062566

Big news on the psychiatry front when I wasn't looking

I've not had much time for blogging in the last few weeks and I've missed some important developments in the last couple of months regarding the upcoming edition of the "bible of psychiatry", the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). An early-intervention mental health diagnosis that has been championed by Prof Patrick McGorry, who has great influence on the Gillard Government and a high-profile in Australia, has been rejected by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). This supposed disorder which is thought to be a milder early sign of the onset of a psychotic mental illness, typically in teens and young adults, will not be included inthe fifth edition of the world-famous manual of psychiatric diagnosis, but will be relegated to the appendix where disorders requiring more research are placed and forgotten. This controversial condition went by a bewildering range of names: "psychosis risk syndrome" "prodromal symptoms" "prodrome" "high-risk syndrome" "ultra-high-risk syndrome" "at-risk mental state" etc. The ad hoc nomenclature gives the impression that the professor was just making it up as he went along. 

Don't be overly distracted by the rejection of one proposed new mental illness by the APA. The crashing and burning of the prodrome is not really the big news from last month on the subject of modern psychiatry's revision of it's great big guidebook. The big news was that two diagnostic categories in some of the most supposedly common and also some of the most aggressively promoted types of mental illness in Australia, major depressive disorder and generalised anxiety disorder, have been found by psychiatry researchers to be diagnostic categories which cannot be reliably identified, in that there was found to be a major lack of consensus from one doctor to another about who did or did not meet some diagnostic criteria for these types of disorders. What kind of diagnoses are these, which cannot be identified with any certainty or reliability? If modern psychiatry was an emperor, he'd be looking very bare and very embarrassed right now.

Why are these recent developments important to Australians? The Gillard Government has committed a huge sum of money to reforms in mental health services, guided by controversial figures such as Pat McGorry, Ian Hickie and John Mendoza. We don't only have the government spending big on psychiatry and shoving the message down our throats that we all need more of it, we also have some very powerful and influential charities and organizations inflicting very pervasive and long-standing public awareness campaigns about mental illness onto the general public. Two that come to mind are Beyondblue and the Brain and Mind Research Institute, but there is a mental health message promoter lurking around every corner in Australia. Awareness campaigns actively recruit ordinary unqualified, uneducated members of the public as peer-support spreaders of the word that mental illness is everywhere and needs to be treated yesterday. Psychiatry propaganda seeps into ordinary social exchanges and is impossible to avoid. TV news stories hammer the message that we should be uncertain and concerned about the minds of others and our own. Journalists have swung from one extreme to another regarding the reporting of suicide (which is universally assumed to be the result of mental illness). I remember the days when it was a subject banned from news reports based on the belief that reporting might trigger copy-cats. These days suicide is the flavour of the month on current affairs reporting, and journalists jump to label crimes and deaths as suicide, sometimes mistakenly. Because of this tasteless and horrible focus on the morbid and the sordid it is now impossible to sit through the news hour on TV in the company of young children. For many years now Australians who watch late-night commercial television have been assailed by TV commercials for the network of Headspace psychiatric clinics aimed at young people, often with scant or no indication that this is what these clinics actually are. Now I find that there is absolutely no place except home where I can go to escape messages about mental derangement. Even in a public toilet I have psychiatry propaganda about depression and anxiety (the two disorders that can't apparently be reliably diagnosed) shoved in front of my face. We now have full-page illustrated advertisements advocating the identification of mental illness and the use of the services of professional mental health services on the back of dunny doors! They are found in toilets in shopping centres, universities, you name it. ENOUGH!

