Documenting Psychiatrists Behaving BadlyOf all professions, psychiatrists seem to get into the most trouble. I have been collecting stories about psychiatric screwups for a while. Sadly, it has been disgustingly easy to do. We post stories with links to the original sources. We couldn't make this stuff up if we wanted to. My Name is Sickmind Fraud.
A Queensbury psychiatrist had his medical license suspended for 6 months last week after the state Department of Health brought a disciplinary case against him for allegations of “gross incompetence” and “moral unfitness.”
Dr. Koock E. Jung, who operates Psychotherapy Center on Bay Road in Queensbury, will also spend 3 years on probation after the suspension is lifted, according to the Department of Health. The suspension takes effect June 29.
The Department of Health website showed Jung admitted he “could not successfully defend against” at least one of a group of charges that included allegations he committed “gross negligence gross incompetence negligence on more than one occasion incompetence; on more than one occasion harassing, abusing or intimidating a patient physically or verbally; engaging in moral unfitness; failing to maintain accurate patient records; and revealing personally identifiable facts, data or information without the prior consent of the patient.”
Among the allegations was inappropriate physical contact with female patients and prescription of medications that were beyond his licensing ability, according to one woman who made a complaint against Jung. Jung denied the accusations Tuesday and said he did not admit any wrongdoing related to sexual contact. He said any physical contact he had with patients was for legitimate medical or examination purposes. He blamed the case on a group of disgruntled former employees, one of whom he had remove her shirt so he could examine her for pneumonia. He said some of them told “lies” because they were angry about a “pay scale” dispute.
Other patients wrongly interpreted examinations he did to check their hearts for problems related to medication they were prescribed, he said. “Some of these women sexualize anything,” he said.
The prescription charge related to prescribing Xanax to a person with “serious anxiety,” Jung said.
He said he suffers from Lyme disease that has limited the use of his hands, so he may decide to retire instead of getting his medical license reinstated. Jung accepted the state’s disciplinary action instead of facing an evidentiary hearing that could have led to him losing his medical license. The hearing was scheduled for last week, and the notice of discipline was posted Monday.
A Queensbury woman was among the dozen or so women, many of them victims of sexual abuse, who sought help from Jung. She said they were prepared to testify at the disciplinary hearing last week. She spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of the allegations. She said Jung engaged in “inappropriate touching” and inappropriate conversations with her and others with whom she discussed the case.
A hearing has begun into a former Queensland Health psychiatrist who worked as a doctor with allegedly bogus medical qualifications.
Vincent Victor Berg was employed as a psychiatrist at the Townsville General Hospital's mental health unit between July 1999 and January 2002. Concerns about the authenticity of the Russian-born migrant's medical qualifications only came to light during the Tony Morris led Health Inquiry in 2005. Berg is facing 22 charges including 10 counts of uttering, six counts of fraud, five counts of attempted fraud and one count of forgery.
During the first day of the committal hearing in the Southport Magistrates Court, arresting officer Detective Sergeant Steven Bignell said Berg sent allegedly fake psychiatric qualifications from the Voronezh University in Russia to the Australian Medical Council.
The sergeant told the court he travelled to Russia to speak with staff at the university and was told they did not offer a psychiatric course in 1977 when Berg claimed to have studied there. The detective tendered a letter from the Russian university that stated Berg's qualifications were a "crude forgery". Berg's Queensland Health photographic identification card was also tendered to the court showing he was employed in the Townsville Hospital as a medical registrar.
The Russian migrant was charged by police in 2009 and it has taken six years for the matter to progress to the committal hearing stage. The long delay has been due in part to Berg previously representing himself and seeking a number of adjournments. Legal Aid stepped in late last week and the defendant is now being represented by criminal lawyer, Michael Gatenby.
The Judge in the case had especially harsh words for the psychiatrist assigned to the case.
A truck driver will spend at least 17 years in jail for the sexual abuse of his daughter in one of the longest sentences handed down to a paedophile father in Australia.
In sentencing the 49-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his daughter, Judge Paul Conlon said it was what the community expected.
[...]
Judge Conlon, who has a reputation for handing down tough sentences to child sex offenders, said the truck driver had exploited her youth “in the worst possible way”.
“He has groomed his own daughter, turning her into his sexual play thing,” the judge said.
He was critical of psychiatrist Dr Olav Nielssen who told the court the repeated sexual abuse over seven years had been “opportunistic”.
Judge Conlon said the psychiatrist had seemed to treat “without any critical evaluation” the man’s comments that he had trouble “showing his feelings” to his daughter and had not known how to express himself.
“In my view, it is inappropriate to use the word ‘opportunistic’ when dealing with persistent sexual abuse of a child over a period of seven years. I am unable to have much confidence in this future risk assessment,” Judge Conlon said.
His daughter, now 28, went to Queensland police in 2007. The father was sentenced in Queensland to a maximum of four years with a non-parole term of just one year four months after telling the psychiatrist that “he and his daughter had a very close and open relationship and that he really loved her”.
He had pleaded guilty to three counts of raping his daughter.
The psychiatrist and columnist Tanveer Ahmed has been sacked by the Australian for plagiarism – just two years after being dropped by the Sydney Morning Herald for a series of similar cases.
Ahmed was exposed by ABC TV’s Media Watch in 2012 and consequently lost his regular spot as a commentator for Fairfax Media.
On Monday the blogger Ketan Joshi accused Ahmed on Twitter of plagiarising the US political website Prospect in his latest article for the Australian, a controversial opinion piece on domestic violence.
The editor of the Australian, Clive Mathieson, told Guardian Australia he became aware of the accusation on Monday.
