The most important thing you can do as a psychiatrist...

 

I won’t build the suspense.  The most important thing you can do as a psychiatrist is to be the medical doctor that you were trained to be.  The second-best thing is to be a good if not great psychiatrist.

I had those thoughts today after reading about a case of misdiagnosed panic disorder (1).  The patient was an athletic 30 yr old woman who reported episodic panic attacks, palpitations, light headedness, and shortness of breath.  A Cardiology evaluation was negative.  That was not too surprising since she was asymptomatic during the testing, but given the final diagnosis I would have expected a subtle baseline ECG change.  She was treated with a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor for presumed panic attacks by her primary care physician.  She is seen in the Emergency Department and an ECG shows an irregular, rapid, wide QRS complex, tachycardia and her usual symptoms. A shortened PR interval with a delta (preexcitation) wave is noted. The entire case description with the associated diagnostic reasoning can be located at this link (1). I am not sure that readers can access it without an account.

The case is an excellent example of the real task of being a psychiatrist. The usual dialogue about what psychiatrists do is typically restricted to criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).  There is a lot of confusion about the importance of the DSM and what it means for psychiatric practice. For example, the popular stereotype is that psychiatrists just sit around and estimate whether people “meet criteria” for a DSM diagnosis and then prescribe an indicated medication.  Life as a psychiatrist is not that simple.  The unique problems of the person in front of you cannot be captured by a crude system of classification.

Using this case as a backdrop, I need to know as much medical detail about this young woman as possible.  More details about the onset of symptoms and associated symptoms. More details about her baseline physical health, associated symptoms, and any cardiology consultation and testing that has occurred.  If I am on the same electronic health record system, I am pulling all of that up including her vital signs over time, lab testing, and cardiac testing.  I am looking at each ECG tracing.  I need to know her detailed family history for cardiac disease, arrhythmias, and sudden cardiac death. How much alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine does she typically use?  Is she using any stimulants?  Does she have an intercurrent illness that could affect her heart rate?

In the next few minutes, I need to be checking her vital signs especially her heart rate and rhythm, respiratory rate, and doing a rapid cardiopulmonary exam. My first decision point is whether she is in a medical emergency or not. This is not always as clear cut as this case where the discussant points out that the patient is treated using the American Heart Association (AHA) Advanced Cardiac Life Support ( ACLS) algorithm and needs electrical or medical cardioversion.

That is where things get tough for a psychiatrist.  Setting is a significant issue.  If I am working in an acute care setting in a hospital – I typically have plenty of back up.  Hospitalists services generally run codes or even have a team for acute care that does not involve codes and I could get them there in a few minutes.  At the other end of the spectrum -  I have worked in a community mental health center with absolutely no access to ECGs and no equipment for cardioversion.  In that case – 911 needs to be called and all medical staff in the facility should be able to perform basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation. 

The main work in this situation is recognizing the medical emergency and getting the patient to the correct setting where she can be stabilized. It is not always black and white.  This patient was eventually diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and Wolf-Parkinson White (WPW) syndrome.  Atrial fibrillation was probably the most frequent cardiac diagnosis that I made as a psychiatrist.  Most people who had it were not aware of it. I happened to pick it up because I noticed an irregularly irregular pulse when checking their vital signs and a pulse deficit on physical exam. It was almost always in a range where the heart rate was not a big problem.  In some cases, it was partially treated by a rate controlling medication like a beta-blocker or calcium channel blocker.  I could typically call the patient’s primary care physician and get them in for a comprehensive evaluation of the problem.  I would have to send some patients to the emergency department or urgent care.     

The issue of cardiac related anxiety is a very interesting issue. Cardiac symptoms can be an associated symptom of anxiety, panic, and other affects like anger.  The symptoms can arise as a sensory phenomenon due to an awareness that the heart is “pounding” or “beating out of my chest”.  Both of those descriptions are very common in people with panic attacks. The sequence of events and what is causing the cardiac phenomenon are wide ranging from an intrinsic cardiac problem to an imbalance in the sympathetic and parasympathetic innervation of the heart. Some electrophysiological experts think that at least some atrial fibrillation is due to overactivity of both autonomic systems.  Even in the absence of a sustained arrhythmias – the autonomic effects can result in premature atrial contractions, premature ventricular contractions, and sustained sinus tachycardia.

There are many other cardiac emergencies that occur in psychiatric settings. I was asked to see an acutely manic woman who was 85 years old.  She was extremely agitated and shouting that her chest hurt.  I was able to get a stat ECG that showed she was having a myocardial infarction and got her transferred to the coronary care unit.  In another case – I was told that a 70-year-old woman was “delusional” about her abdomen.  She clearly had a belief that there were supernatural forces causing her abdominal discomfort.  At the same time, she had a pulsatile mass in her lower abdomen and an abdominal aortic aneurysm on ultrasound.  Both patients survived with timely intervention.

I was a quality reviewer for many years and that job involved reviewing potential quality problems associated with inpatient hospitalizations.  One of those reviews was a patient who was hyperventilating.  He was diagnosed with panic attacks and treated with behavior therapy that did not seem to be effective.  As his condition worsened, he was eventually diagnosed with an acute pulmonary embolism. Since that review, I have seen many ambulatory patients who were short of breath for days due to pulmonary emboli and are not seen in a setting where they can be diagnosed and treated.

There are many more medical problems that crop up in psychiatric outpatients and inpatients that cannot be missed.  They can present as a possible psychiatric disorder and the potentially fatal nature of many mean they cannot be missed.  Many settings are set up to give the appearance that an emergency room physician, hospitalist, primary care physician, or physician extender is medically clearing these patients and that is not the case.  Most frequently that is because the time course of the condition is erratic or communication with a psychiatrist at a more detailed level is necessary.  The only assurance that these patients have no acute problems is if they are acutely symptomatic when they are screened or seeing a psychiatrist who can communicate with them, has no biases against them, and who knows the difference between a medical and a psychiatric problem.

To be very clear, I am not suggesting that psychiatrists initiate care for life threatening medical problems.  They do need to know if there are undiagnosed acute or chronic medical problems and how fast they need to be addressed. They need to be able to recognize the medical causes of signs and symptoms that can be misinterpreted as psychiatric.  They also need to recognize and manage the associated systems problems that in my experience are primarily countertransference driven.  Let me provide a clear example of what I mean.  I was working in an acute care setting and came across a patient leaning against a pool table. He was acutely short of breath, somnolent, and had a history of valvular heart disease. On exam, he was in congestive heart failure. I placed a call to the medical consultant and was told that I should start an IV line and manage the patient myself on an acute care psychiatric unit.  When I suggested that he needed transfer to medicine – I was met with the comment: “Well you know how to start an IV don’t you?”

