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.
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.
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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