“When the Australian discovered it, we discussed it with Tanveer Ahmed and it was decided he would no longer be writing for us,” Mathieson said.
The tactics used by the pharma industry to entrench its influence –
whether with politicians, health groups or prescribers – have been
hitting the headlines lately.
Meanwhile, Dr Peter Parry, a psychiatrist and senior
lecturer at Flinders University, has been investigating internal pharma
documents and has come to the conclusion that we live in a world of
“marketing-based medicine”. He writes:
“The larger issue is how do
we face the outside world when they begin to criticize us for
suppressing data…” AstraZeneca publications manager in internal email 6 Dec 1999.
In recent years doctors and other health professionals have been
exhorted to practice “Evidence-based Medicine” or “EBM”. We should
prescribe to our patients the right medication based on the best
available medical science. Similarly surgeons should select the right
implantable prosthesis according to EBM.
However there has been a growing tide of voices claiming EBM is not
what it seems, that given the multi-billions of dollars involved, the
medical science system has been distorted. The big pharmaceutical
companies spend around 11% to 15% on research and development, but they
spend around 36% of their budgets on marketing. This influence means
much of what passes as EBM, may in fact be “MBM” – “Marketing-based
Medicine”.
A former Melbourne psychiatrist who had sex with a patient for years and billed Medicare $16,000 for their time together has been ordered to pay the woman nearly $400,000 in damages.
A Supreme Court judge recently heard former Kew psychiatrist Francis Tudor Bostock breached his duty of care by having sex with and sexually assaulting the woman over three-and-a-half years while she had depression.
The patient first sought Dr Bostock's help in 1990 for her mental illness, which other treatments had failed to alleviate.
Dr Bostock initially used psychoanalytical psychotherapy on her with some success, but in 1997, the pair started having sex in his rooms whenever she attended.
While the therapeutic relationship ceased when the sex began, Dr Bostock continued to bill Medicare when she visited his rooms until 1998. In total, Medicare paid him $16,464 for their time together.
The woman visited him up to three times a week until she ended their relationship in 2001. Apart from their sexual relationship, they did not interact or socialise outside of his office.
In her judgment on damages, Associate Justice Melissa Daly said the woman fell in love with Bostock and became obsessed with her therapy and feelings about him.
The woman decided to end their relationship when she learnt about the concept of transference in psychotherapy — the process whereby a therapist, in addressing issues associated with the loss of love from a parent, in effect replaces the role of a parent in a patient's consciousness. This made the woman realise how wrong their relationship was and how Dr Bostock had abused his position of power.
The court heard that during their relationship and for many years afterwards, the woman was consumed by guilt and shame and struggled to work. She became depressed, anxious, untrusting of others and suffered migraines and panic attacks.
In 2005, she started seeing a new psychiatrist, who was angry and appalled by what had happened to her. He told the court that Dr Bostock's sexual relationship with the woman was a major boundary violation that was equivalent to child abuse.
He said the woman was unable to give rational consent to a sexual relationship with Dr Bostock, that his actions "massively damaged" her and had aggravated her mental illness. She now exhibits elements of post traumatic stress disorder and has dreams and flashbacks about him.
In 2010, the woman reported him to the Medical Board. In response, Justice Daly said, Dr Bostock admitted the relationship and agreed to wind up his practice. His registration ceased in early 2011. He was nearly 70 at that time.
While Dr Bostock declared himself bankrupt last year, seven months after the woman issued a writ against him, Justice Daly ordered Dr Bostock to pay the woman $384,029 in damages.
She said Dr Bostock did not file a defence and "as such is taken to have admitted the allegations in the statement of claim".
The woman's lawyer, Slater and Gordon principal Anne Shortall, said her client would pursue compensation when the term of Dr Bostock's bankruptcy ends in 2016.
That’s the shocking conclusion of a new report from the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council (VIMIAC).
Their survey of women who have been in psychiatric wards in Victorian hospitals paints a shocking picture.
A terrifying 85 per cent said they had felt unsafe, with most saying they reported it to doctors and nurses and felt nothing was done. About 45 per cent had been sexually assaulted in hospital.
Just imagine the terror. You are alone, in a foreign place, completely under the control of medical staff, many of whom you have only just met, and surrounded by very disturbed people.
Even worse, you are disturbed: so depressed you unable to defend yourself, or perhaps already being tortured by fears, feelings or voices. There is a good chance you have a previous history of being assaulted, as such attacks vastly increase your chance of developing a mental illness.
It’s sickening. It’s happening now. And we are standing by and doing nothing.
“We expect people with mental illness to tolerate what no-one else would tolerate,” says Isabell Collins from VIMIAC. “It would only need to happen once in a general hospital ward and it would be fixed immediately.”
Yet, says Collins, she has been working in mental health for 25 years, “and sexual assault has been a problem for 25 years”.
Her survey included about 50 women from Victoria, but Collins says it does not overestimate the problem.
“If anything it underestimates it,” she says. “If you did the exact same survey in any state you would expect the same results”.
How could this be? How can we allow our most vulnerable people to be treated in this way? It’s hard not to agree with Collins that the answer is that society would rather just ignore mental illness, scared off by stigma and misinformation and a desire to sweep difficult problems under the carpet.
The incoming head of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, Mal Hopwood, says that while he can’t be sure on the exact proportion of women raped in care, there is clearly a problem that exists around the country.
“Certainly the numbers in that report suggest it’s not an insignificant problem,” he says.
He wants hospitals to be properly funded to enforce female-only areas and support women who are assaulted.
But he says fixing buildings and allocating spaces won’t be enough: an attitude change is needed as well.
