Medical Citizenship:

Challenges and Prospects Through a Mental Health Lens

The Mental Health Coalition and the Visiting Professor Medical Citizenship Committee (Dalhousie University) are co-sponsoring a public talk and discussion with Dr. David Healy on Monday, March 24, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Multi-Purpose Room of Bloomfield Centre in Halifax (2786 Agricola Street) about “Medical Citizenship: Challenges and Prospects Through a Mental Health Lens”. 

Medical citizenship means “every doctor should have a voice and should use it, and every doctor’s voice matters”. If doctors cannot speak out, we have a problem.  Of course, this applies to other health professionals and all other persons affected by or concerned with health care.  In other words, what are the challenges and prospects for speaking out and raising one’s voice that each of us sees and what can be done about them, and how does this apply to mental health?  We are asking each panelist to speak to this topic for 3-5 minutes after hearing Dr. Healy.

Our agenda is as follows:

6:30 -6:40     Welcome and Introduction of Dr. Healy

6:40-7:10      Presentation by Dr. Healy

7:10-7:30      Comments from Reaction Panel

7:30-8:00      Open Discussion and Q&A

8:00-8:30      Refreshments and Informal Discussion

Some background information on Dr. Healy is:

“Dr. David Healy is a Professor of Psychiatry in Wales. He studied medicine in University College Dublin, and at Cambridge University. He is a former Secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology; and author of 200 peer reviewed articles, 200 other pieces and 22 books, including The Antidepressant Era, and The Creation of Psychopharmacology from Harvard University Press, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1-3, Let Them Eat Prozac from New York University Press, Mania from Johns Hopkins University Press & Pharmageddon.

His main areas of research are clinical trials in psychopharmacology, the history of psychopharmacology, and the impact of both trials and psychotropic drugs on our culture.  He has been involved as an expert witness in homicide and suicide trials involving psychotropic drugs, and in bringing problems with these drugs to the attention of American and British regulators, as well raising awareness of how pharmaceutical companies sell drugs by marketing diseases and co-opting academic opinion-leaders, ghost-writing their articles. He is a co-founder of Data Based Medicine which has created RxISK.org – the only global adverse event reporting system. He is campaigning to ensure European patient level data on adverse event in in clinical trials remains accessible.