What's wrong with spreading awareness, you might ask. If the message is a misrepresentation, then it is all bad, and the message is indeed mostly lies. We are told that the treatments work. In fact, there is a load of good evidence that many of the drugs prescribed for depression and other mental illnesses do not act as chemical treaments and have troublesome or dangerous side effects. If they were just sugar pills, that would only be a con, but it's worse than that. An active placebo works because the person taking the drug can feel definite and troublesome side effects, and he/she unconsciously takes this as evidence of the potency of the drug, and this gives rise to a powerful placebo effect (which is a real effect, but not the result of any drug action). These drugs cost patients and the taxpayer dearly, many have serious side effects and many of them basically don't work, and in the process the patient is often unjustifiably convinced that she/he has a defective brain which needs ongoing chemical assistance to work adequately. We are told that modern psychiatry is based on a solid foundation of decades of research evidence that meets the highest scientific standards, but in fact one of the trials which was part of the evidence foundation of the recent DSM revisions had a grand total of nine (9) ill patients as subjects. And they are trying to make you and I feel guilty for not going along with this debacle? Pull the other one, mate!

Aldhous, Peter (2012) Trials highlight worrying flaws in psychiatry 'bible'. New Scientist. 17 May 2012 issue 2865. p.6-7.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428653.600-trials-highlight-worrying-flaws-in-psychiatry-bible.html

Maxmen, Amy (2012) Psychosis risk syndrome excluded from DSM-5. Nature. May 9th 2012.
http://www.nature.com/news/psychosis-risk-syndrome-excluded-from-dsm-5-1.10610

New Scientist report on anti-psychiatry protesters

"Label jars, not people"  "Problems aren't in our heads, but between our heads"  "15-minute sessions are a form of malpractice"  "Stop medicalising the normal symptoms of life"

'Label jars, not people': Lobbying against the shrinks.
by James Davies
New Scientist.
magazine issue 2965
17 May 2012.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428653.700-label-jars-not-people-lobbying-against-the-shrinks.html

John Mendoza on One Plus One

Today an interview with the outspoken and controversial Australian psychiatrist John Mendoza was broadcast on the ABC's current affairs interview show One Plus One, along with some other interviews. Journalist Jane Hutcheon was the interviewer. When asked about the current strong advocacy in Australia for early intervention services for young people judged to be at risk of developing psychosis, Mendoza claimed that there was strong evidence, but I don't recall that he stated what of. His words might have sounded quite authoritative to a viewer with only a marginal interest and little background knowledge of the issue, but I was unimpressed, to say the least. Hutcheon also held Mendoza to account for his unprofessional smears of former PM Kevin Rudd during the run-up to the last leadership spill in the ALP, which is surely a question that needed to be asked.

One Plus One.
ABC.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/abcnews24/programs/one-plus-one/

Guardian reports that study finds drugs should not be first option

The Guardian newspaper yesterday published an article reporting the findings of a study which apparently found that drugs should not be the first option for treating young people thought to be at risk of developing a psychotic mental illness such as schizophrenia, because "only a tenth will go on to develop more serious conditions" and ""benign" psychological treatments, including Cognitive Therapy (CT), were effective in reducing the severity of psychotic experiences". So I've got to wonder why some Australian psychiatrists have been so enthused about trialling the pills. I guess this should be good news for psychologists and bad news for psychiatrists and drug companies. But didn't the Gillard Government bring in a program of mental health reforms that gave lots of funding for psychiatry at the expense of psychological treatment? Nice one, Julia! You're a one-woman-skill-shortage.

Drugs not best option for people at risk of psychosis, study warns. Guardian. April 6th 2012.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/apr/06/drugs-psychosis-schizophrenia-counselling?CMP=twt_fd

John Mendoza still an a******e

Shame, John Mendoza, SHAME! Your psychiatric slur against Rudd is grossly unprofessional and clearly motivated by personal emnity, and says so much more about you than it says anything at all about Mr Rudd.

One reason why I find myself in the position of being a solid Rudd supporter, despite what I believe is a good understanding of his many personal flaws and political wrongs, is that so many of the people who speak out against Rudd and might gain more power in Rudd's absence from the leadership role, are a******es. Plain and simple. A******es. Sunshine Coast "Adjunct Professor" Mendoza included.

Aussie psychiatrist Prof Ian Hickie at centre of controversy

Psychiatrist claims campaign to discredit him.
The World Today.
ABC Radio National
February 13th 2012
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3429115.htm

The drug Agomelatine and the medical journal The Lancet are mentioned in this report, subjects that I've written about before in connection with Prof. Hickie.