You also have to wonder if our over-reliance on medication and biological psychiatry have helped downplay the importance of creating positive environments in psych hospitals.
After all, if mental illness is just a brain disease that needs the right medication, then surely a stark, busy, hospital environment will make no difference?
But mental illness is closely linked to both our personal experiences and the culture we are living in, and putting people in scary, loud and under-resourced hospitals cannot be helping.
I couldn’t have more admiration for many of the hard-working doctors and nurses working in public hospital psychiatric units, yet the truth is that most of these places are awful to be in.
Rape is the terrible tip of a huge problem that we have been ignoring for far too long.
While addicted to psychostimulants, Dr Kim Street had painted the walls of his surgery black, was unable to pay bills, and exposed patients to experimental drug therapies without their knowledge.
He prescribed the wrong drugs to pregnant women and elderly patients, as well as patients with a history of psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), erratic criminal behaviour, gambling addictions, major depression and social phobias.
Dr Street, who moved to Swansea in 2000, faked patient prescriptions and pretended to pick up medications on their behalf.
In September the Mater hospital offered him work in its psychiatric emergency unit under the supervision of Hunter New England Mental Health medical services director Dr Marcia Fogarty.
That was despite Dr Street’s lack of acute care experience and the fact he had been heavily addicted to prescription drugs between 2002 and 2012.
Note: Deregistered = He lost his license to practice
Much more about this train wreck at the link
An 80-year-old former Perth psychiatrist has been found guility of molesting and raping two of his patients more than 30 years ago.
Alan John Stubley had been on trial for the past week accused of forcing the two women to have sex with him during psychotherapy sessions between 1975 and 1978.
After six hours of deliberations, a Supreme Court jury found him guility of ten charges, but acquitted him of four others.
Stubley, who has senile dementia, has been remanded in custody and will be sentenced in January.
Of course, curing them of the condition is something that the simply do not know how to do. As seen on News.Com Australia
To most people, the thought of amputating a perfectly healthy limb is unimaginable.
But for at least three Australians, possibly dozens more, cutting off their leg has felt perfectly normal.
These so-called "amputee wannabes" have a very rare condition in which they feel one of their limbs is not truly their own, and they become obsessed with cutting it off.
And people suffering from the bizarre body image disorder should be able to opt for amputation, a Sydney psychiatrist says.
Christopher Ryan, a psychiatrist at the University of Sydney, says there is a good argument for allowing patients with body integrity identity disorder (BIID) to have their unwanted limb removed.
"I am not saying we should unthinkingly cut off people's legs," Dr Ryan said.
"I realise that the idea strikes almost everyone as lunatic when they first hear it. However, there are a small number of people who see themselves, and have always seen themselves, as amputees," he said.
"They are often miserable their whole lives because of their 'extra limb', and we know that at least some of them feel much better if it is removed."
Dr Ryan has examined the ethics of the issue in the international philosophy journal Neuroethics and says doctors have a moral duty to amputate for the health and safety of the patient.
He said one 30-year-old patient of his lived his whole life feeling he was truly an amputee, but was so ashamed of how he felt he did not tell anyone.
"Eventually he took the only step he thought he had open to him and placed his leg in a bucket of dry ice until it died and had to be removed," Dr Ryan said.
"Now, a year later, he is living happily as an amputee and getting on with his life."
The paper said the operations should be likened to plastic surgery, with elective amputation offered to BIID sufferers only.
"Unless these patients know that doctors will take their concerns seriously, and at least consider their requests, more people will risk their lives trying to remove their own limbs," he said.
The disorder hit news headlines in 2000 when it was revealed that a surgeon in Scotland had amputated a healthy leg from two patients with the disorder.
At the time, appalled Scottish politicians called the procedure "obscene" and tried to ban such operations.
Dr Jerry Gelb - suspended from treating patients over the gun incident early last year - is facing further sanctions from the Medical Practitioners Board over his relationship with the patient.
The board heard this week that Dr Gelb was a "naive and inexperienced" psychiatrist in his first year of practice when he began a sexual relationship with a woman he was treating for bulimia and emotional problems in the 1980s.
The woman only complained about the relationship in 2005.
Last year the County Court sentenced Dr Gelb to a 12-month intensive corrections order after he walked into the Magistrates' Court with a loaded .22 calibre Ruger pistol and ammunition in his backpack on February 1, 2007.
The Medical Practitioners Board suspended Dr Gelb's medical licence pending its own hearing into the incident later.
This week the board heard Dr Gelb had rejected the initial advances of his patient.
But when she asked the then young doctor to her birthday, Dr Gelb accepted, buying her a drink before they began kissing on the dance floor and later spending the night together.
When the patient's friend died the next day, and she asked Dr Gelb for help, he invited her to his Toorak home and they again ended up kissing and embracing.
At the patient's psychiatric appointment the following day, Dr Gelb instead took her to lunch and insisted the doctor-patient relationship had to end because he had feelings for her.
Counsel assisting the board, Andrew Clements, asked for Dr Gelb's licence to be suspended because he had abused the doctor-patient relationship.
Dr Gelb's lawyer, Bob Galbally, said a reprimand would be an appropriate sanction.
The family of a woman killed by her psychiatrist husband in 1987 is disgusted he was later able to be reregistered to practise.
Dr George Sliwinski shot his former wife Alice in 1987 and was sentenced to eight years' jail after pleading guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility.
Dr Sliwinski had been struggling with alcoholism and the use of prescription drugs, which during the 80s had led to a number of breakdowns and admissions to psychiatric hospitals.
After being released on parole in 1990, in 1994 Dr Sliwinski successfully appealed to the Medical Tribunal of NSW to be reregistered.
