Pat McGorry's response - to FIDDAMAN misrepresentations

Given that FIDDAMAN stretches things a bit - we give you an EXCLUSIVE peek at the proposed DELOREAN 4 door DMC24

Just like Bob Fiddaman it was a work of pure fantasy

Now back to the present

Response to The Sunday Age article of 21st August 2011

Submitted by Pat McGorry on 22 August 2011 - 6:45am

http://www.patmcgorry.com.au/blog/pmcgorry/response-sunday-age-article-21st-august-2011



For the second time in two weeks, a front page article in The Sunday Age by Jill Stark contains selective and inaccurate information, unsubstantiated claims and innuendo to falsely imply unethical behaviour on my part and to mischaracterize the nature of youth mental health reforms recently supported by the Australian Government. Both articles are likely to result in reputational damage to myself and significant public confusion about mental health reform that risks undermining the confidence of young people and their families to seek help in the new youth mental health services currently being established around Australia.







I have previously addressed the inaccuracies and misrepresentations in The Sunday Age article of 7th August and will now deal with the most recent set of inaccuracies and misrepresentations.







The article is entirely based on misleadingly linking two entirely separate events. These events are:



1.the decision of Orygen Youth Health Research Centre (for which I am Executive Director) not to proceed with an already ethically approved trial of the medication Quetiapine in a population of 15-40 year olds assessed as being of high risk of developing a psychotic disorder within the next 12 months



2.the receipt of correspondence by the research ethics committee of Melbourne Health querying its decision last year to approve the trial.



By linking these two unrelated events, the article misleadingly conveys the impression that Orygen Youth Health Research Centre and I withdrew the trial arising from fears that our work might be found to be unethical if the committee were for some reason to change its original decision.







Prior to the article being filed, The Sunday Age was provided with a detailed chronology of events that demonstrated no linkage between the correspondence to the research committee and our decision not to proceed with the trial. The unrelated nature of the two events was corroborated by one of the proposed lead researchers. Despite this information being furnished to the paper prior to the article being completed, The Sunday Age made a news judgement to dedicate its front page to a story that was entirely premised on a linkage between two events that the paper had no reason to believe were connected.







A number of other aspects of the article are more likely to mislead than to inform. The sub-headline on the print edition of The Sunday Age wrongly described the trial as a “child study” even though the intended population was 15-40 year olds. This age group is correctly termed late adolescence and early to middle adulthood. Similarly, a number of important and independently verifiable facts were reported merely in the form of uncorroborated assertions by me. These verifiable facts include that the research trial had already received ethics approval by Melbourne Health and that the decision not to proceed with the trial occurred before the appeal to the ethics committee had been made.

A key goal of youth mental health models headspace and EPPIC is to address the over medication of people with mental ill-health in our overstretched and under-resourced mental health system. Yet the article fans fears that the opposite may be the case. The article reports completely baseless and unsubstantiated fears that the clinical guidelines of Early Psychosis Prevention and Intervention Centres (EPPICs) will be changed to recommend the use of anti-psychotic medication to people without a diagnosed psychotic disorder. More confusion is caused when the article incorrectly defines early intervention only in terms of preventing psychotic illnesses as opposed to treating diagnosed psychotic disorders. As a result, and in conjunction with the wider context of the article, young people and their families may feel confused and uncertain about whether to seek help at an EPPIC service for illnesses with devastating impacts. The potential for harm to seriously ill young people is obvious and should have been foreseen by the newspaper.







Additional Note:



Orygen Youth Health Research Centre is principally funded by public and philanthropic funds. Less than 5% of our budget is from pharmaceutical companies, who neither design the research we conduct nor restrict our right to publish the results of our research. Our focus is to ensure young people with mental ill-health have a holistic range of supports made available to them, in particular extensive psycho-social interventions.