I most certainly have started hundreds of IVs, but that is not the issue.  My patient had an acute medical problem that needed both medical and nursing expertise to manage in a more medical acute care setting than a psychiatric unit.  I eventually contacted the Chief of Medicine and got the patient transferred where he was subsequently in an ICU setting.  Ideally acute care psychiatrists today can develop good relationships with hospitalists for these kinds of transitions.  The best way to do that is by letting them know you have made a medical assessment and have a good indication for transfer.

Being a good if not great psychiatrist is hard work. My most significant worry was missing a major medical problem and not getting adequate intervention.  That is just the first step. The next steps are a psychiatric formulation, diagnosis, and treatment plan that incorporates state of the art communication and relationship building with the patient.  Hopefully that is followed by a long period of seeing the patient, helping them meet their goals, and providing medical diagnosis and follow up as needed.  In today’s world that is often occurring in a rationed suboptimal environment, overburdened by businesses rationing of both care and medication for profit.

My hat is off to the psychiatrists who are doing this work and probably working way too hard in 2025.

Happy New Year!

 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

Supplementary 1:  There is no doubt that I have practiced in settings where there was a high level of concurrent medical and in some cases surgical illness.  There is also no doubt that it was a conscious decision on my part to practice in those settings.  That undoubtedly sharpened my focus on making sure that I had the skills necessary to provide adequate care to those populations. It may be possible to cleanly partition psychiatric work from the rest of medicine but I have not seen that happen for some of the reasons cited in the above essay.  The training of psychiatrists in the past has had a variable relationship with medicine - at one point going to the extreme that much of the medical internship was eliminated.  The best advice I got in medical school was not to use elective time for additional psychiatry rotations because I would be doing psychiatry the rest of my life. I took neurology, neurosurgery, nephrology, endocrinology, cardiology, allergy and immunology, and infectious disease rotations instead. That initial training worked well over my years of practice and I don't regret it.

Some may question the emphasis in this post on the importance of not missing concurrent medical diagnoses and I would offer these additional observations.  Many patients seeing psychiatrists consider them to be their primary care physicians. That should not deter a psychiatrist from clarifying their role, but the fact that psychiatrist is probably seeing the patient much more often than the primary care physician is often a useful reality.  I have called primary care physicians to report what I consider to be an exacerbation of the patient's underlying medical problem.  That collaboration can get more timely care for acute or chronic medical problems.  I have also had the experience hearing from a person that a psychiatrist diagnosed their medical problem when nobody else did.  Many of these scenarios degenerate into who is the better physician.  The focus needs to be on what the patient needs rather than what the physician needs.  Not ignoring or missing a patient's underlying medical problems is a large part of that personalized care. 

 

Reference:

 1:  Hemingway TJ.  An athletic patient who thinks she has panic attacks.  Medscape December 17, 2024 (accessed on December 31, 2024):  https://reference.medscape.com/viewarticle/858516_6

Norovirus - Avoid It If You Can

 

Norovirus is an Increasing Problem

Norovirus is a non-enveloped single strand RNA virus.  One of the critical features of Norovirus is infectivity.  Infected individuals secrete the virus in feces, saliva, and oral mucus.  Virus can be detectable in the saliva for up to 2 weeks after infection even though most of the guidelines for food preparers suggests that they can go back to work 2-3 days after the acute illness has passed.  The infective dose for Norovirus is as little as 18 viral particles (1).  An infected person is excreting billions of these particles. For comparison, influenza virus requires a dose of about 1.95-3.0 x 10³ infectious particles, and most common respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2 are on par with Norovirus. 

The clinical syndrome develops rapidly after exposure resulting in abdominal cramping, vomiting and diarrhea.  It creates significant mortality and morbidity causing an estimated 213,000 deaths world-wide (2).  In the US 900 people die per year out of 21 million infections. Most of the fatalities occur in the elderly and immunocompromised. Rapid fluid loss and dehydration is most likely a causative factor especially in the case of pre-existing medical problems. There is a bias toward advising all people like they are healthy young adults and that this syndrome is a self-limited 2-3 day episode of stomach flu.

There is an asymptomatic carrier state with anywhere from 11.6-49.2% of measured populations carrying the virus. This also extends to 1-3.4% of food handlers.  Humans were previously the only known reservoir for this virus, but a recent review looked at modern data and concluded that it may be a reverse zoonosis with human to animal transmission in lab animals and the wild (3, 4). 

Outbreaks of the virus are getting more common especially in environments where there is close contact and contact with contaminated surfaces like schools, universities, elderly homes, and cruise ships.  In the US there are about 2,500 outbreaks per year and poor granularity in terms of geographic locations. In other words, unless a local news channel picks up the story of an outbreak – you probably will not know until you get there.  The distribution of outbreaks over the calendar year for the last 4 years is given at the top of this post.  Outbreaks tend to intensify in the winter months where there is more aggregation.   

The most common advice given to prevent Norovirus infection is hand washing and cleaning contaminated surfaces.  The virus remains physically stable in pH 3-7 condition and temperatures up to 60 degrees C (140 degrees Fahrenheit) but that conventional wisdom may not be enough.  The virus is aerosolized presumably by coughing, sneezing, and toilet flushing and has been detected in the air around hospitalized patients (8). The particles detected were in the droplet nuclei/aerosol range but that may be an artificial dichotomy (9).  The main point in this research is that the droplets detected contained sufficient virus to cause infection. Current CDC precautions for Norovirus do not include masking except where there is a risk of “splashes to the face during the care of patients, particularly among those who are vomiting.”  This is reminiscent of the reluctance to declare respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2 and influenza airborne. 

6.6% of the US population are immunosuppressed based on taking immunosuppressant drugs or having a health condition that affects immunity and that number is increasing (10).  Women are more likely to be affected than men. In addition to the immunocompromised - 39% of the population has at least one serious chronic illness any number of which can affect innate immunity (11).  In addition, many of these diseases or their management can end up compromised by severe acute gastroenteritis.  Common examples would be blood glucose management in diabetes mellitus and electrolyte and fluid management in hypertension, arrhythmias, and renal disease.  Since 42% of the population has 2 or more chronic conditions it is highly likely that recommended management of rehydration will need to be personalized to that patient.  

There are also nebulous recommendations about the quarantine necessary following an episode of this illness.  The CDC web site provides an example, in order:

“Most people with norovirus illness get better within 1 to 3 days; but they can still spread the virus for a few days after.”

“You can still spread norovirus for 2 weeks or more after you feel better.”

“Stay home when sick for 2 days (48 hours) after symptoms stop.”

Apparently, Norovirus has been detected in saliva for up to 2 weeks after infection – leading to this mixed recommendation. There is some additional information at a public health link – but not much more. This link has interesting information on clinical criteria without biological confirmation that a probable Norovirus outbreak is occurring. In a 2013 review, Norovirus was the second most common infection disease outbreak affecting psychiatric hospitals (13).  This review looks at infection control procedures that may be unique to psychiatry as well as those that address the difficult to destroy nature of the virus.  It is resistant to common hand sanitizers and the need for contact cleaning with hypochlorite while masked and gowned to prevent infection of staff.  The reference on the possible airborne nature of the virus also applies. A description of a psychiatric hospital with 4 previous Norovirus outbreaks and how that was stopped by a specific infection control program is also described (14).