Since 1996 he has been employed as a psychiatric registrar at Gosford and Wyong hospitals.
The Australian Medical Association opposed his reappointment, Fairfax has reported.
News that Dr Sliwinski was again practising has alarmed his late wife's family, with the victim's sister, Noleen Tasoulis, saying it was "disgusting".
But Dr Sliwinski has been defended by his colleagues and NSW Health.
A spokeswoman for the Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service said there had been no formal complaints about his work.
"All appropriate background checks required at the time of his employment were conducted," she said.
Senior psychiatrist Chris Tennant defended his colleague, saying Dr Sliwinski "met all the conditions imposed on him by the board".
Many of Dr Sliwinski's current patients do not know of his past, as he is under no obligation to tell them, Fairfax says.
NINE years after he shot and killed his wife, George Sliwinski was back in his job as a psychiatrist, treating mentally ill patients in public hospitals.
Dr Sliwinski himself had a history of mental illness. This led him to either leave or be dismissed from four medical facilities in the 1980s. In 1987, after a decade of chronic drug and alcohol abuse, he shot his former wife, Alice, four times, a month after their divorce. One of the shots, to her head, killed her.
But Dr Sliwinski was released on parole in 1990. And he was employed as a resident medical officer at the Central Coast Mental Health Service in July 1994, shortly after successfully appealing to the Medical Tribunal of NSW to be re-registered. The Australian Medical Association publicly opposed the re-registration.
Dr Sliwinski was employed as a psychiatric registrar at Gosford and Wyong hospitals in 1996, and continues in this role.
But, to this day, many of his patients are unaware of his past - and there is no obligation for DrSliwinski or authorities to tell them.
The case of Dr Sliwinski raises difficult issues of a patient's right to know the record and background of their doctor and the ability of someone to redeem themselves and begin a new life.
In 1994 the Medical Tribunal said it had "some difficulty" deciding whether he was fit to be a doctor. But it concluded he was suitable because he did not intend to kill his wife, had no history of violence and was supported strongly by three psychiatrists who gave evidence that he had been fully rehabilitated and was very unlikely to relapse.
And yet questions remain unanswered. The Health Department will not reveal how it monitored Dr Sliwinski to ensure he met strict conditions imposed by the tribunal, such as regular urine and/or blood tests, psychiatric treatment and constant supervision. The tribunal also appeared to be unaware that Dr Sliwinski's wifealleged he had a history of violence against her. It found the killing was an "isolated occasion", despite her allegations, set out in an Apprehended Violence Order summons issued in the year before her death.
The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists - which is responsible for ensuring the suitability of psychiatrists - has refused to comment on what processes it undertook to assess him. And in the 1990s the NSW Medical Board was not required to independently notify employers of a doctor's restrictions. A spokeswoman for the board, Edwina Light, said it was prohibited from revealing why DrSliwinski's strict conditions were lifted in 1999.
Doctors are not legally obliged to tell patients they are working under conditions or have been deregistered in the past, and the Health Department has no policy requiring disclosure.
Dr Sliwinski went on trial in the Supreme Court for the murder of Alice on October 1, 1987, a month after they divorced.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the fourth day of his trial, in 1988, and was sentenced to a maximum of eight years' jail.
He had shot Alice four times but said he could not recall the incident and successfully argued diminished responsibility because of his intoxicated state.
In sentencing him, Justice Ray Loveday said there was no motive for the killing and described it as "quite bizarre".
According to the tribunal's 1994 judgment, he had been abusing alcohol and a cocktail of prescription drugs, mostly tranquillisers, for almost a decade and had sought psychiatric help several times from 1979, including stays at psychiatric hospitals in 1985 and 1987. He feared "dying and going mad".
His drinking dated back to the late 1960s, when he drank on the job as a medical trainee because he found attending cancer wards difficult.
His father died of bone cancer when Dr Sliwinski was 11 and his mother had schizophrenia.
The drug addiction began in 1977 after his first wife, Barbara, left him with their children and a doctor gave him Serepax after he was unable to administer anaesthesia due to a panic attack at Moree Hospital.
However, in its judgment in 1994 the tribunal concluded that Dr Sliwinski was not an intrinsically violent person. "[The shooting] does not indicate a tendency to vice or violence or any lack of probity. It has neither connection with nor significance for any professional function. There is no evidence that the appellant [previously] committed acts of violence towards his ex-wife or any other person …" the tribunal said.
However, a summons was issued to Dr Sliwinski over an allegation that he assaulted her by attempting to choke her in August 1986.
The AVO application, seen by the Herald, alleged that Dr Sliwinski, who had been drinking heavily, said to his wife, "If I hear you have done anything to foul up my career I will kill you", and had assaulted her three or four times during their five-year marriage. The AVO was withdrawn by his wife.
Three years before the killing, he was twice told to take sick leave from his job as a psychiatric registrar at Morriset Hospital due to his depressed mental state and concerns that he was suicidal.
He was also told to take sick leave from the Mater Hospital in Newcastle not long after that.
In 1987 he was sacked from a practice at Kilburn Bay and told to seek psychiatric help. He had come to the North Coast after he left Moree Hospital in 1980 after "difficulties with the Medical Board, [and] with the Hospital Board", and moved to Newcastle, the tribunal said.
He had been investigated by the Medical Board for failing to attend to an unconscious patient at Moree who had had a stroke, and was cautioned over the incident.
A spokeswoman for the Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service, Jenny Dennis, said: "All appropriate background checks required at the time of his employment were conducted." She later confirmed "this included the NSW Medical Board".
"Central Coast Mental Health Service can confirm that Dr Sliwinski complied with the restrictions placed on him by the Medical Board," she said. She said there had been "no formal complaints about his work".
