NAMI and Drug Makers’ $$$

As a Washington Post reporter, I was trained to “follow the money” so last year when the New York Times published a story about how the National Alliance on Mental Illness had received $23 million from drug makers between 2006 to 2008, I winced. The driving force behind the story was Iowa Republican Senator Charles E. Grassley who was using his congressional powers to investigate the drug industry’s influence on the practice of medicine. 
NAMI’s critics were quick to attack, arguing that NAMI was in the pocket of pharmaceutical companies and that is why it endorsed the so-called “medical model,” which blames severe mental illnesses on chemical imbalances in the brain; backs Assisted Outpatient Treatment, which enables judges to forcibly medicate selective persons who have a history of violence or of not taking medications that help them; and believes that mental disorders can strike children as well as adults.
Obviously, all of us who support NAMI would prefer to have more of an arm’s length relationship with drug makers.
But I don’t believe for a second that drug makers control NAMI and, if I did, I would resign from it.