That is currently the state-of-the-art on Norovirus. I have some additional information posted below.  The best defense at this point is to know that this is a highly infectious virus that is nothing to fool around with, especially if you are elderly, have chronic medical conditions, or are immunocompromised.  I don’t think it is my place to make specific rehydration recommendations because of the complexity I describe in the above paragraphs – but your personal physician certainly can.  No matter what you read – avoiding dehydration is the most important aspect.  Your physician can best describe how to do that given any other medical conditions. 

There are currently no vaccines or antiviral medications for Norovirus.  Vaccines are complicated by several factors discussed in this paper (15) that projected vaccine availability 5-10 years out from 2014.  Here we are 10 years out. Like the current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines early trials show a limited duration of immunity, but that can eliminate many cases in more vulnerable populations.

 

George Dawson, MD

 

Supplementary 1:

For 2025 – I decided to separate out my anecdotal experience from the published scientific data.   Readers of this blog know that my intent is generally to include it as additional relevant information and I have joked about trying to learn more about diseases by trying to get most of them.  That is no different with Norovirus.  The actual clinical syndrome I have seen many times dating back to my days as a Peace Corps volunteer travelling in East Africa.  It was referred to as “Traveler’s Diarrhea” and the theory was that it was caused by “enterotoxigenic E. Coli.”  Various remedies were suggested including Pepto Bismol (bismuth salicylate) or a prophylactic course of sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (SMX/TMP) – an antibiotic that I subsequently prescribed many times as an intern and resident.  

All Peace Corps volunteers were issued a medical kit and the two primary medications were a large bottle of Lomotil (diphenoxylate/atropine) and another large bottle of Benadryl (diphenhydramine).  So most acute diarrheal diseases were treated with Lomotil.  We also got IM cholera vaccines that interestingly were discontinued shortly after my Peace Corps tour because “they were more painful than protective.”  The only currently approved cholera vaccine is an oral vaccine.

My wife recently had a complicated course of appendicitis and there was concern about the possibility of an intraabdominal abscess.  As she recovered slowly from the surgery she had residual right upper quadrant pain and suddenly developed an acute illness again very similar to the appendicitis. I convinced her to go to free-standing emergency department where she was treated for nausea and rapidly given 1 liter of normal saline in less than 30 minutes. She was hypotensive and had a lot of vomiting and diarrhea in the hours before this assessment.  A CT scan of the abdomen was negative and a PCR test of a stool sample confirmed no C. difficile toxin and positive for Norovirus (see test panel below).

Returning home she recovered over the next two days – but I contracted it and am recovering on day 3.  I will post the symptom course in this note when I am fully recovered.  I will note that my wife has had 2 episodes of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the past 3 years and I did not get them from the airborne route but was masked and using a UV air cleaner at the time.  This time I was not masked – but I was using all of the CDC recommended contact precautions, the same UV air cleaner, and handwashing.       

Supplementary 2:

Sometimes it pays to be a hoarder. I found this book in my auxiliary library today.  It was sent to me by a friend who was attending Harvard Medical School when he heard I was definitely headed to Africa.  I regaled my Peace Corps colleagues with tales of possible infections in Africa. The most interesting section for this post is that it provides an anchor point for diarrheal disease classification in 1975. It lists invasive and enteropathogenic E. coli as the primary pathogens detectable by culture and bioassay or an assay set up to detect the toxin.  Epidemic viral gastroenteritis is attributed to Norwalk virus in the same book.  The name originated from immune electron microscopy of a viral particle identified as a causative agent in Norwalk, Ohio.  Episodic viral gastroenteritis at the time was attributed to rotavirus, duovirus, and orbivirus.

Supplementary 3:

I resumed working out on day #7 and have charted the symptoms using my invention of a malaise index.  Note that APAP here means acetaminophen that I take for symptoms that are generally caused by cytokines from the inflammatory response caused by viral and bacterial infections.  The index itself is included below the graphic of the course of the illness to explain what was rated.  For research purpose a Likert scale approach for every item would probably be used.  Even though the symptom descriptions are fairly basic - the underlying pathophysiology is not.  There are also some symptoms that I experienced that were not included like a sensory lack of taste for food. 

Supplementary 4: 

The Minnesota Department of Health came out with the following release on Norovirus today.  Apparently there have been 40 outbreaks in the state of Minnesota.  No specific locations are given and the general advice has the limitations I outlined in the above blog post.

All of the details can be found at this link.

Supplementary 5:

EPA Registered Products that will kill Norovirus:  Chlorox and Lysol products are the most recognizable names but there are many (386).  Note the necessary contact time in the table necessary to effectively eliminate the virus.

https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration/epas-registered-antimicrobial-products-effective-against-norovirus-feline

References:

1:  Winder N, Gohar S, Muthana M. Norovirus: An Overview of Virology and Preventative Measures. Viruses. 2022 Dec 16;14(12):2811. doi: 10.3390/v14122811. PMID: 36560815; PMCID: PMC9781483.

2:  Pires SM, Fischer-Walker CL, Lanata CF, Devleesschauwer B, Hall AJ, Kirk MD, Duarte AS, Black RE, Angulo FJ. Aetiology-Specific Estimates of the Global and Regional Incidence and Mortality of Diarrhoeal Diseases Commonly Transmitted through Food. PLoS One. 2015 Dec 3;10(12):e0142927. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0142927. PMID: 26632843; PMCID: PMC4668836.

3:  Robilotti E, Deresinski S, Pinsky BA. Norovirus. Clin Microbiol Rev. 2015 Jan;28(1):134-64. doi: 10.1128/CMR.00075-14. PMID: 25567225; PMCID: PMC4284304.

4: Villabruna N, Koopmans MPG, de Graaf M. Animals as Reservoir for Human Norovirus. Viruses. 2019 May 25;11(5):478. doi: 10.3390/v11050478. PMID: 31130647; PMCID: PMC6563253.

5:  Karimzadeh S, Bhopal R, Nguyen Tien H. Review of infective dose, routes of transmission and outcome of COVID-19 caused by the SARS-COV-2: comparison with other respiratory viruses. Epidemiol Infect. 2021 Apr 14;149:e96. doi: 10.1017/S0950268821000790. Erratum in: Epidemiol Infect. 2021 May 14;149:e116. doi: 10.1017/S0950268821001084. PMID: 33849679; PMCID: PMC8082124.

6: CDC.  Norovirus Facts and Stats.  (accessed on 12/15/2024): https://www.cdc.gov/norovirus/data-research/index.html

8:  Alsved M, Fraenkel CJ, Bohgard M, Widell A, Söderlund-Strand A, Lanbeck P, Holmdahl T, Isaxon C, Gudmundsson A, Medstrand P, Böttiger B, Löndahl J. Sources of Airborne Norovirus in Hospital Outbreaks. Clin Infect Dis. 2020 May 6;70(10):2023-2028. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciz584. PMID: 31257413; PMCID: PMC7201413.

