Conference on a Saturday? Indeed.

Here I am at the First Annual Doctors Hospital¹ at Renaissance  (or DHR, as the cool MDs call it) Behavioral Health Conference. I have to say I’m impressed.

Speakers
The speakers are excellent, which is surprising, given that we’re tucked in such a far corner of the country. Predictably, many of the experts are from Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio², but they really are experts in their fields. We also have researchers  from Boston (Harvard Med) and Tennessee, with international folks originally from Cuba and Colombia. Everyone has big lists of national and international accolades, presidencies, and frickin’ insane publication counts³. The organizers made dang sure this wasn’t a “lame local professionals” thing. Barry Mills, who does research on dangerousness, criminality, etc., was one of the presenters. It’s always nice to meet someone whose papers you’ve been stumbling across in major journals for a decade.

Filthy Lucre
The level of funding for this one-day-only, 150-participant conference is kind of unthinkable, from a social-science/mental-health perspective. Someone said it cost around $30,000. But it’s associated with a medical center, of course, and funded by training grants from pharmaceutical companies. Of course. The door prizes⁴ are Bose Wave Radios, Mont Blanc fountain pens, Tumi luggage, a PS3, ipods, portable DVD players, and a 37″ Toshiba plasma TV. That’s maybe three to five thousand bucks, I’m guessing. The programs are slick and professional, and the venue — though small — is very nice. I guess that’s what happens when you have a super-lucrative corporation or three funding your conference, instead of dues from a few thousand university professors. The registration fee was $35. I’m going on and on, I realize, but every time I come in direct contact with the financial influence of the drug companies, I’m left agog.

Expansion of My Mind
With one exception, every presentation has just been excellent. Solid, research-based, well-delivered, etc. Being funded by drug companies, I expected rampant conflicts of interest, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Only two guys (no female presenters) had lucrative non-grant affiliations with Rx companies (experts on boards etc). Two more had received grants from  Big Pharma, and the rest seemed relatively untouched by the moolah. At least in any direct way.

The first talk (at seven friggin’ thirty a.m.) was a research-intensive review of the apparent reality, etiology, neural correlates, and unsavory comorbid associates of fibromyalgia. I’ve been hearing the same things everyone else in the medical field has been hearing, for years: fibromyalgia is some kind of attention-seeking hypochondriasis experienced by whiners. I’ve resisted this interpretation as somewhat demeaning to the sufferers, but I have still internalized it, I guess. I know that because of how surprised I was to see the evidence: solid brain imaging studies, self-report, other-report, functional impairments, objective measures, and on and on. They all point to a true syndrome with the what seems to be the level of evidence I expect to regarding the reality and specificity of a mood disorder, an anxiety disorder, or many physical impairments.

Humor & Snark

1. It can be jarring for a psychologist to go from an academic or mental health environment to a medical one. We often feel a bit like kids from the poor side of town, with ripped jeans and home haircuts. The medical profession’s term du jour for psychological/behavioral health professionals is Allied Behavioral Health. “Well, we can’t use any words that would imply that they’re part of the medical community… but I guess we don’t want them as enemies, either. How can we phrase that?”
2. From a presentation on bipolar disorder and suicide: “Now, keep in mind that a man who’s lost a wife within the past year has four times the risk for suicide, ah, compared to a woman who’s lost a wife.”
3. In a Simpsons vein, one of the presenters had a voice — nasal, slightly singsong, more tenor than bass — that sounded freakishly like Professor Frink’s. I realized this as soon as I heard him say, “…but this is the *ventral* striatum, in contrast to the *dorsal* medial striatum, which everyone here is clearly familar with.”

1. From the pamphlet, “Separate professional fees will be associated with your physician” [↩]
2. Though all are from nationally-competitive research & treatment organizations, which Texas — perhaps surprisingly — has quite a few of [↩]
3. Seriously, how do those MDs get pub counts like SEVEN HUNDRED by the time they’re 50? Does their research take longer than 10 minutes? Do they have institutional review boards? Do they ever have to apply for funding? I guess it’s a pretty sure bet that these guys don’t teach classes… [↩]
4. I didn’t win anything, but a colleague won the PS3 [↩]