Also see this recent newspaper article:

Dunlevy, Sue
'Campaign' targets depression guru Ian Hickie.
The Australian.
February 13th 2012.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/campaign-targets-depression-guru/story-e6frg8y6-1226269135293

Quote from this article:

"West Australian Labor MP and anti-ADHD drug campaigner Martin Whitely called on Professor Hickie yesterday to step aside as a mental health commissioner over the row "and if he doesn't (Mental Health Minister) Mark Butler should remove him"."

I recommend the website Speed Up & Sit Still by Martin Whitely as a great place to get all the details of this controversy, which I have written about here in past posts:
http://speedupsitstill.com/

You know things aren't going well in your medical practice when....

....a shitload of disgruntled ex-patients get together to form themselves into a support group, and a class action lawsuit looks probable. It looks like the misdeeds of the Australian psychiatrist Professor Graham Burrows are finally catching up with him. Why has it taken so long?

I find it rather interesting that Australia has two controversial psychiatrist professors, Dr Graham Burrows and Prof. Patrick McGorry, who have both been the subject of serious ethical objections to their trials of the same drug - Seroquel, which has the proper chemical name of Quetiapine and also goes by other brand names, and is manufactured by the drug company AstraZeneca. According to the Seven News report Burrows was being funded by the manufacturer of Seroquel to trial the drug on eating disorder patients, and Prof. McGorry tried to get a trial of Seroquel as a treatment to prevent the onset of psychosis happening in Australia, but that trial was closed down on ethical grounds after an international collection of health professionals and researchers lodged a formal objection to the trial, known as the NEUROPRO-Q study. Like Burrows McGorry has been the beneficiary of funding or assistance from AstraZeneca, which he has disclosed at least once in a medical journal paper. Another thing the two profs have in common - both Burrows and McGorry have been accused of practicing psychiatry in a way that results in or probably would result in patients being incorrectly diagnosed as schizophrenic. McGorry should take a tip - looking this similar to Dr Graham Burrows is not a good look, and this is true now more than ever!

Class action against Burrows.
reporter Louise Milligan
7News (Melbourne)
January 15th 2012
http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/vic/-/watch/27901358/class-action-against-burrows/
http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/vic/watch/27901358/

Seroquel XR: 0:28 of advert, 1:02 of horrible side effects!
YouTube
http://youtu.be/vUBjO7J_UpM
[This is an unintentionally hilarious and scary advertisement for the drug Seroquel from the US, in which the disclaimer about serious side effects (which presumably must be added by law) takes up most of the time of the advert.]

Wikipedia contributors (accessed 2012) Quetiapine. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quetiapine&oldid=471222206

I can't understand why Dr/Prof Graham Burrows is still practising medicine

A quote from today's shocking 7News report about the controversial Australian psychiatrist/professor Graham Burrows:

"I can't describe it as anything other than disgusting."

I agree.

Burrows patient used as "guinea pig".
Milligan, Louise
7News.
January 12th 2012
http://au.news.yahoo.com/video/sa/watch/27859872/248154/

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/burrows-patient-used-as-guinea-pig-27859874.html#crsl=%252Fvideo%252Fworld-15749633%252Fburrows-patient-used-as-guinea-pig-27859874.html


and from late last year this report of an incredible bit of conduct:


Mental health charity probe.
McArthur, Grant
Herald Sun.
December 23rd 2011
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/mental-health-charity-probe/story-fn7x8me2-1226228855616


another damning report from 2011:

7News exposes medical scandal

https://au.news.yahoo.com/vic/a/9690341/7news-exposes-medical-scandal/

Aussie parents could be forced to medicate kids (as has happened in some US states)

Whenever the WA ALP MP Martin Whitely gets a mention on the front page of The Australian, the story is sure to be one that I'll find interesting. In the editorial comment about this story the possible consequence of new NHMRC guidelines on the treatment of ADHD in which Australian parents could potentially be referred to child protection if they refuse to medicate a child diagnosed with ADHD has been compared to the world of Orwell's dystopian novel 1984.

