Reports detail psychiatrist's mistreatment of patient

Officials in Oregon are investigating allegations of abuse by a senior psychiatrist at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem.

The allegations against Dr. Charles E. Faulk, 53, were outlined in Department of Human Services investigative reports and other records obtained Monday by The Oregonian. They have found that he denied medications to a severely mentally ill patient, causing the man to unduly suffer for months. Apparently Dr faulk cut off the medicine for a severly psychotic inmate, essentially abandoning him and apparently doing nothing significant to help him out. Records show that Faulk, the ward's full-time psychiatrist, visited his ailing patient only once during that period, and ignored repeated staff warnings that Norton was "decompensating."

The patient, Neil Norton, 59, lost nearly 40 pounds, frequently cried through the night and became persuaded that someone had left a dead fetus near a soda machine on the ward. Faulk had cut Norton off his medications in June 2002 after accusing him of being "a pill seeker." When Faulk finally intervened in January, 2003, he did so with six electroshock treatments.

According to the report, Dr. Faulk is paid $9,756 a month.

Additional Note: Four years earlier, Dr. Faulk nearly lost his medical license for what the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners called "habitual or excessive use of intoxicants or drugs."

Additional Note: This comes at a time of increasing scrutiny for the hospital, which receives nearly half of the state's budget to care for the mentally ill yet serves only 1.5 percent of them.

Other Accusations: The patients claimed that Faulk had called one a "homicidal maniac" and told another, "You are the worst patient I have ever had." The alleged abuse also included Faulk telling a Cuban patient to "go back to where you came from." Many of those allegations were never investigated by the Human Services Department because they did not constitute abuse under Oregon law, officials said.

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The criticism in the report is for taking the guy off his medications. But obviously, if the guy got better, there would not have been a problem. The response seems to have been to brutalise the patient further instead of doing something effective.

So it seems like he didn't know how to deal with the guy without the patient being in a chemical straight jacket. and instead drove him over the edge further. Not a pretty picture.

update: this story has been picked up by the AP Press wire