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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 8277

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Sharfstein SS.
My 15 Minutes of Fame
Psychiatric News 2005 Aug 5; 40:(15):3
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/40/15/3


Notes:

What is the message for the audience of not only the “Today” show but of all the spinoff media events that occur as a result of this opportunity?

…First and foremost, we can tell the world about psychiatry-that psychiatrists are physicians and that our field is backed by science like other branches of medicine. In recent years, thanks to advances in neuroscience, brain secrets at the molecular and genetic levels are being revealed, identifying the close links between nature and nurture.

Most importantly, we can get the word out that psychiatric illness is real disease, and there are interrelated biochemical and psychosocial causes. These illnesses are recognizable, diagnosable, and highly treatable. The message “treatment works” must be said more than once…


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Cases of wilful misrepresentation are a rarity in medical advertising. For every advertisement in which nonexistent doctors are called on to testify or deliberately irrelevant references are bunched up in [fine print], you will find a hundred or more whose greatest offenses are unquestioning enthusiasm and the skill to communicate it.

The best defence the physician can muster against this kind of advertising is a healthy skepticism and a willingness, not always apparent in the past, to do his homework. He must cultivate a flair for spotting the logical loophole, the invalid clinical trial, the unreliable or meaningless testimonial, the unneeded improvement and the unlikely claim. Above all, he must develop greater resistance to the lure of the fashionable and the new.
- Pierre R. Garai (advertising executive) 1963