Psychiatric Journals are More Biologically Skewed than Internal Medicine Journals

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Researchers from Tufts University (including Nassir Ghaemi) assessed the ratio of “biological” to “non-biological” in both psychiatric journals and journals of internal medicine. Though there were an equivalent number of biological and non-biological articles in psychiatric journals, journals of internal medicine had a predominance  of non-biological and epidemiological studies (22% biological, 88% non-biological or epidemiological). The authors conclude that this tendency may influence psychiatric education and practice in a biological direction.

Article → 

Note from Kermit Cole, “In the News” editor:
Reader Sean Kitaoka brought this article from March 1 to my attention. Usually I don’t include articles in “In the News” that are more than a month old; instead I put them into what will become the “resources” section. But I wanted to thank Sean publicly for his contribution.

Thanks, Sean.

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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Kermit Cole
Kermit Cole
Kermit Cole, MFT, founding editor of Mad in America, works in Santa Fe, New Mexico as a couples and family therapist. Inspired by Open Dialogue, he works as part of a team and consults with couples and families that have members identified as patients. His work in residential treatment — largely with severely traumatized and/or "psychotic" clients — led to an appreciation of the power and beauty of systemic philosophy and practice, as the alternative to the prevailing focus on individual pathology. A former film-maker, he has undergraduate and master's degrees in psychology from Harvard University as well as an MFT degree from the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia. Kermit leads workshops and webinars on the role of humor in psychotherapy and other human services. You can reach him at [email protected].

1 COMMENT

  1. That’s because psychiatry is interested only in providing rationales for prescribing, not the epidemiological consequences of such prescribing. Outcomes be damned.

    I note MIA is running many pointers to papers that would be cautionary regarding prescribing (I applaud providing these resources), but I wonder how many prescribers see them or give credence to them, even in their own journals.

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