Four Geisinger College of Health Sciences School of Graduate Education alumni and a faculty member co-authored a paper published by The BMJ. The paper, "Undisclosed financial conflicts of interest in DSM-5-TR: cross sectional analysis," assessed the extent and types of financial ties to industry of panel and task force members of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, text revision (DSM-5-TR), published in 2022.
The Geisinger Master of Biomedical Sciences alumni are Lauren C. Davis, MBS; Alexa T. Diianni, MBS; Sydney R. Drumheller, MBS; and Noha N. Elansary, MBS. They were mentored by co-author, Brian J Piper, Ph.D., assistant professor, Geisinger Center for Pharmacy Innovation and Outcomes and assistant professor of neuroscience at Geisinger College of Health Sciences.
Using the Open Payments database, the researchers found 168 individuals who served as either panel or task force members of the DSM-5-TR. 92. Of these, 92 individuals, 55 (60%) received payments from industry.
The paper concluded that ". . . Because of the enormous influence of diagnostic and treatment guidelines, the standards for participation on a guideline development panel should be high . . . When no independent individuals with the requisite expertise are available, individuals with associations to industry could consult to the panels, but they should not have decision making authority on revisions or the inclusion of new disorders."
The BMJ is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. First published in 1840 as the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal, it became the British Medical Journal and finally The BMJ in 2014.