9:  Drossinos Y, Weber TP, Stilianakis NI. Droplets and aerosols: An artificial dichotomy in respiratory virus transmission. Health Sci Rep. 2021 May 7;4(2):e275. doi: 10.1002/hsr2.275. PMID: 33977157; PMCID: PMC8103093.

10:  Martinson ML, Lapham J. Prevalence of Immunosuppression Among US Adults. JAMA. 2024 Mar 12;331(10):880-882. doi: 10.1001/jama.2023.28019. PMID: 38358771; PMCID: PMC10870224.

11:  Benavidez GA, Zahnd WE, Hung P, Eberth JM. Chronic Disease Prevalence in the US: Sociodemographic and Geographic Variations by Zip Code Tabulation Area. Prev Chronic Dis 2024;21:230267. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5888/pcd21.230267

12:  Fukuta Y, Muder RR. Infections in psychiatric facilities, with an emphasis on outbreaks. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2013 Jan;34(1):80-8. doi: 10.1086/668774. Epub 2012 Nov 27. PMID: 23221197.

13: Tseng CY, Chen CH, Su SC, Wu FT, Chen CC, Hsieh GY, Hung CH, Fung CP. Characteristics of norovirus gastroenteritis outbreaks in a psychiatric centre. Epidemiol Infect. 2011 Feb;139(2):275-85. doi: 10.1017/S0950268810000634. Epub 2010 Mar 25. PMID: 20334730.

14:  Tseng CY, Chen CH, Su SC, Wu FT, Chen CC, Hsieh GY, Hung CH, Fung CP. Characteristics of norovirus gastroenteritis outbreaks in a psychiatric centre. Epidemiol Infect. 2011 Feb;139(2):275-85. doi: 10.1017/S0950268810000634. Epub 2010 Mar 25. PMID: 20334730.

15:  Gupta SS, Bharati K, Sur D, Khera A, Ganguly NK, Nair GB. Why is the oral cholera vaccine not considered an option for prevention of cholera in India? Analysis of possible reasons. Indian J Med Res. 2016 May;143(5):545-51. doi: 10.4103/0971-5916.187102. PMID: 27487997; PMCID: PMC4989827.

16:  Benenson AS (ed).  Control of communicable diseases in man – 12^th Edition. American Public Health Association. Washington, DC.  1975:  96-101, 125-129.

17:  CDC.  Confirmed norovirus outbreaks submitted by state.  Good source of data from CaliciNet updated every months.  Gives number of outbreaks per state in the past year and rough data on virus genotype.  https://www.cdc.gov/norovirus/php/reporting/calicinet-data.html

 

Long Term Use of ADHD Medication and Cardiovascular Outcomes

 

 

I have several posts on this blog about prescribing ADHD medications with a goal of minimizing adverse psychiatric and medical side effects.  Like all medical treatments, close follow-up and monitoring is required to assure efficacy while reducing the risk of adverse effects.  To a trained physician it does not take much effort other than being rigorous in examinations and discussions with patients. In the area of ADHD, there is the frequent assumption that patients are young, healthy, and can probably tolerate medications better than older populations. With the increasing diagnosis of adult ADHD, all the comorbidities need to be carefully addressed and a recommendation of no treatment also needs to be considered.

Who have I advised against treatment? Older adults with obvious cardiovascular problems that are inadequately treated or controlled who may or may not have ADHD.  I do not really care if you are 60 years old and I think you really have ADHD, I am not going to start treatment if your blood pressure is not in good control or if you have other unstable conditions like angina, congestive heart failure, cardiomyopathy, or arrhythmias.

The commonest reason for not treating people was hypertension, measured by me in the office.  In some cases, there was an abnormal ECG showing a previously unknown arrhythmia. It can be difficult to tell a patient that you will not treat them because of a medical condition – but that is just the way it is.  Even if treatment is started – blood pressure monitoring needs to occur at every visit.  In some cases, I recommend that the patient purchase a home blood pressure monitor and send me the results.  Referring the patient to their primary care physician or cardiologist is useful to let that physician know that their patient wants stimulant treatment and provide feedback on what your assessment of their cardiac status was.  It is common for physicians prescribing adequate does of antihypertensives to not know that their patient is still hypertensive. It is always clear that the decision to prescribe stimulants is made by me and does not depend on the opinion of another physician.

White coat hypertension (WCH) is not an exception.  WCH is the idea that people get hypertensive related to the stress of being in physician’s office.  Conventional wisdom was that resolved when the patient left the office and therefore this was a being condition. The problem with that assessment is that it depends on knowing that the blood pressure did normalize away from the office.  That lead to a more modern definition that required ambulatory blood pressure measurements away from the office and subsequent more detailed definitions. As an example, the European Society of Hypertension recommends the following:  subjects with office systolic/diastolic blood pressure readings of ≥140/90 mm Hg and a 24-hour blood pressure <130/80 mm Hg.

In the most recent review, the authors do an excellent job pointing out some of the flaws in the early research that led to no significant differences between subjects with WCH and controls.  The control subjects often had cardiovascular disease or were treated with antihypertensives.  They also make the distinction between white coat effect (WCE) and white coat hypertension (WCH). WCE is defined as “an alerting reaction working through reflex activation of the sympathetic nervous system.”  A standard research technique to assess stress effects on blood pressure is to ask subjects to do mental arithmetic and it generally leads to a blood pressure effect like what the authors describe in this paper of 20 mm systolic or 10 mm diastolic.  The authors provide guidance on differentiating the various combinations of white coat hypertension and hypertension as well as providing guidance for future research.  In the office for the purpose of prescribing stimulants the key question is whether there is a white coat effect, white coat hypertension, and whether it occurs in the context of treated or untreated hypertension. Short of ambulatory blood pressure measurements other sources can provide some additional guidance.  Access to the electronic health record can show long term trends.  If indicated - I would not hesitate to suggest that the patient consult with their primary care physicians or hypertension specialist for ambulatory BP measurement.         

Studies have shown that patients who continue to exhibit a reactive blood pressure problem at home have similar cardiovascular risks to hypertensive individuals.  On the flip side, I have assessed many distressed patients in inpatient settings who were normotensive.  Based on this experience, I do not dismiss elevated blood pressure readings in the office especially if I am going to prescribe a medication that may elevate blood pressure.  

