Two-thirds of studies on 'psychosocial' treatments fail to declare conflicts of interest

fpjl2 — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 14:13:45 +0000

Health services in many countries increasingly rely on prescribed 'psychosocial interventions': treatments that use counselling techniques to tackle mental health issues, behavioural problems such as substance abuse, and assist parents with new or troubled children.

These highly-regarded therapeutic and educational programmes, devised by senior academics and practitioners, are sold commercially to public health services across the world on the basis that they are effective interventions for people in need of support 鈥撀爓ith the evidence to back them up.

However, the first study to investigate conflicts of interest in the published evidence for intervention treatments has revealed that the majority of academic studies which assert evidence of effectiveness list authors who profit from the distribution of these programmes, yet few declare a conflict of interest.

In fact, the new research shows that as many as two-thirds of the studies that list an聽author who financially benefits from sales of said treatment programmes declare no conflict of interest whatsoever.

While major steps have been taken to counter research bias in other fields such as pharmaceuticals, the new study's authors say that hugely influential psychosocial treatments suffer a distinct lack of transparency from academics that both publish research on treatment effectiveness and stand to gain significantly from any positive findings.

They write that as commercial psychosocial treatments 鈥撀爉any of which cost hundreds, even thousands, of dollars per participant 鈥撀燾ontinue to gain traction with national public health services, it is important that "systems for effective transparency are implemented" to ensure clinical commissioning bodies are aware of potential research biases. 探花直播findings are published today in the journal聽PLOS ONE.

"Contrary to some, I have no problem with introducing commercial programmes into a national health service if decision makers and trusts come to the conclusion that a commercially disseminated treatment is more effective than their current psychosocial offerings, but this must be based on fair and transparent evidence," said the study's lead author Professor Manuel Eisner, from Cambridge's Institute of Criminology.

"What you don't want to see is an intervention system that remains as effective, or becomes less effective, despite buying in expensive programmes, because you have a public goods service competing with research that has a commercial interest to publish overly optimistic findings," Eisner said.

"Policy makers in public health have a right to expect transparency about conflicts of interest in academic research."

Four internationally disseminated psychosocial interventions 鈥撀燿escribed by Eisner as "market leaders" 鈥撀爓ere examined: the Positive Parenting Programme (or Triple P); the Nurse-Family Partnership; the parenting and social skills programme Incredible Years; the Multi-Systemic Therapy intervention for youth offenders.

探花直播researchers inspected all articles published in academic journals between 2008 and 2014 on these interventions that were co-authored by at least one lead developer of the programme 鈥撀燼 total of 136 studies.

Two journal editors refused consent to be included in the research, leaving 134 studies. Of all these studies, researchers found 92 of them 鈥撀爀qualling 71% 鈥撀爐o have absent, incomplete or partly misleading conflict of interest disclosures.

探花直播research team contacted journal editors about the 92 published studies on the effectiveness of one of these four commercial psychosocial interventions co-authored by a primary developer of the self-same therapy, yet listed no conflict of interest, or, in the case of a few, an incomplete one.

This led to 65 of the studies being amended with an 'erratum', or correction. In 16 cases, the journal editors admitted "mishandling" a disclosure, resulting in the lack of a conflict of interest statement.

In the remaining 49 cases, the journal editors contacted the study's authors seeking clarification. In every case the authors submitted a new or revised conflict of interest. Eisner and colleagues write that the "substantial variability in disclosure rates suggests that much responsibility seems to lie with the authors".

探花直播most common reason given by those journals that did not issue a correction was that they did not have a conflict of interest policy in place at the time of the published study's submission.

While the overall rate of adequate disclosures in clear cases of conflict of interest was less than a third, just 32%, the rates for the four programmes varied significantly. 探花直播lowest rate of disclosures was found in academic studies on the Triple P programme, at just 11%.

Triple P is a standardised system of parenting support interventions based on cognitive-behavioural therapy. Initially developed by Professor Matthew Sanders at the 探花直播 of Queensland, Triple P has sold around seven million copies of its standard programme across 25 countries since it began commercial operations in 1996, with over 62,000 licensed providers 鈥撀爉ainly trained psychologists.

In 2001, Queensland 'spun out' the licensing contract into a private company, the royalties from which are distributed between three groups of beneficiaries: Queensland 探花直播 itself, Prof Sanders' Parenting and Family Support Centre (also at Queensland), and the authors of Triple P.

Despite being one of the most widely evaluated parenting programmes worldwide, the evidence for the success of Triple P is controversial, say the researchers.

Several analyses of Triple P 鈥撀爄ncluding those by Triple P authors with previously undeclared conflicts of interest 鈥撀爏how positive effects. However, at least one independent systematic review cited in the new聽PLOS ONE聽study found "no convincing evidence" that the Triple P has any positive effects in the long run.

"Researchers with a conflict of interest should not be presumed to conduct less valid scholarship, and transparency doesn't necessarily improve the quality of research, but it does make a difference to how those findings are assessed," said Eisner.

In the聽Journal of Child and Family Studies聽in January 2015, Triple P creator Prof Sanders wrote that "[p]artly as a result of these types of criticisms" his research group had "undertaken a comprehensive review of our own quality assurance practices".

Added Eisner: " 探花直播development of standardised, evidence-based programmes such as Triple P is absolutely the right thing to do. If we have comparable interventions providing an evidence base then it promotes innovation and stops us running around in circles. But we need to be able to trust the findings, and that requires transparency when it comes to conflicts of interest."

探花直播creators of commercially sold counselling programmes increasingly profit from public health services across the world. However, a new study into the evidence basis for some of the market leaders reveals that serious conflicts of interest across the majority of the research go habitually undisclosed.

Policy makers in public health have a right to expect transparency about conflicts of interest in academic research

Manuel Eisner

Cathrine Ids酶e

Reading psychology...

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Two-thirds of studies on 'psychosocial' treatments fail to declare conflicts of interest