December 22, 2009
from
CCHRINT Website
Creating The
Perfect Marketing/Lobbying Machine
Mental Health "Advocacy Groups" Funded by Big Pharma
The majority of the public may or may not be familiar with these
so-called mental health advocacy organizations, such as the
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI),
Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(CHADD) or the myriad of bipolar, depression or
ADHD “support
groups” that are inundating the internet.
But they need to be.
These are groups operating under the guise of advocates for the
“mentally ill,” which in reality are heavily funded pharmaceutical
front groups - lobbying and working on state and federal laws which
effect the entire nation - from our elderly in nursing homes to our
military, pregnant women, nursing mothers and school children.
Presenting themselves as patient
advocacy groups is highly disingenuous not only to their membership,
many of which may have a sincere desire to help a loved one or a
family member with mental problems, but to legislators, the press
and the American public - for they have consistently lobbied for
legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical
industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to
represent.
Certainly any organization claiming to be for the rights of patients
diagnosed mentally ill would have as their primary goal, full
informed consent in the field of mental health - including full and
complete disclosure of all drug risks, the right to refuse
treatment, the right to know that psychiatric diagnoses are not
medical conditions (evident by the fact there is not one
confirmatory medical/scientific test).
Above all such groups would provide
patients with an abundance of information on non-harmful, non- drug,
medical solutions and options considering the dangerous and well
documented risks of psychiatric drugs by international drug
regulatory agencies.
These groups do not.
A patients rights group for the mentally ill would never endorse
something as absurd and obviously dangerous as giving electroshock
to pregnant women, nor condone schools being able to require
children to take a psychiatric drug as a condition of attending
school.
Furthermore, they would never be opposed
to
the FDA actually doing its job and finally issuing long overdue
warnings that antidepressants can cause children to commit suicide,
or issue warnings that ADHD drugs have serious and even deadly side
effects. Yet these are just some of the actions condoned and
promoted by these so-called patients rights groups.
As another example take the federally proposed bill,
The Mothers
Act.
A previous version of this bill called
on using a method of “screening” pregnant women and new mothers
called EPDS, a screening method documented to triple the number of
women diagnosed with Post partum depression, according to a study
published in Obstecrics & Gynecology.
The Scandinavian Journal of Public
Health stated that EPDS screening was unethical and should not
be used. None of the so called advocacy groups for the mentally ill
had any objections to this bill whatsoever, or endorsing such an
unethical screening tool.
They supported it. The bill would have
passed with no objections from them whatsoever, if not for the
dedication of real advocacy groups with no vested interests (ties to
Big Pharma) opposing language in
this bill that would have led to women being falsely diagnosed and
put on dangerous psychiatric drugs to “treat” them, unnecessarily
placing new mothers and their infants at great risk.
To put it simply, these groups are not what they appear to be.
Yet
their influence over legislation, lobbying, drug regulation (or lack
thereof), and public relations campaigns is substantial and effects
the entire nation. For they claim to be the voice of the “mentally
ill.”
But are they? Or are they the result of
a brilliant marketing/lobbying campaign designed to benefit the
Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry that funds them.
HOW IT ALL
STARTED
In the late 1970s and 1980s, prominent American Psychiatric
Association (APA)
psychiatrists, directors and researchers with the National
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
were in need of more government funding, and devised a plan to
create a “growth of consumer and advocacy organizations” with the
intention of getting these groups to help lobby Congress for
increased funding for psychiatric research.[1]
Several groups emerged first on the
scene during that period:
-
The National Alliance on Mental
Illness (NAMI)
-
Anxiety Disorders Association of
America (ADAA)
-
National Depression & Manic
Depressive Association (NDMDA, now called Depression and
Bipolar Support Alliance, DBSA)
-
National Alliance for Research
on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD)
In an incestuous relationship, many of
these groups were formed by the directors or researchers from NIMH-the
very organization that needed mental health advocacy groups to make
demands on Congress for increased funding.
All of them had board or advisory board
members with financial ties to Big Pharma and the majority of them
were heavily funded by Big Pharma. So this was a brilliant
marketing/lobbying strategy - Set up patients rights groups to lobby
for the funding needed for psychiatry and big Big Pharma while
claiming to be “advocates” for the mentally ill.
Perhaps this explains why these groups which claims to be patients’
“rights” groups would so vehemently oppose such vital mental health
reforms as:
-
Black box warnings to highlight
how antidepressants can cause suicide in children and young
adults.
-
ADHD drug warnings that the
psycho-stimulants being given to millions of children should
carry warnings that the drugs could cause heart attacks and
strokes.
-
A federal law prohibiting school
personnel from forcing parents to give their children
mind-altering psychiatric drugs as a requirement for their
inherent right to education.
-
Better informed consent rights.
Rather, these groups - while raking in
millions of Big Pharma dollars each year - frenetically lobby
Congress and state governments to channel billions more taxpayers
dollars into mental health programs that benefit the industry that
funds them - not the patients they claim to represent.
Among the issues these groups have
supported include forced drugging of patients, endorsement and
promotion of psychiatric drugs documented to be dangerous and
lethal, mental health screening of all school children, drugging and
electroshock treatment for pregnant women.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
These groups have also done all they can
to suppress and/or minimize any workable alternative non-drug method
(e.g.