That brings me to the paper that led me to write this post (1).  This is a nested case control study of registry data in Sweden that looked at 10,388 cases of ADHD and 51,672 matched controls (aged 6-64 years old).  Exclusion criteria included pre-existing cardiovascular disease, previous use of ADHD medication, and emigration or death before baseline (defined as day of first ADHD medication or diagnosis – whichever came first).  This study design basically looks at the defined illness (in this case ADHD) and then matches the selected cases to controls from the same cohort – in this case up to 5 controls without known cardiovascular disease.  The exposure in this case was ADHD medications including study period, including methylphenidate, amphetamine] dexamphetamine lisdexamfetamine, atomoxetine, and guanfacine.  The last two medications are nonstimulants and guanfacine has also been used as an antihypertensive medication.  The cardiovascular outcomes included: Ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, hypertension, heart failure, arrhythmias, thromboembolic disease, and arterial disease.  The statistics of interest were adjusted odds rations comparing cases to controls.  The authors also did a brief literature review in both the introduction and discussion sections of the existing literature in this area and what can be described as mixed results.

Their main finding was that only two cardiovascular conditions – arterial disease and hypertension were significantly associated with stimulant medication use but not with atomoxetine or lisdexamfetamine use.  Risk also increased at a level of 1.5 DDD (defined daily doses) of stimulant medication.  Those specific doses except for guanfacine can be found at this link. 

The authors do a good job of interpreting the limitations of their data including the possibilities of under detection of the true rate of cardiovascular disease at baseline, the possibility of mediation nonadherence and underestimating the effects of medication exposure, and confounding by severity could be an issue through the effect for more severe ADHD on lifestyle factors important in the genesis of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Finally, since the study eliminated subjects with existing CVD – stimulant exposure was not measured at all in that population. The authors advise very cautious treatment and monitoring of those individuals.

All things considered, this was a good approach to studying the effects of ADHD medication exposure and the development of cardiovascular disease on a significant sample.  It was a convenience sample from a pre-existing registry.  The authors point out that some treatment groups were very small and advocated for a similar study with a larger N.   Just looking at the trends in their tables, there is clearly significant cardiovascular disease in both the test and control subjects.  The odds ratios for medication exposure were low when they were significant.  Few medical variables were controlled for (obesity, Type 2 diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, and sleep disorders) and of those 3 out of 4 are more common in patient with ADHD (3).  More subtle forms of effects from ADHD like whether there are affective changes (typically irritability and anger) leading to hypertension or a white coat effect are unknown currently.

That leads me back to the need for close monitoring for cardiovascular risk factors and conditions before any medication is considered. The group with pre-existing cardiovascular disease is at highest risk and they have not been studied. My speculation is that even using a large health plan database those numbers (patients with cardiovascular disease started on ADHD medication) will be small.  Any real world clinical scenario where this is being considered should be approached as cautiously as possible and monitored the same way.   

 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

Photo Credit:  Sgt. 1st Class Shane Klestinski, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.  For full details click on the photo to see Wikimedia Commons page.  I chose this photo because several adults that I diagnosed with ADHD told me that they had adapted to work in warehouse management and logistics - in many cases that involved driving fork lifts. 

References:

  1:  Zhang L, Li L, Andell P, Garcia-Argibay M, Quinn PD, D'Onofrio BM, Brikell I, Kuja-Halkola R, Lichtenstein P, Johnell K, Larsson H, Chang Z. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Medications and Long-Term Risk of Cardiovascular Diseases. JAMA Psychiatry. 2024 Feb 1;81(2):178-187. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2023.4294. PMID: 37991787; PMCID: PMC10851097.

2:  Franklin SS, Thijs L, Hansen TW, O'Brien E, Staessen JA. White-coat hypertension: new insights from recent studies. Hypertension. 2013 Dec;62(6):982-7. doi: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.113.01275. Epub 2013 Sep 16. PMID: 24041952.

3:  Chen Q, Hartman CA, Haavik J, Harro J, Klungsøyr K, Hegvik TA, Wanders R, Ottosen C, Dalsgaard S, Faraone SV, Larsson H. Common psychiatric and metabolic comorbidity of adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: A population-based cross-sectional study. PLoS One. 2018 Sep 26;13(9):e0204516. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0204516. PMID: 30256837; PMCID: PMC6157884.

4:  Fuemmeler BF, Østbye T, Yang C, McClernon FJ, Kollins SH. Association between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms and obesity and hypertension in early adulthood: a population-based study. Int J Obes (Lond). 2011 Jun;35(6):852-62. doi: 10.1038/ijo.2010.214. Epub 2010 Oct 26. PMID: 20975727; PMCID: PMC3391591.

Social Media Discovers Managed Care and Rages - Or Not?

I watched TMZ last night and they were fascinated about the homicide of Brian Thompson the CEO of United Healthcare in New York City the night before.  The hosts could not approach that topic directly so they brought on Taylor Lorenz who they described as a social media expert.  She made some posts about healthcare companies.  She claims that the “entire internet left and right” was united in celebrating the death of this CEO because “Somebody stood up to this barbaric, evil, cruel violent system.”  Her rational is that if you see a loved one die because an insurance company denied care it is natural to want to see that person dead and this is not advocating homicide. It is a justice fantasy.  She went on to say that United Healthcare has murdered tens of thousands of Americans by denying healthcare.  She sees this as a revolution and it is a problem that should be addressed without violence.  She suggests letter writing and possibly politicians and journalists getting a clue and seeking to correct this imbalance. 

I have been aware of United Healthcare for at least 30 years.  They are renowned in Minnesota for their initial emphasis on not funding psychiatric care and moving on from there.  Physicians like me have been railing against United Healthcare and other managed care companies for decades.  And nobody - and I mean nobody cares. No politicians, nobody in the media, and nobody in physician professional organizations.  There has been an occasional activist state Attorney General suing these companies into a temporary correction that they can easily wait out.   The American Medical Association just recently came out against prior authorization one of the main forms of managed care denial – just a few years ago.  It has been in place along with utilization review – the other main form of denial for at least 40 years.

These business practices have transformed the practice of medicine into a high productivity and low-quality enterprise where medical judgment is replaced by the judgment of middle managers with no medical training and company profit in mind. Physicians have been displaced in their roles in managing the treatment environment and now it is staffed by business people concerned only about the bottom line. If a company decides it is not going to cover a medication or a procedure or a hospitalization – the general message to the patient is “you are out of luck.”  I worked at the same hospital for 22 years and during that time we went from providing care to anyone who walked in the door to care based on businesses telling us what to do.  At one point to make things less contentious (and after we were bought out by a managed care company) – the external review was replaced by the same kind of decisions made by internal staff.  Some physicians became "managed care friendly" in order to move up the corporate ladder.

How did these organizations get so much power over healthcare?  A lot of it depended on lying to gullible politicians.  The original sales job was that physicians were just too expensive.  They order too many tests.  They were going to close down or buy out the expensive specialists and greatly expand primary care.  That primary care expansion would lead to more prevention and reduce the overall costs of medicine. But once these organizations were granted all the power they wanted, they began acquiring specialists and providing their own specialty care.  They also greatly expanded middle management to micromanage staff and basically tell them to work harder.  The result is a system that is much more expensive rather than more cost effective.  Shareholder profits and CEO salaries require a lot of denied care to fund.  This article about the company is an indication of the amount of money that we are discussing. We are talking about executives that are making tens of millions of dollars in an organization that rations health care.