Ms Light, said it was the responsibility of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists to determine whether Dr Sliwinski was fit for psychiatry. The college would not comment.
The board's registrar, Andrew Dix, said it regularly monitored conditions. "It's up to the doctor to comply but if they don't comply we know about it very quickly because we've got a data base following this," Dr Dix said.
Alice's sister, Noleen Tasoulis, said the family was devastated that Dr Sliwinski was practising psychiatry. "I think it's disgusting," Mrs Tasoulis said.
She alleged that at the time of his marriage to her sister he was a "violent" alcoholic and her sister supported him with $335,000 she won in a lottery just before they married. "The seven years that he was married to my sister … he was in various [psychiatric] clinics … so it seems rather unbelievable that he could even practise."
Dr Sliwinski had a solicitor, Denis Williams, contact the Herald to arrange an interview yesterday to respond to questions about his past and what monitoring he was subjected to by the area health service.
Dr Sliwinski did not show up but a senior psychiatrist, Chris Tennant, who is a visiting medical officer at Gosford and Wyong hospitals, did, and strongly defended him.
Professor Tennant said "he met all the conditions imposed on him by the board".
He said whether he told the tribunal he was considering a career in psychiatry was irrelevant. "It's not their business," he said.
He declared the Herald "mother f---ers" after the meeting.
Mr Williams said Dr Sliwinski's suitability had been "extensively considered" by the college and the tribunal. "There's been no record anywhere of this bloke not doing the right thing since the day he was readmitted," he said.
Asked whether Dr Sliwinski divulged to the tribunal that there had been other allegations of assaulting his wife, Mr Williams said: "It's too long ago."
Asked about the alleged threat Dr Sliwinski made to his wife that he would kill her, Mr Williams said: "I think we'll end this now. Goodbye."
Toddlers as young as two are being diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed drugs including Ritalin.
Figures obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal 311 children in NSW aged five and under depend on controversial medication, including 58 four-year-olds and 13 three-year-olds.
Health Department figures show that, nationally, doctors have prescribed ADHD drugs to five toddlers aged only two, despite possible side effects.
The mother of one four-year-old who has been on Ritalin since the age of three said she knew there could be long-term effects but the change in her son's behaviour was worth the risk.
"At first I was hoping he didn't have ADHD and I didn't want to put him on medication but I thought I should give it a go and there has been a big improvement," the single mother of two told The Daily Telegraph.
But the disturbing figures tell only part of the story.
They cover scripts subsidised under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - only a proportion of the young children on ADHD drugs.
With Australia's ADHD rates among the highest in the world, the federal Department of Health said prescriptions paid for without PBS subsidies "are a significant portion of the total scripts".
It has no corresponding data for them.
The most widely prescribed drugs for the youngest children, according to the figures to March this year, continue to be Ritalin and the longer-lasting associated drug, Concerta, which was added to the PBS last year.
Dexamphetamine is the next most popular while Strattera, a longer-lasting non-stimulant, is less popular and prescribed mainly for children aged six and older.
As well as the three and four-year-olds, there are 240 five-year-olds on subsidised ADHD drugs in NSW. There are 6692 6- to 10-year-olds, 9006 11- to 15-year-old and 2584 16- to 18-year-olds.
The figures follow the State Government's ADHD review which found there was no overprescribing of drugs.
But child psychiatrist Jon Jureidini said he was disappointed at the number of preschoolers on the list.
"I would be confident that they (the drugs) are being inappropriately used in most cases of preschool children," Dr Jureidini said.
"ADHD is not a good explanation for putting these children on drugs.
"I have seen children of that age displaying very disturbed behaviour but it is usually a medical problem or significant family circumstances that are undermining their well-being."
However paediatrician Dr Michael Kohn, the treating doctor for the four-year-old, said he was not surprised at the number of children on ADHD medication.
Dr Kohn, a senior staff specialist in paediatrics at The Children's Hospital at Westmead, said the prescribing of ADHD drugs to children aged four and less was strictly controlled in NSW.
Specialists needed the permission of the state's Stimulant's Committee with the committee having to meet on each individual case.
A FORMER NSW psychiatrist has pleaded not guilty to the shooting murder of South Australia's former mental health chief, Margaret Tobin, in 2002. Appearing in the South Australian Supreme Court today, Jean Eric Gassy, 52, declared emphatically he was not guilty when asked to plead to the murder charge.
Dr Tobin was fatally shot as she walked from a lift on the eighth floor of an inner-city office building in Adelaide in October 2002.
She was 50 years old.
Justice Trish Kelly said the trial would be listed for hearing at the earliest opportunity.
Dr Tobin's widower, Don Scott, said outside court the day had been an emotional one for him.
Mr Scott said he would attend the trial, even though it might bring back “horrific” memories for him.
Representing himself, Mr Gassy was remanded in custody for a directions hearing in two weeks.
He flagged his intention to apply for a “suppression order” from the court, but Justice Trish Kelly suggested he raise it at the directions hearing.
Prosecutor Peter Brebner QC asked the court for more time to prepare the Crown case, because of the large number of witnesses expected to be called.
“Checking their availability will take quite some time,” Mr Brebner said.
A Supreme Court judge has told prosecutors that the retrial of the man once convicted of the shooting murder of Dr Margaret Tobin should be held as soon as possible.
Justice Trish Kelly today said that a retrial for Jean Eric Gassy should be held as soon as possible.
"From the court's point of view, this matter should proceed in August," Justice Kelly said.
Gassy, 51, today pleaded not guilty to murder and plans to represent himself at trial.
