Ethics of psychopharmacological research

1. Psychiatry is in dire need of research in all areas--from psychopharmacology to psychotherapy. 2. It is unethical not to undertake research as long as hundreds of thousands of patients suffer from incapacitating mental disorders. 3. It is unethical not to apply proper research principles to obtain maximal information from the observations of patients treated by different drugs or techniques. 4. The Tokyo (Helsinki II) declaration takes cognizance of the special problems in psychiatric (and certain other areas of) research, and should help to heighten the standard of all clinical research. 5. Psychopharmacology is based on the principles of the biological sciences. In the behavioral aspects of clinical psychopharmacological research non-objective observations cannot solely be based on these principles, but we should always be able to aim at: a. Description of spontaneous history. b. Description of diagnostic and therapeutic techniques and processes. c. Description of goals. d. Description of results (with as detailed information on treatment failures as on treatment successes). e. Prospective studies instead of retrospective ones. 6. Psychopharmacology is probably the area within psychiatry where the ethical issues have been most protected against the uncritical introduction of unproven therapeutic principles.