Soteria House a proven and workable
non-drug treatment for those diagnosed “schizophrenic”/psychotic)
that threaten their multi-billion dollar psycho-pharmaceutical
empire.
It is for this reason, and the disingenuous nature of many of these
groups, that we are exposing their conflicts of interests because a
patients’ rights group should be dedicated to patients - not the
vested interests of the psycho/pharmaceutical industry.
Big Pharma
admits it gets more bang for
its buck from funding these front groups than it does from spending
on direct-to-consumer marketing (DTC).
Josh Weinstein, “a veteran pharma marketer” writing for the
trade magazine Pharmaceutical Executive, in an article titled,
“Public Relations: Why Advocacy Beats DTC,” said,
“I have witnessed that the most
direct and efficient tool for driving long-term support for
[drug] brands has been, and continues to be, a well-designed,
advocacy-based public education program…” [2]
-
“Unlike DTC, advocacy-based
promotion brings with it a cadre of allies… This factor
grows in importance as the pharma industry becomes more of a
political target,” Weinstein says. In such a situation,
advocacy groups “can be counted on to speak out for [the
company]” and “the media will view them as more objective
sources than industry spokespeople.” [3]
-
The pharmaceutical industry
magazine Pharmaceutical Executive published a report
by PR expert Teri Cox called “Forging Alliances,
Advocacy Partners.”
According to Cox, partnering
with advocacy groups helps drug companies to,
“diffuse industry critics by
delivering positive messages about the healthcare
contributions of pharma companies to legislators, the
media, and other key stakeholders.”
And they help influence the
decisions of policy-makers and regulators. [4]
“Gone are the days when
companies just handed out big checks to groups with no
discussion afterward,” says Winton. “Now, we seek
opportunities with groups that not only help them
achieve their goals and objectives, but also help us
move our business along.” [5]
"the
psychiatric-pharmaceutical company 'advocacy' groups
hold national meetings that bring together drug
advocates to talk directly to consumers. They also put
out newsletters and other information that praise
medications. Sometimes they actively suppress viewpoints
that are critical of drugs - for example, by
discouraging the media from airing opposing viewpoints.”
[6]
The Psychiatric-Pharma Cartel is
able to conceal its covert advertising and uses these groups to
bolster its poor reputation.
-
Sharon Batt of Dalhousie
University in Halifax, Canada, studied the behavior and
funding of advocacy groups after years working herself in
advocacy, where she noticed a general pattern.
Organizations that accept
pharmaceutical funding, she says,
“tend to advocate for faster
review and availability of drugs, greater insurance
coverage, and they tend to see ‘direct-to-consumer’
advertising as a benefit to patients.”
On the other hand, groups that
maintain financial independence, she says,
“emphasize safety over speed
and are critical of direct-to-consumer advertising.”
[7]
“working with advocacy
groups is one of the most accomplished means of raising
disease awareness and enhancing the industry’s image as
deliverer of new and tangible value to patients.”
[8]
Government agencies such as,
...should not have its officers or
employee researchers sitting on the Boards or as advisers to any of
these groups.
All of these groups can and must
disclose their pharmaceutical funding (of their own accord, not due
to the fact that they are under Senate investigation as many of them
currently are) they should also require complete disclosure of any
vested interests of their board members and advisory committees.
When you read each of their histories as
we have provided, you will understand why.
And while several of these groups are now under Senate investigation
for huge amounts of their previously undisclosed pharmaceutical
funding, we want to provide the general public with more information
about these psycho/pharma front groups, including some of the key
players are who formed them, advise them or sit on their boards, and
then links to each group listed at the top of this page and on the
side bar.
Note that this is only a partial
list and it will be updated with many similar
Big Pharma funded groups shortly.
We would also like to point out that there are groups that are not
funded by pharmaceutical companies, that truly do have the best
interests of the consumer/patient and parent as their goal.
You can find links to these groups and
organizations on our
Alternatives page.
Notes
[1] “NIMH celebrates Half-Century of
Progress,” Psychiatric Times, Vol. XXXIII, No. 13, 4 July 1997,
p. 31.
[2] Josh Weinstein, “Public Relations: Why Advocacy Beats DTC,”
Pharmaceutical Executive, 1 Oct. 2009. http://pharmexec.findpharma.com/pharmexec/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=129300&pageID=1.
[3] Josh Weinstein, “Public Relations: Why Advocacy Beats DTC,”
Pharmaceutical Executive, 1 Oct. 2009. http://pharmexec.findpharma.com/pharmexec/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=129300&pageID=1.
[4] Teri Cox, “Forging Alliances Advocacy Partners,”
Pharmaceutical Executive, 1 Sept. 2002. http://pharmexec.findpharma.com/pharmexec/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=29974.
[5] Melody Petersen, Our Daily Meds (Sarah Crichton Books, New
York, 2008), p. 57.
[6] http://dissidentvoice.org/June05/Pringle0607.htm “Evelyn J.
Pringle, Portrait of Laurie Flynn, TeenScreen’s Top Pill
Pusher,” www.dissidentvoice.org, 7 June 2005.
[7] http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/00436/ssri.html.
[8] Josh Weinstein, “Public Relations: Why Advocacy Beats DTC,”
Pharmaceutical Executive, 1 Oct. 2009, http://pharmexec.findpharma.com/pharmexec/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=129300&pageID=1.
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