The new DSM. Are the Pharmaceutical companies behind the new Diagnostic Criterias // El nuevo DSM: Están las compañías farmacéuticas detrás de los nuevos criterios diagnósticos?

Doctor Allen Frances, M.D., was chair of the DSM-IV Task Force that published the well known Manual in 1994; He was also chair of the department of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC and is currently professor emeritus at Duke. While working at the DSM, he established strict guidelines to ensure that changes from DSM‐III‐R to DSM‐IV would be few and well supported by empirical data. Recently, Dr. Frances objected the new Diagnostic Criteria and predicted potentially grave problems in the DSM‐V goals, methods, and products due to the intervention of the Pharmaceutical companies in the edition and selection of those criterias; he stated that “unless its course is corrected, DSM‐V will lead to many damaging unintended consequences”.

Here is the editorial published by Psychiatric Times where Dr Frances reveals the tensions within the members of the DSM V task force and the intervention of the Pharmaceutical Companies.

El Doctor Allen Frances perteneció a la fuerza de trabajo que desarrollo el DSM IV y que publico su famoso manual en 1994. El fue también miembro del departamento de psiquiatría de la universidad de Duke en Carolina del Norte, donde hoy trabaja como profesor emérito. Mientras trabajaba en el DSM, el estableció unos estrictos parámetros para asegurar que los cambios entre el DSM-III-R y el DSM IV fueran pocos y bien soportados por datos empíricos. El Dr. Frances, recientemente, objetó los nuevos criterios diagnósticos y predijo potenciales graves problemas en las metas, métodos y productos del DSM V, gracias a la intervención de las compañías farmacéuticas en la redacción y selección de dichos criterios. El ha dicho que “A menos que el curso sea corregido, el DSM V llevara a muchas, aunque involuntarias, consecuencias nefastas” (la traducción es mía).  Aquí está el editorial publicado por la revista “Psychiatric Times” en donde el Dr. Frances revela las tensiones entre los miembros de la fuerza de trabajo para el DSM V y la intervención de las compañías farmacéuticas. 

Mike Rosenthal: http://vectorbelly.com/electrical45.html

DSM-5: Dissent From Within

By Allen Francis, MD | January 3, 2011

Many people associated with DSM-5 have privately expressed their serious doubts to me, but felt muzzled into public silence by constraining confidentiality agreements and loyalty to the process. Gary Greenberg's recent DSM-5 piece inWired offers a set of dispirited quotes from discouraged Work Group members--but again he elicited them only under the promise of strict anonymity. Until now, the only people connected to DSM-5 to express public displeasure were the two who have resigned from it.

John Livesley, a highly respected member of the Personality Disorders (PD) Work Group, has now broken this fortress defensiveness and enforced wall of silence. He has published a brilliantly reasoned critique titled "Confusion and Incoherence in the Classification of Personality Disorder: Commentary on the Preliminary Proposals for DSM-5."

The title says it all --the PD proposal is a pretentious emperor without any clothes. Livesley systematically catalogs all its many defects: breathtakingly radical change based on questionable empirical support, lack of reasonable rationale, mind boggling and incoherent complexity, poor taxonomic methods, and inconsistency among components. This is a proposal that will never be used by clinicians, will greatly hamper personality disorder research, and will blacken the reputation of dimensional diagnosis. It will reduce the credibility of personality disorder as an important clinical issue, leading patients with severe personality problems to be misdiagnosed and hence mistreated or not treated at all.

Opposition to the proposal is virtually unanimous among personality disorder experts. Strong critiques have been, or soon will be, published in The American Journal of Psychiatry; the Journal of Abnormal Psychology; the Journal of Personality Disorders; and Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment. Only a very flawed and unnecessarily closed DSM-5 process could have allowed the survival to this late stage of such bizarrely misguided and idiosyncratic suggestions.

Clearly, breaking with his colleagues was not an easy step for Dr Livesley, or one he took lightly. The confidentiality restrictions turned out not to be a problem-- he bypassed them simply by using only information that is already available in the public domain. His more difficult choice was whether to expose the follies of the PD work group-- given his understandable bond of loyalty to colleagues on the committee. Fortunately, this was trumped by four much stronger and even more admirable loyalties-- "to intellectual honesty, respect for empirical findings, and concern for the future of the field and patient care."

I know that many other DSM-5 workers are similarly disturbed by the lack of organization in the DSM-5 process and the wayward nature of many of its proposals. They have heretofore been frozen into immobile public silence by some combination of team spirit, passivity, the confidentiality agreements, distaste for controversy, and fear of retaliation. Dr Livesley's well reasoned dissenting opinion provides DSM-5 participants with a model of responsible behavior under difficult   circumstances. Principled and open dissent is a time-honored way of reconciling the conflicting pressures they must feel. If this is a good enough approach for the Supreme Court, why not have it inform a DSM-5 process that has become the supreme court of diagnostic judgment?

Everyone involved with DSM-5 should follow Dr Livesley's example and at last feel encouraged to speak openly. They needn't  worry about confidentiality agreements if comments focus on information that is posted and public. Intellectual honesty and concern for patient welfare trump narrow loyalties to colleagues or guild interest.