The former Sydney psychiatrist was jailed for life with a 34-year non parole period for the shooting murder of Dr Tobin in October 2002.
Dr Tobin, then South Australia's mental health chief, was shot four times as she walked from a lift at her city office building.
Earlier this month, the High Court of Australia overturned Gassy's murder conviction and sentence.
The High Court found that Supreme Court Judge Ann Vanstone had erred in her directions to the jury during their deliberations in Gassy's original trial.
Prosecutor Peter Brebner QC said more than 160 witnesses were likely to be called when the matter again goes to trial.
Dr Tobin's widower Don Scott attended this morning's hearing, which lasted a little over two minutes.
Gassy will be back in court in June, when another judge will set a date for the trial.
NEARLY two-thirds of female patients surveyed in psychiatric wards in Victoria have been sexually abused or harassed by male patients, new figures show.
A report by the Victorian Women and Mental Health Network has also revealed that 70% of mental health staff surveyed by the group knew the abuse and harassment was occurring in public hospital wards. A further 30% of the 42 staff surveyed said the abuse, usually perpetrated by sexually disinhibited male patients, happened frequently.
Network convener Heather Clarke said the report, Nowhere to be safe: Women's experiences of mixed-sex psychiatric wards, showed that 61% of the 75 female patients surveyed about their experiences in psychiatric wards had been abused or harassed in some way and did not feel safe.
"These women are being admitted to hospital to get well and then they are being subjected to harassment and abuse that has an adverse effect on their health," she said.
"The situation is most concerning in areas of wards where staff are not always present, or in cases where patients are heavily medicated, making them more vulnerable to abuse."
Ms Clarke said any form of abuse in psychiatric facilities had great potential to retraumatise women. "Evidence suggests that up to 70% of women admitted to psychiatric inpatients units have experienced past sexual abuse," she said. "These women are at risk of having that trauma retriggered in a place where they should be safe."
During inpatient meetings last year, some women said they had been sexually assaulted or had seen women engaging in sexual activity with men when they did not seem well enough to consent. One woman fled from a high-dependency unit after a male patient sexually assaulted her in her bedroom. When she returned to the unit days later, the offender was still there.
Monash University psychiatrist Jayashri Kulkarni said most of Victoria's public inpatient units became mixed wards in the 1960s, creating the potential for men to assault women.
"It's a system that is a recipe for problems," she said. "There are lots of minor incidents occurring all the time that can have quite an impact on vulnerable female inpatients. Unfortunately, there are major incidents occurring as well. The framework of the inpatient settings has allowed this to happen."
Professor Kulkarni said that while some units tried to separate men and women when they could, ward design often hindered their efforts.
"A lot of wards have very rabbit-warren-like structures so there are lots of pockets staff can't see. Some of the designs are better with smaller bedrooms now, but you can often still have common bathrooms, which means both sexes traipsing around from bathroom to bedroom and so on … It's a situation where women can be assaulted too."
She said she knew of two cases now before the courts involving a public and a private hospital.
Ms Clarke and Professor Kulkarni said Australia needed to follow British policy to segregate new wards for patient safety.
"What's happening at the moment is a dereliction of that duty (of care), which could lead to litigation if nothing is done about it," Professor Kulkarni said.
A spokesman for the Department of Human Services said the Government was looking at ways to increase women's safety in new hospitals, which "may involve creating spaces that are for women only".
The department gave some centres a $20,000 grant to promote gender sensitive practices last year, which included the development of separate outdoor garden areas, he said.
But Ms Clarke said it was not enough. "At the end of the day, this is about people's safety. If the UK can introduce segregation, we should at least be able to start talking about it here," she said. "The safety of vulnerable people in hospital should be paramount."
We have recently received two documents from someone who appears to be Dr Yolande Lucire, who offers them as evidence that they are a whistle blower in Australia. They point to a pattern of corruption in the Australian Medical System the should be troubling to anyone. (We also point people to her site, as there are a number of interesting documents pointing out the hazards os SSRIs)
The first is a text of a troubling letter sent to Sun Herald on 28 Feb 2008. Here is the text of that letter, as I received it
Sir
The Professional Standards Committee (PSC) judgement, said that I needed to consult a senior colleague about deficiencies in my knowledge and communication. It concerned 3 patients out of 30 whose pharmacological treatment I had reported to the area health service and to the NSW Medical Board.
Before I saw them, all had displayed suicidal, homicidal, psychotic, violent or otherwise peculiar behaviours both caused and aggravated by high doses of 'SSRI' antidepressants to which had been added to other medicines which have been well documented interactions with them. Two were on Aropax which its maker, GSK had admitted, a fortnight ago, had increased suicides eightfold in clinical trials over placebo, but they had not disclosed this catastrophic side effect when Aropax was licensed as an 'antidepressant.' The third was on three drugs together with Luvox, a drug so interactive that it had been withdrawn from use in the United States.
The NSW Medical Board had declined to investigate my 30 complaints as prescribing issues. The HCCC used the services of a psychiatrist who was a 'peer' of the prescribers, who found nothing unusual in a series that soon involved four deaths and several more suicides and deaths which were not investigated either and a dozen near lethal suicide attempts and a variety of bizarre behaviours on these drugs. On legal advice, I made the reports prospectively, at a rate of two or so each week, as the doctors of concern continued in their prescribing after I had issued formal warnings supported by documentation to the Superintendent. The first deaths occurred very soon after the prescriber had been ‘exonerated’ by the HCCC for the first group of suicide attempts but the reports of the deaths were ‘lost’ for two years at the HCCC, then not investigated either, or not by relevant experts. .
