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Objective: The authors review the more than 30-year history of the academic affiliation between the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and the Mental Health Service at the Veterans Affairs North Texas Health Care System. Methods: The authors interviewed individuals involved at various stages in developing this affiliation about decisions and challenges. Results: The academic association has been very successful on the whole, though not consistently so. At this time, a flourishing educational and research program is in place and seems stable. Conclusion: It is not clear how generalizable the Dallas experience is. Both sides of this affiliation have overcome obstacles. Persistence and patience have been crucial, especially when one or the other side produced temporarily insurmountable obstacles. It appears that the decision to pursue the recruitment of both researchers and educators to the North Texas Veterans Health Care System from the beginning may have been crucial in developing a fuller academic collaboration.

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the educational and ethical issues involved in interactions between departments of psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. METHODS: The author analyzes the history of attitudes toward pharmaceutical companies, various conflicting ethical principles that apply, and areas of confluence and conflict of interest between psychiatric education and the drug industry. These attitudes are applied to a variety of specific types of interactions with representatives of the pharmaceutical industry. RESULTS: A number of forms of interaction are found to be on balance, ethical, and productive, while others are found to be problematic. CONCLUSIONS: Careful analysis of both ethical and educational dimensions can produce meaningful and constructive involvement with the pharmaceutical industry, without inevitably corrupting psychiatric educators.