Mental Health Blogs

Today, NAMI National’s executive director Michael Fitzpatrick penned a letter to the editor of the New York Times and objected to how NAMI had been portrayed in a recent article which outlined how the group had gotten about $23 million in pharma funding in recent years. The paper had claimed that represented two-thirds of NAMI’s budget and Fitzpatrick wrote to claim it only represented 50 percent.

Then he dropped this claim into the letter:

“NAMI maintains strict guidelines that govern all corporate relations and does not endorse or promote any specific medication, treatment, service or product.”

That’s a bald-faced lie. In December 2006, Fitzpatrick was quoted in a Janssen/J&J press release wherein he openly touted the company’s new atypical antipsychotic Invega:

“‘We are pleased that innovative delivery technologies are being applied to new treatments for schizophrenia,’ said Michael J. Fitzpatrick, MSW, Executive Director, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). ‘New and efficacious treatment options, like INVEGA, provide significant opportunities for more people with schizophrenia to manage their disease as they work with their treatment teams to live more fulfilling and productive lives.’”

Sadly, the press release itself is no longer online, but if Fitzpatrick wants to claim his group has been mischaracterized, then he needs to be more careful in what he states.

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