It is not too late to save DSM-5 from itself-- if only those working on it will finally break free of groupspeak and share their thoughts with the field-- as they should have been encouraged to do from very outset. The current sad state of DSM-5 has been caused by secrecy and defensiveness. The only salvation is completely frank and open discussion. Great thanks are owed to Dr Livesley for having demonstrated the wisdom, responsibility, and courage to light this path for his colleagues.

Dr Livesley's article can be found online in the current issue of the journal Psychological Injury and the Law -http://www.springerlink.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.1007/s12207-010-9094-8. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in the conceptual issues that underlie personality disorder diagnosis and more broadly to those concerned with the problems that have bedeviled the development of DSM-5. He will be publishing additional thoughts in a spring issue of the Journal of Personality Disorders devoted to the DSM-5 suggestions.   

Child Obesity is Child Abuse! // Obesidad Infantil es Abuso Infantil.

Some Facts 

Without reducing consumption, more than one in five children will be obese by 2020.

"16% of American youth 6-19 are now overweight and 34% are at risk for becoming overweight."

Centers for Disease Control, August 2007

"The prevalence of overweight adolescents 12-19 has nearly tripled in the past two decades."

U.S. Surgeon General, December 2002

The health consequences of the obesity epidemic among kids demand immediate action. Children's food choices are heavily dependent on adults, and childhood obesity predicts a lifetime of struggles with weight and disease. It's time for an all-out national campaign to change this disturbing picture.

American youngsters have a long way to go to reach new goals for a lower childhood obesity rate, new study shows.

The science behind “broken heart syndrome” // La ciencia detras del "Sindrome de Corazon Roto"

The science behind “broken heart syndrome”

Posted By P.J. Skerrett On February 14, 2012

http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-science-behind-broken-heart-syndrome-201202144256/print/ 

During Valentine’s season, it’s not hard to run across articles on what’s come to be called broken-heart syndrome. These often open with a touching story of a long-married couple that died within days of each other.
Many of these articles lump two completely different conditions under the “broken heart” heading. One is stress cardiomyopathy, sometimes known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy. The other is myocardial infarction, better known as a heart attack.
A huge sudden stress—like news that a loved one has died, experiencing an earthquake, or learning that your accountant has stolen all of your retirement savings—unleashes a torrent of stress hormones. Most of us weather this storm just fine. Others don’t.

Stress cardiomyopathy

Stress cardiomyopathy is a weakening of the left ventricle, the heart’s main pumping chamber. The bottom portion of the left ventricle balloons out each time the heart beats. It was originally called takotsubo cardiomyopathy because the shape of the left ventricle resembles the tako-tsubo, a Japanese trap used to catch octopi (see image). Exactly how stress makes this happen isn’t yet known.
Calling this “broken-heart syndrome” is cute, but limited. In addition to happening after news of unexpected loss, stress cardiomyopathy can be caused by an accident, episode of severe fear or pain, fierce argument, or even something that’s supposed to be pleasurable, like a surprise party or winning the lottery.
Stress cardiomyopathy feels like a heart attack—pain in the chest, left arm, jaw, or upper back; feeling short of breath or lightheaded; the sudden onset of nausea, dizziness, or a cold sweat. It even looks like one on an electrocardiogram. But none of the coronary arteries are blocked, the hallmark of a heart attack.
Treating stress cardiomyopathy generally involves the use of heart-protecting medications such as beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, and diuretics. Over the course of a week or longer, the ballooning tends to fade and the left ventricle usually recovers its pumping power.
(You can read more about stress cardiomyopathy in this article from the Harvard Women’s Health Watch.)

Myocardial infarction

Plaque is the cholesterol-filled gunk that builds up inside arteries throughout the body. Small plaques are silent; large ones can cause angina—chest pain or pressure brought on by physical activity or emotional stress. A big, sudden stress can lead to a heart attack two ways: by causing plaque to burst, or by triggering a dangerous heart rhythm.
When a plaque bursts, it spews a mixture of activated cholesterol, white blood cells, and other debris into the bloodstream. A blood clot forms to seal the leak and contain the damage. If the clot is so big that it completely blocks the artery, blood stops flowing to a section of heart muscle. Without oxygenated blood, that area of the heart begins to die. That’s a heart attack.
A surge or stress hormones can also interfere with the precisely timed signals that keep the heart beating steadily. It can make the left ventricle beat so fast and so erratically that it never has time to relax and fill with blood. Circulation to the brain and body stops. This situation, known as ventricular fibrillation, is a common cause of sudden (and deadly) cardiac arrest.
Over the years, a number of studies have shown that sudden stress from earthquakes, wars, sporting events, and more are followed by a spike in heart attacks. It happens with sudden loss and grief, too. A new study from Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center showed that the risk of having a heart attack is 21 times higher than normal within the first day after a loved one dies. The elevated risk drops as the days pass. The report was published in the journal Circulation. (You can read more about sudden stress and heart attack in this article from the Harvard Heart Letter.)

Prevention is tricky

There’s no way to steel yourself against the shock of bad news. All you can hope for is that your heart can handle it. The best way to get it ready is by making the kinds of healthy daily choices that protect the heart and prevent the buildup of plaque. You know which ones I mean—exercising, eating a healthy diet, not smoking, and the like.
If your heart has been broken and you are in mourning or grief, take care of yourself, advise the Beth Israel Deaconess researchers. Try to eat and sleep, don’t forget to take any needed medications, and take seriously symptoms such as chest pain.