"Within 48 hours, the institutional review board at my university received a phone call from an angry psychiatrist who facilitated an OCD support group whose members had participated in the study. I subsequently spoke to the psychiatrist about his concerns. Apparently, our study had created a “firestorm” in the group, sparked by complaints from members who were upset about the causal information we provided. The participants were not troubled by the biomedical information despite what we regarded as its rather obvious omission of well-established psychosocial influences on OCD. Rather, support group members were “up in arms” about the portion of the biopsychosocial script disputing the chemical imbalance explanation. According to the facilitator, all group members believed, on the basis of what they had been told by treatment providers, that their OCD was the result of a chemical imbalance. Indeed, of the 13 patients who completed our survey before it was taken offline, nine (69.2%) reported being informed by their treatment provider that they needed to “take psychotropic medication to manage a chemical imbalance in the brain just as people with diabetes need to take insulin to manage their blood sugar.” Horrified at the prospect of interfering with participants’ treatment, we immediately terminated the study. Our naïve mistake was failing to appreciate the extent to which OCD patients in the community are socialized in the biomedical model of their disorder. The facilitating psychiatrist admitted during our conversation that the information we provided disputing the validity of the chemical imbalance explanation was accurate. “It’s true,” he noted. “But you shouldn’t say it.”" (from the article) - [Cat]
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 00:01:26 +0000
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