Q: What prompted the stereotype of psychiatrists medicating children at the drop of a hat?
A: Some psychiatrists take money from drug companies for giving lectures about medication, or even allow drug companies to ghostwrite medical journal papers for them. This creates the impression of a conflict of interest. It also adds to impressions that medicines are sometimes prescribed for the wrong reasons and that kids are getting too much care. In fact, there’s a dearth of children’s mental health providers.
AP Photo/ Dima Gavrysh
PTSD: The War Inside
Finally recognized as real and debilitating, post-traumatic stress disorder may now be yielding ground to innovative therapies.
Our Native Flora
In today’s antimicrobial world, broad swaths of our 100 trillion resident bacteria may soon disappear—with profound consequences.
Logical Medicine
Thousands of step-by-step decision aids stand ready to assist in diagnosis and treatment. But most physicians don’t use them.
The Brain at Work
What do London cabbies have in common with musicians and mathematicians? Bulked up gray matter that helps them do their jobs.
Dangerous Devices
It’s much easier to get a medical device approved than to bring a new drug to market.
Why Recertify?
Does the recertification process prove physicians’ expertise or just waste their time?
Nursing a Profession
One hundred and fifty years ago, Florence Nightingale opened a school that would revolutionize nursing.
Proto allows us to leverage our position as a research leader to deliver chapter after chapter in the larger, never-ending story of medical progress. Not every story has a successful ending, but they all need to be told.
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Tune in to Proto: Dispatches from the Frontiers of Medicine on ReachMD. Host Dr. Bruce Bloom interviews Mass General experts about evidence-based medicine, hormone therapy and more.
ghostbusting [gōst 'bə-stiŋ] n: a term adopted in January 2009 by editors at the journal Blood for a movement to ban journal articles ghostwritten by uncredited contributors financed by drug companies.

