Patrick McGorry is intent on implementing plan to treat youth "at risk of developing psychosis"

Update!  August 20, 2011 around 10:30 pm

via the Syndey Morning Herald: McGorry aborts teen drug trial Jill Stark

August 21, 2011 

                                                                   read:  Sydney Morning Herald

Patrick McGorry is claiming the decision to not not conduct the unethical neuroleptic trials on 

youth was made in June; and has nothing to do with a formal complaint  being lodged by an 

international group protesting the trial.  The original post below has an interview with 

McGorry that was broadcast two days before he announced he was aborting the teen drug trial.

Original post:
via:the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:




Patrick McGorry televised interview requires windows media player

In the August 15, 2011 online Psychiatric Times an article written by Allen Francis is published in which  Dr. Francis expresses his hope that Australian psychiatrist, Patrick McGorry, has done an about face and  is no longer supporting a questionable and potentially disastrous agenda.  The questionable agenda to which Dr. Francis refers is McGorry's plan to include youth who are suspected of being "at risk of developing psychosis" when Australia implements an early intervention and treatment program for youth experiencing psychosis.  Allen cites two reasons for his hope in the article:


"The great news is that Professor McGorry has recently renounced the relevance of psychosis risk syndrome in the current practice of clinical psychiatry. He has done so in two separate and dramatic ways: 1) by withdrawing his support for the inclusion of psychosis risk in DSM 5; and 2) by promising not to include it as a target in Australia’s massive new experiment in early intervention. Psychosis risk syndrome is an extremely promising topic for ongoing research, but it is not nearly ready for current clinical application and if introduced prematurely could cause disastrous unintended consequences."


It appears that Dr. Francis's hope may be premature.  In an interview broadcast on August 18, on the Australian Broadcasting Network, McGorry is quoted as saying, "Well, my colleague Alison Yung and I in the early days of our early psychosis work in the '90s, patients were presenting to the first episode psychosis programs with lot of distress, a lot of functional impairment, but with warning signs of psychosis.