Talk:Study: cognitive therapy as good as medication, but lasts longer

Correspondence

Note that replies below have been trimmed to avoid copyright violation. The published parts are published under fair dealing/ fair use. This was done not at the sender's request, but of my own initiative, after discovering that my government is a bunch of dark ages characters who belong in a dungeon.

• Attorney-General's Department. Intellectual Property Branch.. "e-News on Copyright: Issue 20 - April 2001 : DIGITAL AGENDA: copyright and e-mail" — Commonwealth of Australia, April, 2001

Initial query

emailed the American Psychiatric Association <press at psych.org> for alternative viewpoint comment, chance to respond to claims in the Uni of Pennsylvania news release. - Simeon 04:55, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi,

I am writing a news story for en.wikinews.org, an open news publishing web site, covering a recent report from a University of Pensylvania study.

In their press release, it is claimed:

http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/article.php?id=777

"Cognitive therapy to treat moderate to severe depression works just as well as antidepressants, according to an authoritative report appearing today in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University, challenges the American Psychiatric Association guidelines that antidepressant medications are the only effective treatment for moderately to severely depressed patients."

I wonder if the APA would like to comment in response to their statement, or to further points made in the press release?

Would you like to comment on the validity of the study?

Will the APA review its guidelines in reaction to this finding? or when might you do that?

Are medication and cognitive therapy mutually exclusive?

Does the study mean patients are better off not taking medication, and taking cognitive therapy instead? Or should both be used?

Is cognitive therapy the only such effective alternative/supplement to medication, or are other forms of therapy known to be effective?

Simeon Scott

Part-way through discussion, my reply to her query

She asked whether I can assure that a quote won't become distorted or misrepresented through our editorial process.

Jessica,

There is no assurance, but it is unlikely. Such occurances do happen, and they are usually noticed and fixed, due to the multi-user environment. But I can't guarantee it.

However, I would post, in addition to whatever portion useful for the article, the full content of your reply, seperately, and that can be protected. The wikinews system also automatically preserves a full history of all changes, so any user who has a query regarding the article is always able to track back through the article's history. If something misleading were found, they could ask to have the document fixed, even if unable to correct it themselves.

I can assure you that I would do my best to portray your comments in a fair light, but I cannot watch 24-hours a day.

You could look at wikinews as being a cross between a forum and a publication. It is not squarely in either category.

(I am myself merely an individual who is interested in publishing news, I am not authorised as a representative of Wikinews or the Wikimedia Foundation which implements the project technical aspects. In my earlier email referring to 'we' I did not mean to imply that I was a representative of Wikinews, but only a member of the community of users of the site.)

I hope that answers your questions. If you are really unsure about giving me information to post to Wikinews, I could instead post an article on my own website, including your comments, which would be protected from change by other users. But it is possible that someone would transclude that text into Wikinews anyway, where it would be subject to the possiblity of obscurement or misrepresentation.

I think if you are concerned, you could examine the resulting wikinews article and inform myself, or comment on the article's 'discussion' page if you have any problem with the content. That would certainly be ethical, in the worst case where you were ignored, you could amend the text yourself (although after some time of inactivity articles are currently made 'read-only'). If you had a genuine grievance, noone could argue that your change amounted to writing with bias, which is the only reason why anyone should not edit wikinews articles about themselves.

I have asked that the wikinews pages display more information to readers about the nature of the content as user-editable, but have not yet had a positive result on this suggestion.

Simeon

Quoting Jessica Mikulski <JMikulski at psych.org>:
> Simeon -
> <snip for copyright reasons> is there a
> guarantee given that information that is given to you won't be <snip for copyright reasons - man talk about irony>
> changed to misconstrue a direct quote?

Final reply from APA

Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2005 09:25:03 -0400 From: Jessica Mikulski <JMikulski at psych.org> To: shevek at bur.st Subject: RE: University of Pensylvania study for en.wikinews.org

Dear Simeon -

<snip for copyright reasons> from the wikinews web site -

"If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here."

As the article could manipulated to distort the original quote and information, <snip for copyright reasons>

Sincerely, Jessica Mikulski

<JMikulski at psych.org>'s reply

Interesting psych.org reply. I hope there is no confusion that a quote would be edited mercilessly. -Edbrown05 14:18, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Note Ed's reply is from before I found I was obliged to edit mercilessly in order to avoid potential of copyright problems. :\ - Simeon 22:34, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)