News: Move over Zyprexa, Seroquel, trial on Risperdal

News: Psychiatric Solutions: pay raise, lawsuits and a new military contract
Psychiatric Solutions, Inc., a national chain of psychiatric hospitals plagued with state and federal investigations and share-holder lawsuits has received a military contract for serving vets in eight hospitals.. . .
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News: Harvard psychiatrist courted pharma
Documents in a class action law suit show an active courtship between psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Biederman and Johnson and Johnson to fund a center at Massachusetts General Hospital to promote marketing goals. Discussions dating from 2002 address "deliverables" and positioning the company for child and adolescent pharmacology. Emails were posted on the Wall Street Journal. The documents are part of a class action law suit over pediatric use of Risperdal. Additional stories: Reuters, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Bloomberg News, The...
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Consider This: Goodwin under the bus
. . .and journalism ethics?
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News: Grassley widens probe
The name of another prominent psychiatrist has been added to the list of expert physicians identified by Sen. Chuck Grassley because of lucrative speaking fees from pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Frederick Goodwin, recognized expert on bipolar disorder, former head of the National Institute of Mental Health, and current host of the popular NPR radio show, The Infinite Mind, was the subject of a story in Slate in May. Goodwin has apparently received more than one million dollars from just one drug...
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News: NIH holds up Emory grant
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has frozen payments to Emory University as part of an investigation into conflicts of interest of Dr. Charles Nemeroff. Nemeroff, an expert on depression, stepped down last week as chairman of the psychiatry department. He is charged with failure to disclose $1.2 million he received from drug companies while engaged in research, a violation of NIH and Emory's own academic procedures. The Atlantic Journal Constitution broke the story after receiving a memo from...
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News: Report issued on conflicts of interest
In response to allegations of conflicts of interest and ethical misconduct between 2006 and 2007, the Office of Inspector General has issued a report outlining how they were resolved by the National Institutes of Health....
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News: Psychiatrist under investigation resigns
Dr. Charles Nemeroff, under investigation for violating federal regulations to guarantee unbiased research while receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health, resigned as chair of department of psychiatry at Emory University. The resignation follows a New York Times story, and conversation in the blogs, about $2.8 million in fees he has received from different pharmaceutical companies. Although Emory had advised him to keep his consulting fees under $10,000, and Nemeroff presumably agreed, he did not. The university was reminded...
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News: FDA lashes Ranbaxy about generic drugs
The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) sent warnings to Ranbaxy, a generic drug company based in India, partially restricting imports of some drugs while it was highly critical of the company's sloppy quality control for others. Redactions in the letters make it impossible to know whether the problems cited apply to the anti-anxiety and anti-depressants Ranbaxy makes. While the FDA was coming down on Ranbaxy, Rep. John Dingell, chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, released a statement asking...
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News: Georgia slashes budget
The Atlantic Journal-Constitution reports that Georgia is considering slashing its mental health budget by as much as $77.5 million. Cuts of that amount, about 10 percent, throw into question improvements to the tarnished hospital system currently under investigation for reports of patient abuse and suspicious deaths. Officials are considering contracting with private psychiatric hospitals, a cheaper alternative than fixing, pending the justice department findings. Citizen activists worry the solutions will look good on paper while people with a mental illness...
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News: Georgia hospitals still failing
Today's Atlantic Journal-Constitution reports that Georgia's state hospitals failed another inspection, this time in July, "despite a $3.4 million "turnaround" plan that was supposed to address persistently dangerous conditions." They include overcrowding, abuse, over-medication, suspicious deaths, poor staffing. and failure to record incidents. This is an on-going problem which the Atlantic Journal-Constitution has been tracking....
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News: Conflicts of interest pinpointed again
The relationship between psychiatry and pharma is getting renewed attention as a result of Sen. Charles Grassley's ongoing investigation. The probe began in June focusing on three pediatric psychiatrists whose incomes had been greatly supplanted by a multitude of consulting relationships. An article in Saturday's New York Times focused on "Dr. Alan F. Schatzberg of Stanford, whose $4.8 million stock holdings in a drug development company raised the senator’s concern." Schatzberg is president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association. On Friday,...
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News: Shocking death in psychiatric emergency room
A video, now on YouTube, recorded the conspicuous neglect of a patient waiting in the psychiatric emergency room for more than 24 hours while staff ignored her writhing in pain, falling from a chair, lying on the floor of New York City's Kings County Hospital. The incident took place June 19, and the video was provided as part of a routine release of evidence in a law suit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The New York...
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News: Drug funding for psychiatrists questioned
Psychiatrists who failed to report receiving a combined $4.2 million from 15 drug companies since 2000 were the subject of a Senate inquiry according to information released by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) (top left). The three Harvard doctors -- Joseph Biederman (see left), Thomas Spencer, and Timothy Wilens -- mentioned by the senator have been aggressive proponents of medication management for ADHD and bipolar disorder in children and Biederman is a popular conference speaker for parents and educators. His 300...
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Track Legislation: H.R. 5605
Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) introduced the Physician Payments Sunshine Act of 2008 on March 12, 2008: “To amend title XI of the Social Security Act to provide for transparency in the relationship between physicians and manufacturers of drugs, devices, or medical supplies for which payment is made under Medicare, Medicaid, or SCHIP.”
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Track Legislation: S. 2029
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) introduced the Physician Payments Sunshine Act of 2007 on September 5, 2007: “To amend title XI of the Social Security Act to provide for transparency in the relationship between physicians and manufacturers of drugs, devices, or medical supplies for which payment is made under Medicare, Medicaid, or SCHIP.”
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News: Dept. of Justice scores Georgia hospitals
The Justice Department's list of problems in Georgia's state hospitals amounted to a scathing attack on the state psychiatric hospitals which have been investigated on and off by different government agencies since 1999. Suicides, razors, sexual assaults, general mayhem and gang fights on the adolescent unit, and the inappropriate hospitalization of those with developmental disabilities are among the specifics in a 65-page letter to Gov. Sonny Perdue. The lengthy investigation included all aspects of the system despite Georgia's challenge...
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News: Substandard treatment of immigrants
Suicide and dubious management of psychiatric conditions point to mistreatment of immigrants held in detention at the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Investigative journalists Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein for the The Washington Post report “substandard medical care,” and how “people with mental illness are relegated to the darkest and most neglected corners of the system.”...
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News: Mental health ombudsman
Georgia is proposing a mental health ombudsman attached to the governor’s office of consumer affairs and not to the mental health division it is supposed to investigate. Reports of patient abuse and deaths have led to federal investigations in Georgia, Del. and North Carolina....
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News: North Carolina questions services
North Carolina is learning that many private companies hired to deliver mental health community support services have dubious practices including preying on the poor, charging excessive fees, and at least $4.2 million in questionable Medicaid charges. The North Carolina News Observer reports that during one three-month period in 2006, “277 companies received taxpayer money to provide community support.” One of them, Dominion Healthcare Services, charged $61 an hour to take clients to charities for free clothes. Aggressive canvassing techniques in...
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