Of course, people are angry about the situation of rationed health care. But it is more about how things are organized and all the associated politics. I think we can all agree that there do not seem to be many bright politicians out there and that low bar took an even more precipitous drop in the last election. Even managed care companies know more than to ration vaccines or give everyone hydroxychloroquine for COVID.

 Politicians have invented this system at every step of the way and made it impossible for the average citizen to get any satisfaction when their health care is denied. Federal and state governments both side with healthcare companies to support the denial of care and (incredibly) indemnify them from liability when their denials result in bad outcomes.  Death is just one of many bad outcomes. 

The press does not get it. I am tired of writing about it for physicians.  The only bright idea that group seems to have come up with is not contracting with these companies and either charging cash or asking the patient to seek their own insurance reimbursement after paying their bill. This obviously has limited application and doesn't work if the patient needs more resources like operating rooms or rehab facilities.  So - Ms. Lorenz’s solution of writing letters certainly will not work.

Some news services seemed to connect a policy reversal by Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield (ABCBS) to the homicide. Some of the original stories claimed that anesthesia time per procedure would be limited and the patient might need to pay the balance. Subsequent stories state that the insurance company planned to pay the time allotment indicated in the estimated relative value units (RVUs) for the surgery.  They claim their reversal was based on misinformation. RVUs are another form of rationing – paying only a set amount irrespective of the complexity of the case.  It is another way that psychiatric services were also rationed by reduced reimbursement.  In some cases, it leads clinics to stop seeing all the patients from a particular insurer based on low reimbursement to the physicians and providers.  Lorenz posted a caption of the ABBCBS story with the additional line:  ‘And people wonder why we want these execs dead.'     

This is the state of medicine in the US today. We have just had an election that puts the most rational parts of the fragmented healthcare system (the ACA or Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid) at risk.  The party in power espouses gun extremism and uses political tactics that direct violence and aggression toward specific individuals or groups. The party in power favors the top wage earners rather than production or knowledge workers. That includes large healthcare conglomerates that all function by rationing care and access to medications and procedures. And in that context, we have a social media expert claiming that we now have bipartisan rage against these health care companies who have murdered tens of thousands of people by denying their care.  I certainly know many people who have been harmed by the denial of care.  In some cases, I spent hours advocating for them and trying to get the care they needed but I was simply ignored.   

At this point, the crime is being analyzed like it is just another true crime TV show. Endless analysis about the perpetrator’s behavior and possible motivations.  It is all highly speculative but made as controversial as possible.  All the analyses I have seen so far seem way off the mark – but I am not going to add mine at this point.  I am more than a little suspect about all the social media rage. Is it real or just generated by a few provocative trolls?  Will it lead to a typical Congressional show hearing where members manufacture outrage and nothing changes. One thing is for sure – the current state of events is not a good sign.  It is a sign of just how corrupt, ignorant, and not self-correcting the American political system is - and just how much those politicians collude with businesses.

In the end, Americans end up paying top dollar for a healthcare system that may refuse to treat them, an airline system that may refuse to fly them, a financial system with excessive charges and minimal interest payments on savings, and a system for workers that disproportionately pays the people who do not do any of the brain or physical work.  Is it any wonder that 4 people in the US possess more wealth than 50% and that 50% are essentially left hoping for changes that never come.

 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

References:

Jeremy Olsen.  Shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO revives criticism of company’s medical claim denials.  Some mourn the shooting of chief executive but still have scorn for the insurance company he ran.  StarTribune.  December 5, 2024.  https://www.startribune.com/why-unitedhealthcare-is-a-four-letter-word-to-critics/601191492

 

Addendum:

As any reader of this blog can attest – I do not consider homicide as a solution to any problem.  The two main features of homicide that I consistently observe on this blog is homicide as a primitive value and a primitive solution.  It has no place in civil society.  In the anthropological literature homicide as a solution dates to prehistoric times when minor conflicts escalated from individuals to entire villages.  Modern man has not uniformly progressed very far as evidenced by every active war in the world right now and ever.  The shooting of Brian Thompson is no exception. Given everything, I have listed in the above post – it changes nothing.  It was a cowardly, immoral act, and unlawful act. I hope that the perpetrator is caught and punished.  I hope that the privacy of Brian Thompson’s family is respected.  

The Importance of Malaise...

About a year ago – a good friend of mine shared his observations about death and dying. 

“I have known 5 people who told me that they ‘felt the worst they had ever felt in their life’ and by that afternoon – they were dead.”  The “people” were all men.

He went on to describe what happened to our long-time mutual acquaintance and what he said on that fateful morning.  He described a man who went to work at a local factory despite his wife’s suggestion that he stay home and see a doctor. In every case the “worst I have ever felt in my life” predicted death in a few hours and did not deter these men from their usual daily routine.  Most of these men died of heart attacks.  They had atypical symptoms rather than chest pain – but my friend is not a physician and was not interested in the details only what they all said on the morning of their deaths.

The only time I felt that badly was when I sustained a ruptured and gangrenous appendix at age 18.  I had a very complicated course that included a Penrose drain being placed in my side to drain the remnants of the necrotic appendix. Even as I was healing, I felt horrible. I felt so badly that I did not care if I lived or died at that point. I was not depressed, nauseated, or in pain – just a very intense sick feeling.

That may be why I have had an interest in malaise as a syndrome.  I equate malaise with flu-like illnesses and that feeling you get from a severe case of the flu or flu-like viruses.  I had malaria once back in the 1970s and was very ill for several days.  That bout of illness was characterized by low energy, fever, and severe chills associated with the fever.  I can remember crawling across the floor of my house draped in a sleeping bag and into a tub of hot water just to warm up.  That was about 6 years after the appendicitis and the disease features were clearly different, but again not nausea, depression, or pain. 

Steadman’s medical dictionary defines malaise as:  A feeling of general discomfort or uneasiness, an out-of-sorts feeling, often the first indication of infection or other disease.  That definition captures the general experience but not the intensity.  I could tell that something was wrong in the early stages of appendicitis.  But in the space of 2 or 3 hours something was really wrong and the sick feeling was amplified a hundred-fold.  Are they both malaise?  Can malaise occur during a chronic condition – can you have acute and chronic malaise?  This semantic confusion may be why not many people seem interested in using the term. 

Interestingly there is a Malaise Inventory and it is in the psychiatric literature (1-3).  It was originally conceived by Michael Rutter as a measure of psychological well-being and the associated physical components.  It was adapted from the 195-item Cornell Medical Index Health Questionnaire.  The inventory itself consists of 24 self-competed questions and can be viewed here.  Many of the items (eg. Do you often feel miserable or depressed?) decrease item specificity.  Many of the items (eg. Do you often get worried about things?) are not specific for physical illnesses.  That may be why some authors found that psychological dimensions accounted for the more variance than physical ones.  It has generated very little research interest and is generally referenced once or twice a year in PubMed except for the year 2021 where there were 10 references.  In more recent studies it is used as a measure of psychological distress rather than malaise associated with a physical illness.

