What's A Thought Leader In Psychiatry?

A reader left a fabulous question in response to an earlier post on Market Analyst Cognitive Disorder.

"'...according to thought-leading psychiatrists.' What is a thought-leading psychiatrist?"

The answer isn't especially precise, but the alleged thought leaders in the mental health world are MDs attached to the tony medical schools, who publish lots of papers on the glory of this or that new pharmacological treatment and, sometimes, also do prospective research on diagnoses, neurology and advanced treatments. People like Joe Calabrese at Case Western, Michael Thase at Pitt, Dan Casey at OHSU/VA, Lilly's Maurico Tohen, Ron Kessler at Harvard, Jeff Lieberman at Columbia, Fred Goodwin at George Washington University and so on. Generally, these are the kind of folks who when a study or editorial has their authorship credit on it, then docs in the field pay attention, as do the PR folks at pharma companies who can quote these folks and lend credibility to whatever snake oil they are hocking that day.

In general, I find their work to be uncreative. But that's for another day.