Sunday, February 23, 2014

Misdirecting mental health research

Cynthia Joyce, the chief executive of MQ: Transforming Mental Health (see previous post), in her post on the Wellcome Trust blog, does not doubt that the reason biomarkers for depression have not been found is because of the "complexity of the disorder as well as a deficiency of tools and technologies to help solve the problem". Oh dear, she thinks biobehavioural combinations of psychological symptoms and body fluid measures is the answer. The reason elevated morning cortisol isn't a biomarker, she reckons, could be because we haven't combined it with high depressive symptoms as a risk factor for major depression, at least for adolescent boys.

 Don't waste your money giving MQ the opportunity to follow another blind alley, which if it's being responsible, it shouldn't have misled you into.

 (With thanks to Peter Kinderman)
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3 comments:

  1. Peter Jones25 February 2014 at 03:04

    MQ has been created to get money on news of large investments of different governments in "electronic" study of mental illness after being disappointed from pharmas.

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  2. Anonymous25 February 2014 at 09:47

    I was wondering what happened to Mary Quant. This doesn't look very fashionable though.

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  3. Oliver25 February 2014 at 10:30

    Physicalism, bioreductionism, genetic determinism and scientism are the great superstitutions of our current civilization.

    ReplyDelete