Why might it be important to have a more physically defined malaise? It could lead to earlier recognition of serious physical illnesses.  Based on what we currently know about pathophysiology – I would not be surprised if there were subtypes of malaise.  For example, the severe illnesses I have experienced were all most likely related to inflammatory signaling and the well documented effects of some of those molecules like cytokines. On the other hand, hyperadrenergic states associated with acute cardiovascular diseases could produce a different type of illness feeling.  We are generally limited by knowing the possible presentations (typical and atypical) to not miss a serious problem without reference to any non-specific illness feeling.  It may also allow for treatment of those associated symptoms. One of the striking features of the modern approach to appendicitis is rapid symptomatic treatment or pain and nausea. Are there better ways to treat acute infectious inflammatory conditions than NSAIDs and acetaminophen?  Are there better ways to treat chronic malaise?

My proposed analysis of malaise does not replace the need for common sense and recognizing the dangers of denial.  I am fully aware of the difficulty getting timely emergency care in the US health care system unless you need a trauma surgeon or interventional cardiologist.  But – if you are experiencing the “worst I have ever felt in my life” feeling you owe it to yourself and your family to get it checked out as soon as possible.  EMTs are called for a lot less.  I have talked to too many people who in retrospect would have called the EMTs instead of driving themselves to the hospital while they were having a heart attack.  

 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

 

References:

1:  Grant G, Nolan M, Ellis N. A reappraisal of the Malaise Inventory. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology. 1990 Jul;25:170-8.

2:  Rutter M, Graham R Yule W (1970a) A neuropsychiatric study in childhood. London, Heinemann.

3:  Rutter M, Tizard J, Whitmore K (1970 b) Education, health and behaviour. Longmans, London.

 

Photo Credit:  Eduardo Colon, MD - Thunderstorm over Minneapolis.

Supplementary 1: The Malaise Inventory

How are you feeling generally…

1. Do you often have backache?

2. Do you feel tired most of the time?

3. Do you often feel miserable or depressed?

4. Do you often have bad headaches?

5. Do you often get worried about things?

6. Do you usually have great difficulty in falling or staying asleep?

7. Do you usually wake unnecessarily early in the morning?

8. Do you wear yourself out worrying about your health?

9. Do you often get in a violent rage?

10. Do people often annoy and irritate you?

11. Have you at times had twitching of the face, head or shoulders?

12. Do you often suddenly become scared for no good reason?

13. Are you scared to be alone when there are no friends near you?

14. Are you easily upset or irritated?

15. Are you frightened of going out alone or of meeting people?

16. Are you constantly keyed up and jittery?

17. Do you suffer from indigestion?

18. Do you suffer from an upset stomach?

19. Is your appetite poor?

20. Does every little thing get on your nerves and wear you out?

21. Does your heart often race like mad?

22. Do you often have bad pains in your eyes?

23. Are you troubled with rheumatism or fibrositis?

24. Have you ever had a nervous breakdown?

 

Supplementary 2: 

I put the following questionnaire together based on some of my previous inventories for tracking flu-like illnesses.  

The Minnesota Malaise Index (MNMI)

1:  I have a fever

2:  I am fatigued

3:  I feel physically sick like I have the flu or another serious infection

4:  I have a difficult time concentrating on tasks and thoughts that I need to focus on and this is a new problem.

5:  I have a difficult time making decisions that used to be easy for me.

6:  I have a cough

7:  I have a runny nose

8:  My nose is congested to the point that it blocks or partially blocks air flow.

9:  I have a headache

10:  I have a sore throat

11:  My muscles are sore

12:  My joints are sore

13:  I am sneezing

14:  I am sleeping less than 6 hours per night

15:  I am sleeping more than 9 hours per day

16:  I have no appetite

17:  I have nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea

18:  I am in pain

19:  My activity level has changed and I am hardly doing anything

20:  Severity level:

A.       Some impairment in daily activity due to illness.

B.       Moderate impairment postpones desired activity.  No longer able to exercise.

C.       Severe impairment – need to rest due to illness and feeling physically ill

D.       Very severe impairment-cannot stand or sit due to severe illness and in some cases indifferent to living or dying due to illness severity

 

Supplementary 3:

Minnesota Malaise Index Tracker

 

 

 

 

 

Science and Politics…..With A Lesson from Psychiatry

 

I started reading this week’s edition of Science and was surprised to find several editorials about the relationship between science and politics. In addition to the editorials, news items like “Will Trump upend public health?” and “Trump picks lawyer for EPA.” Were no less alarming.

Marcia McNutt, President of the National Academy of Sciences wrote the first essay (3).  She correctly discusses science as a rational neutral process that by its very nature is apolitical.  She describes the peril of citizens ignoring scientific reality by quoting a 26% increased mortality rate in areas of the US where political leaders dismissed the importance of the COVID-19 vaccine.  She makes the point that science must define the body of information that policy should be based on - but it should not actually dictate policy.  She advocates for a role of listening to the affected people and fighting the disinformation that affects them.  Unfortunately, the process of active listening will not do anything toward fighting misinformation – especially when things get to the wide dissemination and meme stage. 

H. Holden Thorp, Editor-in-Chief of Science journals wrote the second essay (4) and it was more specific to the current political situation.  After commenting on the win for Trump he provides the following qualifier:

“Although his success stems partly from a willingness to tap into xenophobia, racism, transphobia, nationalism, and disregard for the truth, his message resonates with a large part of the American populace who feel alienated from America’s governmental, social, and economic institutions.”

The first clause in this sentence is accurate – but there are problems with the second.  Are xenophobia, racism, transphobia, nationalism, and dishonesty really symptoms of an underlying problem or do they represent the real problem of an opportunistic politician successfully scapegoating a portion of the population to gain the support of the electorate with these biases?  That has immediate relevance for the author’s proposed solutions of decreasing scientific misconduct to enhance public trust.  He points out that an animated defense on X/Twitter by scientists was not successful (how could it be based on the platform’s structure, biases and conflicts of interest?). He ends by correctly predicting that the attacks on science and scientists will go on unabated into the future and would like to see a response by the scientific community that makes them less successful.

The essay by Jaffrey Mervis (2) highlights concerns that research advocates have for the Trump agenda that is described at one point as defunding research to reduce taxes.  Any analysis of the tax plan shows that the savings are disproportionately awarded to the top 1% of wage earners.  A research physicist points out that there is no good news for science in the Trump agenda and that also translates to no good news to the tech industry that depends on government funded research for innovation.  Three areas from the Biden administration that may suffer are the Chips and Science Act, climate change, and research collaboration with China. 

