Insightful analysis, that the pharmaceutical companies were able to capture the macro-culture of psychiatry, because they captured the medical training and research funding. They will continue to hold psychiatry to their agenda, because there always is a supply of chemicals that they can hype up and make billions in profit, despite marginal, or non-existent benefit (ketamine is the latest example). Given their vast wealth, they will always be able to co-opt training and funding.
“The result has been that microcultures in healthcare remain limited in their ability to shape the macroculture. Tactics that work in other cultural and political spheres have limited ability to create large shifts in the macroculture of clinical practice unless they are also able to recruit the medical training and research funding apparatus to their advantage (pharmaceutical companies were exceptionally successful in pulling this off).”
I’d agree, but I think digital can really shake this up. Relatively small and low-resource organisations (compared to pharma companies, anyway) have the ability to develop and roll out new therapeutic interventions rapidly and at scale. But establishing a meeting of minds between academia, clinicians, and tech is the challenge.
Insightful analysis, that the pharmaceutical companies were able to capture the macro-culture of psychiatry, because they captured the medical training and research funding. They will continue to hold psychiatry to their agenda, because there always is a supply of chemicals that they can hype up and make billions in profit, despite marginal, or non-existent benefit (ketamine is the latest example). Given their vast wealth, they will always be able to co-opt training and funding.
“The result has been that microcultures in healthcare remain limited in their ability to shape the macroculture. Tactics that work in other cultural and political spheres have limited ability to create large shifts in the macroculture of clinical practice unless they are also able to recruit the medical training and research funding apparatus to their advantage (pharmaceutical companies were exceptionally successful in pulling this off).”
I’d agree, but I think digital can really shake this up. Relatively small and low-resource organisations (compared to pharma companies, anyway) have the ability to develop and roll out new therapeutic interventions rapidly and at scale. But establishing a meeting of minds between academia, clinicians, and tech is the challenge.
Thank you so much for this