These same ‘side effects’ have been reported tens or possibly, hundreds of thousands of times to the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) which issued Public Health Advisory in March 2004 and many before and since about worsening depression, suicidality, mania, akathisia, violence, insomnia, agitation, panic and anxiety caused by antidepressants. The Area Health Service, the PSC and the various ‘peers’ all failed to acknowledge the significance and legal importance of such high level advisories.
The PSC was not concerned that one of the three went on to stab a man and attempt suicide when he was given even more of the very drugs that I had warned (in writing) had already caused a ‘serotonergic reaction.’ Nor were they concerned that he had been abandoned by his treaters and re-diagnosed with an ‘antisocial personality disorder’ after he had done that.
That complaint was bizarre in that it was I, who had tried to prevent such a catastrophe by warning in writing, was alleged to be somehow responsible for causing this behaviour. The PSC was advised that I was unethical for making so many unjustified reports and for informing a patient’s mother about her son’s problems, although that information led to his full recovery.
Since 1997, that Area Health Service had increased its mental health beds from 30 to 42 and it was promised another 12 in 2006, after yet another inpatient suicide.
Hospitalised suicide attempts have trebled from 55 to 155/100,000. Suicides under mental health care in NSW (a relatively new phenomenon) run at between 100 and 150 annually and violence and homicides by mental health patients have hugely increased. 194 such patients were admitted to one ward during 2003-4, but it took a psychiatrist with 42 years of experience to see that this was a population which did not exist before this new batch of serotonin altering psychiatric drugs came into use, antidepressants and ‘atypical’ antipsychotics which have the same side effects at double the rate of antidepressants.
We have a Crisis in Mental Health. The Department of Health has installed nearly 500 more mental health beds and there are 1100 more on the drawing boards.
Finding and relieving such patients has been a Mental Health priority in the UK for three years now and in Canada where I had lectured on this problem.
In the USA, 40 State Attorneys are suing the makers of these drugs for criminal fraud, to get funds to compensate patients who had suffered and to recoup costs so generated, and settlements run in billions of dollars. Doctors, when sued, say they were not properly warned, and thus pass the responsibility successfully onto the drug companies.
The Department of Health has been told many times that the causes of this crisis are: new drugs which have suicide attempts, homicidal thinking and hallucinations among their listed side effects. It prefers to kill the messenger by repeated acts of defamation.
The Health Care Complaints Commission is the only body available to look at treatment complaints. It had been was set up in the wake of the Chelmsford Royal Commission to ensure that malpractice of such magnitude could not happen again. Thirty years ago, 26 deaths and suicides were occasioned by pharmacological treatment delivered by the late Dr Harry Bailey over some twenty years.
Today's drugs are far more dangerous inductive of suicide. They are given to a million Australians, 14% of whom do not have the metabolism to deal with them at all. Huge numbers who are at risk of these catastrophic side effects which, more often than not, are taken for schizophrenia, bipolar illness or borderline personality disorder and the patient is given more drugs. Persons seeking mental health care doubled in the decade since Prozac was released in 1992 to 2003 and the numbers are still increasing, as the number of people whose SSRI side effects were taken for schizophrenia, etc mounts up.
I reported this series of suicides deaths and suicide attempts over 6 months, after which I was advised by lawyers to stop reporting because the Medial Board has decided to pursue me. The series was far worse than anything that Dr. Bailey and Chelmsford produced in that short period time and every complaint was dismissed in a cavalier fashion. One senior administrator apologised to me for not dealing with my reports. He explained that it was ‘The System.’
We also have a copy of an interesting report. This report concerns how the Greater Southern Area Health Service (at the time the Greater Murray Area Health Service) has dealt with nearly 40 reports of suicides, dangerous suicide attempts, a homicide, a serotonin syndrome death and many episodes of violence and psychosis due to how certain drugs were prescribed and co-prescribed by certain practitioners. These reports were made initially in 2002 but mostly from September 2004 to April 2005 and again from September 2005 to December 2006. The report notes this as a pattern of cover-up of repeated acts, which caused serious adverse events including deaths.
To be honest I had to check the calendar when I first saw this story. I had to verify it wasn't April Fools Day. While there are pets who are obviously driven mad by the humans that they live with, the solution is probably not to drug the animals, but to improve their lives.
Pets at risk of self-harm are increasingly being prescribed anti-depressants because they cannot discuss problems in their lives with others, a leading veterinarian says. Zoo and wildlife medicine specialist with the UK’s Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, Romain Pizzi, told the Telegraph that more pets were being prescribed Prozac.
[...]
Some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies have also recognised the need for anti-depressants for animals.
Last year, Eli Lilly released a chewable anti-depressant for dogs onto the US market.
The manufacturers even gave the “Reconcile” drug a beef flavour.
Pfizer has also created a diet drug for dogs, as well as motion-sickness medicine for all pets.
The judge who accused doctors of creating a generation of Ritalin kids who become criminals has been gagged in an extraordinary move by the state's Judicial Commission.
An ADHD support group which supports the use of drugs like Ritalin complained to the commission that Judge Paul Conlon had got it wrong, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
Judge Conlon criticised the over-diagnosis of ADHD, the over-use of medication and its effect on children.
Instead of dismissing the complaint, as it does in 75 per cent of cases, the commission referred it to Judge Conlon's boss, District Court Chief Judge Reg Blanch. In such cases, the chief judge is expected to counsel the judge or "make administrative arrangements within his or her court" to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Judge Conlon, a former Crown prosecutor, sparked fresh controversy about the use of Ritalin when he made his comments last year during the sentencing of a 20-year-old man who was prescribed the powerful stimulant at the age of six.
Judge Conlon, who jailed the man for 15 months for assault and an act of indecency, was told by a psychiatrist the man had become addicted to methamphetamine because of his Ritalin use.
