NBC Fleecing Story Misrepresents Cost-Saving Military Program

by the American Psychological Association

The Department of Defense Psychopharmacology Demonstration Project (PDP) was the subject of a misleading Fleecing of America piece on NBC News last night. The PDP, a pilot program which trained military psychologists to prescribe psychotropic medications, was independently evaluated by Vector Research, Inc. for the DOD and determined to be cost-effective and a good use of DOD resources.

NBC, however, based its Fleecing story solely on a recent GAO report which erroneously claimed that the DOD spent $6.1 million on this project. Colonel (retired) Greg Laskow, Ph.D., US Army, the initial project director for the PDP told NBC News during an on-camera interview that, "Absolutely no new money was allocated by Congress for the PDP program. We folded PDP students into already existing DOD health care program classes side by side with other medical students. So that $6.1 million also trained the nurses and physicians in those classes, not just the PDP students." NBC did not include this fact in the story.

A recent Air Force memo provided to NBC News prior to airing the Fleecing story detailed the current serious shortage of psychiatrists in the Air Force. Another memo from 1991, also furnished to NBC News, confirmed a serious shortage of psychiatrists in the Navy at the outset of the PDP. Yet NBC News claimed that there was a surplus of psychiatrists in the military.

"If there is a surplus of psychiatrists, why does the military regularly contract with civilian psychiatrists and why are psychiatrists recipients of the military pay bonus program used specifically as a recruiting and retention tool for specialties experiencing a shortage," asked Russ Newman, Ph.D., J.D., executive director for professional practice at the American Psychological Association, in a face-to-face interview with Ed Rabel, NBC's correspondent for the Fleecing story.

The Fleecing story failed to acknowledge that the GAO, even with its faulty assumptions, concurred with the Vector analysis in recognizing that the PDP successfully trained psychologists to prescribe psychotropic medications safely and effectively. Indicating that they were missing the point, Colonel Laskow told NBC News, "The demonstration project was just that, a demonstration, designed to find out if it can be done and what the best model of training would be to do it, and we accomplished that."

In an April 28 letter to Ed Rabel, Dr. Newman stated that, "We strongly believe that, at the very least, the picture of this program is far more complicated than can be presented within the time frame of a Fleecing story. Further, to cast the PDP and its intent to find a new cost-effective way to deliver health care as a Fleecing would be harmful and very misleading."

4/17/98

The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 159,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 50 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 58 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.

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