When Advocacy Groups Take Pharma Money

In the past, I have rapped NAMI's knuckles for taking contributions from pharma companies. It's a big compromise when advocacy groups of any kind take money from private industry and then go out and beat the drum to help create a market for their contributors, directly or indirectly, all while being a tax-exempt non-profit. So now, DBSA notes on its website that it's gotten support from AstraZeneca, makers of Seroquel, for the group's "Sleepless in America" campaign. Sleep is, of course, a huge issue for bipolars, but that still does not remove an advocacy group's responsibility to do independent advocacy for the patients it says it represents--and taking money from pharma companies puts them in conflict with the people they are supposed to serve. That would be you and me.

We are not well-served when one America's major mental health advocacy groups essentially seeds the ground for bipolars to go marching into their docs with sleep problems and go marching back out with a scrip of Seroquel. Psych docs and GPs love handing out that nasty atypical antipsychotic as if it were Ambien. AZ is, of course, working overtime to convert Seroquel into a mood stabilizer akin to Lithium and Depakote.

What's more, DBSA also notes in the executive summary of its "The State of Depression in America" report that the report was supported by an educational grant from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Why would Wyeth want to help? The company makes Effexor.

Nami is also pounding on the sleep theme on its website in a bit reprinted from bp Magazine called "The Quest for Sleep." The magazine also takes money from pharma companies. Look at its website for proof.

I have never run into NMHA taking money from pharma companies.

Some of you could probably give a tinker's damn where advocacy groups get their money. But you should. Almost every pronouncement on treatment from NAMI National, for example, contains some kind of pro-meds message. Even when the organization makes statements about recent research results that indict meds, NAMI always spins things positively for its masters. Don't believe me? The group recently spun the results of the STAR-D research, which were very bad news for anti-depressants (and of course for patients), as being hope-filled. I kid you not. Why's that important? If you are a patient, then you'd expect that you can look to an advocacy group, which claims to serve you, as having your best interests at heart and to holding multi-billion dollar pharma companies accountable for the products they make.

But you cannot do that. And that is disgusting.