Posts Tagged ‘politics’

A U.S. Senate Finance Committee report says a federal official approved a device to treat persistent depression against the advice of a scientific advisory committee. According to the Senate committee, the official overruled his scientific staff to approve the vagus nerve stimulator device, despite its not having been proved effective against depression in its only clinical trial.

The Mental Health Foundation today welcomed the UK Government’s long awaited Green Paper on Welfare reform, but warned that planned changes to Incapacity Benefit may create fear and anxiety for thousands of people already living with mental health problems.

The ISMHO’s ad hoc handling of evidence that one of the organization’s founders inadvertently published confidential client material on a public website without consent, and the subsequent expulsion of the whistleblower, highlight several constructive opportunities for improving and reforming the ISMHO and bringing a more explicit ethical component to its management. This document outlines seven suggested principles for raising the standard of ethical and competent management within the International Society for Mental Health Online.

Two weeks after well documented facts were published indicating unethical behaviour by an ISMHO founder, the mental health organization’s board of directors has formally expelled the whistleblower for activities contrary to the best interests of ISMHO — i.e., for telling the truth. The result of the board’s secret deliberations comes just days after board members misled the ISMHO membership, claiming the APA had found that no unethical behaviour had ever occurred.

As the UK government moves to make it a crime to justify terrorist acts, I have to ask: don’t mainstream journalists justify terrorism every time they use the phrase ‘in response to’ in a description of terrorist acts, as they are particularly accustomed to doing when reporting on the conflict between the state of Israel and Palestinians?