Medicate ADHD kids or else, parents told.
by: Sue Dunlevy
The Australian
November 21, 2011
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/medicate-adhd-kids-or-else-parents-told/story-fn59niix-1226200652633

Commonsense deficit disorder
Editorial
The Australian
November 21, 2011
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/commonsense-deficit-disorder/story-e6frg71x-1226200557444

Another addition to the war of words over early psychosis

GP David Shiers and bipolar disorder expert Prof. Jan Scott, both from the UK, are both quoted in this report in the Weekend Australian, and they both lend support to the vision of early intervention in psychosis that has been promoted by Prof. Patrick McGorry. I have a few comments about the content of this article. Dr Shiers is quoted as claiming that new early intervention services, presumably in the UK, save money by lowering the rate of hospital readmissions. Where's the published study that demonstrates as much? There is no reference to any published study in this newspaper report, so I've got to assume that there isn't one.

Professor Scott's assertion that "...there is no medical disorder in which the outcome is better if you delay treatment" is presented in this article as a supporting argument for McGorry's early intervention program, but it fails, for two reasons. Firstly, it doesn't really address the previously expressed fears of Dr Allen Frances that McGorry's early intervention plans for a condition that is characterised as pre-psychosis will probably misdiagnose young patients who are not genuinely developing cases of psychosis. There is simply no value in intervening early with patients who are not geuninely ill. Secondly, Prof. Scott's assertion fails as a supporting argument because it simply isn't true. I can easily think of medical diseases, disorders and conditions in which the best medical practice is either watchful waiting or delaying treatment for a specified period. Some mild infections are best left untreated but with monitoring if it is not clear that antibiotics are necessary, and I know of at least one birth defect in which self-correction can happen in infancy, and therefore the best medical proctice is to delay surgery till the age at which the chances of spontaneous healing are negligible. I also believe that best medical practice for some cases of prostate cancer might be watchful waiting. Most cases of stuttering (a speech disorder) in early childhood remit spontaneously, and the last time I checked there was virtually nothing in way of credible published evidence that the treatment program used by most speech pathologists works better than no treatment, so the argument for doing nothing, at least in the early years, makes sense. When a medical doctor makes such a questionable and dogmatic statement I believe we should take that as a hint that an interventionist bias combined with an insufficient regard for all of the options and all of the evidence about outcomes could be operating, which is the last thing that we need in the vexed and heated dispute over how to treat Australian youths who may, or may not, be developing a serious mental illness.

At odds over early psychosis.
by: Sue Dunlevy
From:The Australian
November 12, 2011
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/at-odds-over-early-psychosis/story-e6frg8y6-1226191802632

Words of wisdom about mental health from Jon Jureidini on the radio

I so much love the concept of the "unexplanation" in relation to mental illness labels which child psychiatrist Prof. Jon Jureidini has created and used in his talk which was recently broadcast on ABC radio, on the radio show All in the Mind on Radio National 810am. Prof. Jureidini cites depression and most mental health labels as "unexplanations", and I'd certainly agree with him on that point. We should never be satisfied with "unexplanations" from doctors or psychiatrists or psychologists or counsellors. We deserve so much more from highly paid and highly educated professionals who wield a lot of power in our society.

Prof. Jureidini is one of many critics (including myself) of Prof. Patrick McGorry who has had a great level of influence on federal government mental health policy, particularly under the Gillard Government, and this has concerned many people. Many thanks to Natasha Mitchell and the ABC's Radio National for giving airtime in two different radio shows to rational and science-based critics of "big pharma" such as Prof. Jureidini and the multi-award-winning Australian health journalist and author Ray Moynihan.

Juredini, Jon (2011) Sick, Screwed Up or Just Lazy? - 2011 Adelaide Festival of Ideas. All in the Mind. ABC Radio National. 22 October 2011.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2011/3340004.htm

Moynihan, Ray (2011) A noble cause. Background Briefing. October 16th 2011.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2011/3337618.htm

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http://www.healthyskepticism.org/global