More Bipolar Disease Mongering in a Respected Journal

“The drug companies learned a while back that the best way to sell drugs was to sell diagnoses… selling the diagnosis is a way of opening up the new market. New diagnoses are as dangerous as new drugs, at least in psychiatry.”~ Dr Allen Frances, chair of DSM IV task force - Selling Sickness conference, 2011.

One of the main themes of both my book How Dysfunctional Families Spur Mental Disorders and this blog has been the incredible expansion of the bipolar diagnosis to anyone who is moody, chronically depressed and irritable, or chronically agitated. 

This has been done predominantly by some egocentric blowhard psychiatrists trying to make a name for themselves in conjunction with a well-documented and highly successful plan by several pharmaceutical companies to enlarge the market for their brand named, so-called atypical antipsychotics.  This marketing plan was documented with the release of Eli Lilly's own company marketing memos as part of a US Justice Department investigation - the so called Zyprexa Documents. These medicines are potentially toxic and do nothing to solve the interpersonal and psychological problems of many of the mental health patients to whom they are prescribed.

My colleague in Australia, Peter Parry, told me,  "Our director of training for psychiatry in our state quipped sarcastically that we may as well subsitute “mental disorder” with “bipolar disorder” and have the “DSM of Bipolar Disorders” and then recategorise subtypes like ‘adjustment bipolar disorder,’‘personality-based bipolar’ etc."  With some of the psychiatrists I know personally, this would actually be considered a good idea!

Many of the adults misdiagnosed with bipolar actually carry the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and not bipolar. While medication can help these folks with some symptoms, most of these patients are in dire need of good psychotherapy.  Unfortunately, a lot of therapists do not like to work with them, so many end up seeing psychiatrists who use antipsychotics basically to shut them up.

"Disease mongering" is a term used for marketing techniques designed to accomplish what Dr. Frances alluded to at the top of this post.  The ongoing mongering of bipolar disorder by the pharmaceutical companies uses many tricks.  Often so-called researchers and practitioners alike do totally inadequate diagnostic evaluations using highly inaccurate and misleading symptom checklists; others employ the completely unvalidated concept of bipolar spectrum, or b.s. as I like to call it.

Bipolar ver. 4.1

A highly transparent example of disease-mongering was just published in a respected psychiatric journal, the Archives of General Psychiatry.  521 hospital-based or community psychiatrists in 18 countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa between April 1, 2008, and April 30, 2009 were involved in a “research” project which was designed to shape their thinking and diagnosing, and altering diagnostic paradigms in those countries.



The article is titled “Prevalence and Characteristics of Undiagnosed Bipolar Disorders in Patients With a Major Depressive Episode” and was “designed, conducted and prepared” by Sanofi-Aventis. Sanofi-Aventis markets an atypical antipsychotic named Solian, which is the brand name of the drug amisulpride.  It is not FDA-approved in the United States, which is probably one reason why this study was done overseas.

The supposed "results" of the study:

“These results are from a large, 3-continent, culturally generalizable study conducted by practicing psychiatrists. The data indicate that, whereas with application of the DSM-IV-TR criteria, 16.1% of patients with Major Depressive Episodes met criteria for either bipolar I or bipolar II disorder, this rate rose to 47% with application of the bipolarity-specifier criteria.

These results suggest that bipolar features are more frequent in patients with MDE than indicated by DSM-IV-TR criteria. Almost half of the entire 5098 cohort presented the core symptoms of bipolarity (elevated mood, irritable mood, or increased activity), and these symptoms led to unequivocal changes in behavior that were observable by others in a similar proportion of patients.”

What this means is that, if this were true, half of patients who exhibit Major Depressive Episodes are actually bipolar and should  be taking “mood stabilizers.” Not lithium, I suppose, but antipsychotics. 

The article  goes on to state: “Major depressive disorder, the most common psychiatric illness, is often chronic and a major cause of disability. Many patients with major depressive episodes who have an underlying but unrecognized bipolar disorder receive pharmacologic treatment with ineffective regimens that do not include mood stabilizers.”

All of the "researchers" recruited received fees, on a per patient basis, from Sanofi-Aventis in recognition of their participation in the study. The key lead authors, all with significant Pharma connections, did not disclose their personal ties. Quite a transparent example of how cultural beliefs are manufactured, and how direct involvement with Pharma is normalised.

So what's wrong with the study?  Well that hinges on the meaning of the term "bipolarity specifier" that was added to the usual, DSM criteria for bipolar disorder.  This assumes that this additional test has been validated as being predictive of actual bipolar disorder, which is a "fact" not in evidence.  It sounds in the study as if this were an established and valid measure.

Here's the defintion:

“This bipolarity specifier attributes a diagnosis of bipolar disorder in patients who experienced an episode of elevated mood, an episode of irritable mood, or an episode of increased activity with at least 3 of the symptoms listed under Criterion B of the DSM-IV-TR associated with at least 1 of the 3 following consequences: (1) unequivocal and observable change in functioning uncharacteristic of the person’s usual behavior, (2) marked impairment in social or occupational functioning observable by others, or (3) requiring hospitalization or outpatient treatment. No minimum duration of symptoms was required and no exclusion criteria were applied.”

People sleeping less, talking more, and doing more. This is how mental illness is now being defined in psychiatry’s leading journal.

One of the dead giveaways that this article is bipolar diseases mongering is the sentence:
“No minimum duration of symptoms was required and no exclusion criteria were applied.”
This means that any person who has a suddenly angry, agitated, or elated response to an environmental trigger (like a big fight with a family member or winning the lottery) could be labeled bipolar.

This would also mean that if they had an episode of emotional dysregulation for the same reason, the reaction would be labeled a bipolar episode. This makes almost anyone who has borderline personality disorder suddenly bipolar.

23.2% of their subjects had experienced episodes of elevated or irritable mood triggered by antidepressants and were also defined as bipolar.  This is almost comical. Irritibility is a common side effect of drugs like prozac and has absolutely nothing to do with bipolar disorder (unless tranquilizers cure mania, because they sure do cure that side effect). This incredible nonsense is straight out of Hagop Akiskal’s dishonest playbook. I heard him say once that if someone who is depressed gets agitated on an SSRI, he just “knows” that person is bipolar.

The word bipolar, in the sense advocated by this piece-of-you-know-what study, is showing up in common discourse everywhere, particularly among young people describing their unpredictable and volatile classmates.  You can even hear the word in pop songs used as a synonym for moody (e.g. “Hot and Cold” by Katy Perry).

Someone... call the doctor
Got a case of love bi-polar

The drug companies have really done a masterful job in bastardizing the diagnosis of real bipolar disorder, which is a serious mental illness.  The harm to both the field and to patients alike has been staggeringly immense.