At the time, the judge said he had huge concerns because of the "amazing tide" of cases coming before him involving people prescribed Ritalin as children who went on to commit violent crimes.
His remarks led to a review of the treatment of ADHD in NSW, which earlier this month reported that it had found no overprescribing of drugs.
However, sources say many doctors refused to co-operate with the study, which had no public input.
Three members of the committee have also served as expert advisers to drug companies, including Novartis, which produces Ritalin. The doctors all declared no conflict of interest.
At the same time, a prominent Sydney psychiatrist, Professor Joseph Rey, wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia that doctors should review their patients' need for the medications.
A former Launceston psychiatrist has been sentenced to 18 months jail for hiring a former patient to intimidate another patient.
A criminal court jury this afternoon found Ian Anthony Martin guilty of attempting to interfere with a witness.
The Chief Justice Peter Underwood says the crime struck at the well being of society and the court must send a clear message that it will act to protect the judicial system.
He gave Martin a 10 month non parole period.
Original Report: As seen in these reports from ABC News in Australia Report 1
The trial of a Launceston psychiatrist, accused of trying to use one patient to threaten another, will continue in the Launceston Criminal Court tomorrow.
Ian Anthony Martin has pleaded not guilty to attempting to interfere with a witness and to an alternative charge of perverting the course of justice.
Martin has denied that in 1998 he asked a female patient to withdraw a charge against him of maintaining a sexual relationship.
Another former patient, Gregory Shane Kirkland, has told the court that he damaged the woman's car after Martin asked him to threaten her and her family.
A third former patient, Raymond Henry Wells, said he helped Martin burn the woman's medical files.
Tomorrow the jury will continue watching a recorded police interview with Martin, before the Crown sums up its case.
A man has told the Launceston Criminal Court how his doctor asked him to threaten a Launceston family in 1998.
The witness was a patient of Launceston psychiatrist Ian Anthony Martin.
Martin has pleaded not guilty to one count of interfering with a witness and an alternative count of perverting the course of justice.
This morning witness Gregory Shane Kirkland told the court that his psychiatrist Martin offered him $1,000 to go to a Launceston house and threaten a family to get them to drop a lawsuit against Martin.
Mr Kirkland said he damaged two cars at the house and made a threatening phone call.
Martin's lawyer Adrian Hall asked Mr Kirkland whether he had made the story up to get back at Martin for writing a report that resulted in the witness losing his son to child protection.
Geelong Hospital is under investigation after sending a psychiatric patient's confidential medical records to the wrong person.
The documents -- wrongly included in a Freedom of Information response provided to another mental health patient -- detail extremely sensitive medical records of a woman with schizophrenia living in the same region.
Privacy Victoria and the Victorian Ombudsman have been notified of the breach and Health Services Commissioner Beth Wilson has confirmed she is investigating an incident of psychiatric records going to the wrong person.
But the woman who received the files said she was outraged by the careless record-keeping and worried her records could fall into the wrong hands.
She has visited the patient named in the files to inform her of the incident and both have lodged complaints with authorities.
The Herald Sun will not reveal their names to protect their privacy.
"I can't trust the system," the woman who received the files said. "I have no confidence in a system that dismisses this as a filing error and vague assurances that something will be done about this."
The woman placed a Freedom of Information request with Barwon Health to gain access to her psychiatric records.
She was shocked when she received five pages about the second woman, including details of an examination by a psychiatrist, an Involuntary Treatment Order, a Community Treatment Order and a treatment plan.
The documents detailed a diagnosis of schizophrenia, that the woman has a history of psychosis and does not believe she has a mental illness, suffers hallucinations and hyper religiosity.
The pages also had the name of the woman's psychiatrist, case manager and register.
The papers were returned to the hospital last Friday.
Ms Wilson said complaints about medical records being sent to the wrong person were rare but must be taken very seriously.
"Psychiatric records are particularly sensitive because of the propensity for misuse and discrimination," she said.
"This is one of the reasons why we have health-specific privacy legislation in Victoria."
Mental health charity SANE Australia's deputy director Paul Morgan said the Geelong case was "mind-boggling irresponsible incompetence" and health services needed to better protect patients.
"It doesn't matter if someone had schizophrenia or prostate cancer or anything else," he said.
"It is very private information and when people are handling files they need to understand that the whole person's life is documented there and it needs treating with respect.
"It's not enough for the response to be, 'Sorry, and we won't do it again'. There need to be systemic steps to make damn sure this doesn't happen again.
"If something is being sent out FoI there needs to be somebody going through every page to make sure there is not misfiling."
Factoid 01
In the 1999-2000 US election, the drug industry spent more money on political lobbying than any other industry.
Factoid 02
There are some very strange strong political links between the current President Bush, and psych drug maker Eli Lily
Factoid 03
In at least one state, psychiatrists are more than 7 times more likely to be a sex abuser compared to other physicians
Factoid 04
The World Health Organization concludes that living in a developed country is a ''strong predictor'' that a patient never will fully recover from Schizophrenia.
Factoid 05
Study reveals that sudden deaths are 5 times more common in people with a history of psychiatric
contact
Factoid 06
74% of children and adolescents have suffered a bad sideffect during their treatment with SSRI Psych Drugs
Factoid 07
At least 21 thousand avoidable suicides may have been induced by Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft side effects, without any warnings to the victims or their families.
Factoid 08
What are the odds that male psychiatrists will be disciplined for sexual misconduct sometime in their careers?
Factoid 9 A Critical Investigation of the History of Psychiatry reveals that Psychiatry is not everything that it is cracked up to be.
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