Today's Integrity Award: A Pakistani Psychiatrist

I cannot promise that each day I will issue an Integrity Award (let alone post a blog entry), but such as it is, today's award goes to Dr. Murad Moosa Khan, professor of psychiatry at Aga Khan University in Karachi, and author of "Why I declined an invitation to a drug company seminar":

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/335/7625/887?etoc

There are several reasons why Dr. Khan seemed to merit special recognition:

1. He referred to the invitation to the seminar, at a 5-start hotel in Pakistan, as "a form of bribery" (see my other post today on that topic).
2. He is alert to the negative consequences of pushiong psychiatric drugs in his country, both for the patients who might be better served by a different form of treatment, and the excessive costs of the drugs that could better be invested elsewhere.
3. Dr. Khan emphasizes the social circumstances of psychiatric illness. He notes that most of his patients with the worst mental health problems are poor, and that Pakistan has no effective public policy for dealing with mental illness. He also berates the medical schools in Pakistan for failing to teach most physicians about any form of psychiatric management.