Reminder: “Psychiatric Medications: Promise or Peril?” Fall 2014 Felician Symposium

Here’s a reminder, for those of you in the New York/New Jersey Metro Area, of our upcoming symposium, “Psychiatric Medication: Promise or Peril? An Interdisciplinary Discussion.” The symposium is the third annual one sponsored by the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs, and is co-sponsored by the Felician College Department of Psychology, and Felician’s Graduate Program in Counseling Psychology. It takes place Saturday, December 6 between 1 and 5 pm in the Castleview Room on the Rutherford, New Jersey campus of Felician College. The Castleview Room is located on the second floor of the Student Union Center on the Rutherford campus. (The GPS address is 223 Montross Ave., Rutherford, NJ, 07070.)

The topic is timely enough as it is, but has been made particularly so by recent coverage of the issue in The New York Times, among other places. Check out this article on psychiatric drug use in children, as well as these follow-up letters on the same article. This review of Yochi Dreazen’s The Invisible Front discusses the use of psychiatric drugs for PTSD in returning veterans. Also worth checking out is Alan Schwarz’s controversial series on ADHD in The New York Times, which you can find by scrolling backward on his dedicated page at their website. Likewise worth checking out (and more supportive of the use of medications) are guest posts at the Times by Richard Friedman of Weill Cornell Medical College.

I’ve only scratched the surface of the popular literature on psychiatry, but I’ve found the work of Peter Breggin, Gary Greenberg, and Peter Kramer illuminating in addressing the important background issues. (For whatever it’s worth, despite his reputation among libertarians, I have generally not found the work of Thomas Szasz particularly helpful. And despite her reputation among mainstream readers, I have very mixed feelings about the work of Kay Redfield Jamison.)

Here’s the line-up of presenters at the Felician event:

• Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America;
• Raymond Raad, a psychiatrist in private practice in New York City, and Fellow in Forensic Psychiatry, Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons;
• Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy at Dowling College in Oakdale, New York, and editor of Metapsychology Online Reviews; and
• Peter Economou, Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology at Felician College, and Founder of The Counseling Center of Hoboken and Springfield, New Jersey.

Raymond Raad replaces Cheryl Kennedy of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, who unexpectedly had to cancel. I’m very grateful to Ray (who lurks on PoT) for doing the event on such short notice.

Whitaker’s work features prominently in a much-discussed two-part review by Marcia Angell in The New York Review of Books; for another view of Whitaker’s work, check out this highly critical review by E. Fuller Torrey, along with Whitaker’s response.

If you’re interested in issues at the intersection of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology, and don’t know Christian Perring’s Metapsychology Online Reviews, you probably need to head there ASAP (see link above). [Added later: Perring is the author of the entry for “Mental Illness” for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the  main reference work in the field.]

Peter Economou not only has the distinction of having founded a Counseling and Wellness Center in New Jersey (see link above), but of being on the New Jersey State Board of Psychological Examiners (aka “the licensing board”)–and of being my academic advisor in the counseling program at Felician.

Hope to see some of you at the symposium.

PS., More grist for the mill: Though much of it is behind a paywall, I just happened to notice this piece by Mitchell Feinberg, “On the Moral Use of ‘Smart Drugs,'” in The Objective Standard. Perhaps readers who subscribe to TOS can tell us what Feinberg says. Meanwhile, neurophilosopher Patricia Churchland weighs in on the controversy in her recent book, Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain:

To the degree that I am optimistic, it is because there are scientific discoveries that obviously and unequivocally have been used to make life better–such as polio and smallpox vaccines; such as Prozac and lithium; such as hand washing by surgeons and the use of local anesthetics by dentists….(p. 23)

It does seem generally true that as we come to understand that a particular problem, such as PMS or extreme shyness, has a biological basis, we find relief–relief that our own bad character is not, after all, the cause and relief because causality presents a possible chance for change. If we are lucky and current science has moved along to understand some of the causal details, interventions to ameliorate may emerge. Even if a medical intervention is not available, sometimes just knowing the biological nature of the condition permits us to work around, or work with, what cannot be fixed. For some problems, such as bipolar disorder and chronic depression, medical progress has been greater than for other problems, such as schizophrenia and the various forms of dementia. As more is unraveled about the complex details of these conditions, effective interventions will likely be found. The slow dawning of deep ideas about the brain and the causes of neurological dysfunction has lifted us from the cruel labeling of demonic posesssion or witchery. (p. 31)

I take it that Churchland takes her neurophilosophical eliminativism about mind to prescribe support for the pro-medication (“promise”) side of the debate? If she doesn’t intend that, it’s not clear to me what she is saying. (Of course, it’s not clear to me how eliminativists can have intentions, either, but never mind.)

Postscript 2, November 30, 2014: Some excellent posts on psychiatric medications, care of Scott Alexander at Slate Star Codex: SSRI’s, More Than You Ever Wanted to Know, and Such Crazy Feelings About Crazymeds.