The essay by Jocelyn Kaiser (1) focuses on the possible impact on the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  In this essay there is clear focus on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as a danger to the NIH and health related basic science research.  That danger on the one hand describes him with the euphemism “vaccine skeptic” and on the other quotes former NIH Director Harold Varmus as saying: ”enormous risks especially if [Trump] placed someone as unhinged as [Kennedy] into a position of responsibility.”  There is a lot of room between skeptic and unhinged.  Trying to present an even-handed description in this case is a clear error when responding to RFK’s rhetoric. It is not a stretch to say that his rhetoric may replace science as the guiding principle behind the NIH.  That is a problem regarding the role of science advising policy makers and a boundary problem on the part of rhetoricians.  Simply put – if you are an administrator with no science background and you are making science up – stay in your lane.

Another clear example of potential problems with a Republican Congress is still based on the COVID-19 pandemic and insistence that the bat coronavirus research was the source of the pandemic virus.  This has reached meme status in the MAGA community fueled by rhetoric from both Trump and members of Congress who have directly attacked NIH scientists.  In some cases those verbal attacks have resulted in threats of violence to those same scientists. All of that happening even though the origins of SARS-CoV-2 are not settled science - but most recent reports suggest origins in the wild like practically all pandemic viruses. Some politicians want to reform the NIH and that is typically a code word for changing an institution to something more like the one they want.  In the case of the Trump administration that can include banning fetal tissue research and I would expect other issues related to women’s reproductive health that the religious right objects to.

The final essay by Rachel Vogel (5) is focused primarily on the implications of Trump’s threat to leave the World Health Organization (WHO). The author reminds us that Trump started this process in July 2020 based on the false claim that “WHO had helped China cover up the spread of the virus in the early days of the pandemic.”  The Biden administration came in and stopped that process.  WHO member states are bracing for a second withdrawal or a reduction in funding to key programs that many think would be catastrophic.  Cuts could also be made to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) that administers many of these programs and other agencies funded to research and treat tuberculosis, malaria, and AIDS.  Political and religious ideology may also be a factor.  A program for AIDS relief started by George W. Bush is a possible target for indirect support of abortions and the use of language that right wing religious groups consider offensive including “transgender people” and “sex workers”.  It is likely that a “gag rule” on the dissemination of abortion information will be reinstated and the penalty will be withdrawal of funding.  Like aspects of the other essays, the author is hopeful that there will be ways to compensate for the Trump worst case scenario. Reform of the NIH has been talked about in the past.  Europe and other countries could compensate for the lack of US support.  Competitive funding sources like the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) could also come to the forefront.  The amount of funding available from BRICS and what those countries would require in return is speculation at this point.    

The 5 essays highlight real problems and given Trump’s current nominations for the Director of HHS and NIH probably minimize them.  Suggested solutions to the problem seem to be the time-honored stay out of politics, present the data, and take the high road.  This is really an inadequate plan.  How do I know this?  The valuable lesson is that this is what psychiatry has done for decades.  Ever since Thomas Szasz began his repetitive rhetoric that there was no such thing as mental illness, or that psychiatric diagnoses were like drapetomania (later modified to drapetomania was somehow a psychiatric diagnosis) we have had to tolerate nonsensical criticism while major physician and psychiatric groups were silent.  The many leaders in the field who did respond and had excellent responses were eventually ignored as the neo-Szaszians continue to repeat this nonsense decades later.  An experiment by Rosenhan that was exposed as fraudulent continues to serve as an anchor point for antipsychiatrists – even though what happened clearly did not impact the field (deinstitutionalization had already started and the neo-Kraepelinians were already at work on reliable and valid diagnostic criteria).  The result of this rhetoric is significant hangover on the field. It is difficult to make a direct connection but common sense dictates that psychiatric resources probably takes a hit from all the repetitive negative rhetoric. That is the risk to all of medicine, public health, and scientific research with the current MAGA rhetoric.

Science typically considers itself above rhetoric and politics at least until the competition for grant funding heats up.  The editorials all fail to comment on this.  Instead, they suggest that leading by example, being available for consultation, and generally taking the higher ground will somehow correct corrosive politics.  That is both a naïve and losing strategy.  We currently have a party that has lied and misinformed the public repeatedly and at record levels.  It is supported by a large mainstream media organization with the same goals providing a constant diet of misinformation. It is funded by billionaires. The effects of all those dynamics are easily observed in attitudes toward real science and scientists.  Experts on autocracy and authoritarianism point out that the effect of constant lies on any group of citizens is that eventually they don’t believe anything – even if it happens to be the truth.  A standard authoritarian tactic is to attack expertise and pretend that it does not exist.   

At no recent point in history have legitimate scientists, physicians, and public health officials been threatened with violence by people who have no clear idea of what they do.  In many cases these professionals have been responsible for saving thousands of lives. That situation should be intolerable to any scientist or modern citizen who can evaluate the effects of science.  Furthermore, it should not be supported at any level by the government, but it currently is.  The same party that that supports lies also supports threats and violence at various levels up to an including an attempt to overthrow the US government. With the current election there is the expectation that attempt will be whitewashed as a protest further eroding the rule of law.

The curious aspect of this process is that it is right out there in the open. The repetitive lies are picked up by social media.  Proxies of that ideology begin to amplify them to the point that they become memes rapidly assimilated by true believers in the same ideology.  At that point they become part of that culture and resistant to change from rational arguments and additional information. There is no evidence that I am aware of that change is possible at that point and the most recent Presidential election is solid evidence.     

There is a semi rational basis to politics at best.  The current election illustrates this at many levels.  Major questions of character, intellect, and policy were ignored. The fact checking mode of the fourth estate was minimized.  Some media outlets were mere propaganda arms and provided no information for voters to make an informed decision. 

The only rational course is to continuously counter the repetitive propaganda being put out in social media.  There is no comprehensive strategy for doing this but it must be done.  It will take more than a few editors from Science journals.  A starting point may be a coalition of editors of science and medical journals with their own website dedicated to refuting misinformation and posting the real science. The time has come to stand up for what is science and what is not and protect people under attack for doing the right thing.

 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

 

References:

 

1:  Kaiser J. Trump won. Is NIH in for a major shake-up? Science. 2024 Nov 15;386(6723):713-714. doi: 10.1126/science.adu5821. Epub 2024 Nov 14. PMID: 39541475.

2:  Mervis J. Research advocates see 'no good news for science'. Science. 2024 Nov 15;386(6723):712-713. doi: 10.1126/science.adu5820. Epub 2024 Nov 14. PMID: 39541473.

3:  McNutt M. Science is neither red nor blue. Science. 2024 Nov 15;386(6723):707. doi: 10.1126/science.adu4907. Epub 2024 Nov 14. PMID: 39541446.

4:  Thorp HH. Time to take stock. Science. 2024 Nov 15;386(6723):709. doi: 10.1126/science.adu4331. Epub 2024 Nov 7. PMID: 39508752.

5:  Vogel G. 'America first' could affect health worldwide. Science. 2024 Nov 15;386(6723):715. doi: 10.1126/science.adu5822. Epub 2024 Nov 14. PMID: 39541476.