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.
Gov. Terry Branstad has proposed closing two of the state's four institutes for people with mental illnesses.
The proposal startled legislators of both parties, although the idea of closing at least one of the institutes has been debated off and on for decades, as their populations dwindled and costs soared.
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Branstad suggested during a budget hearing last month that he wanted to consider consolidating some of the services at the institutions. "The facilities are obsolete, and it's extremely expensive" to use them the way the state now does, he said then. However, he said he had no immediate plans to do so.
According to his new budget, however, Branstad wants to zero out spending for the Mount Pleasant and Clarinda institutions. According to the budget, the state is spending nearly $7 million on the Mount Pleasant facility this budget year and $8.7 million on the Clarinda facility.
Local legislators were surprised by the Governor's budget proposals, and are in a panic over the proposed closings
Alabama Psychiatric Services will close all locations across the state by Feb. 13, according to Richard Craig, executive director of the Jefferson, Blount, St. Clair Counties Mental Health Authority.
Craig said employees at his agency have been working with insurance providers to find new care for patients treated at facilities run by Alabama Psychiatric Services.
The company has locations in Birmingham, Cullman, Decatur, Dothan, Fairhope, Florence, Madison, Mobile, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, according to the website.
Executives from the company have not returned calls seeking comment, but a receptionist at one office confirmed that they were no longer taking new patients.
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An employee at the clinic told Allen that they found out just yesterday that the facility would be closing on Feb. 13. Allen had not heard anything about the closing.
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Executives at Alabama Psychiatric Services notified Blue Cross Blue Shield on Friday that they were closing all their offices across the state, wrote spokeswoman Koko Mackin in an email.
"Blue Cross is working diligently to minimize any inconvenience these office closures may cause for our members and their families," Mackin wrote. "We are disappointed about these closures and are doing everything we can to assist our members during this transition."
Craig said he didn't know how the closure will affect access to mental health care in Alabama.
KALAMAZOO, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - We are learning more Wednesday night about a criminal investigation into 16 Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital employees.
Kalamazoo Public Safety is investigating 19 incidents of possible patient abuse, and all of them involve the same patient.
Wednesday, that patient and his family agreed to tell us their side of the story.
"Pretty much the whole time I was there, I was treated very poorly," said former KPH patient Michael Joseph Rowley, who spent two years at the hospital.
"They would constnatly provoke him into a fight," said his mother, Carla Rowley. "Then they would drag him into a room and beat him up and, you know, that's recorded."
Rowley and his parents told Newschannel 3 over the phone Wednesday afternoon that he has various disorders that make him violent and aggressive, and he also has at least three assault convictions.
We asked him if he ever assaulted employees at KPH.
"Well, to be honest, many times," he said, adding that he was provoked.
"They would tease me, they would bully me," Michael said.
But there was an incident with a resident care aid in June.
"He bent my arm way back and was smacking me around," Michael said. "My arm got broken in two spots."
That sparked the criminal investigation and 28 employee suspensions.
"The actions of the staff are probably prosecutable," said former KPH Interim Director Cynthia Kelly in an October interview with Newschannel 3.
In the course of that interview, Kelly told Newschannel 3 that staff reviewed hundreds of hours of surveillance as a part of their investigation.
"There are a few things that I viewed even just this morning that...restraint was used and it was completely uncalled for," she said.
Current and former employees say forced overtime, exhaustion, and irritation is a major factor.
"You go to work for your 8 hour shift, and you're told you have to stay 16, you have no choice," said an anonymous former employee in mid-September.
Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show 236 resident care aids work at KPH.
Through October of this year alone, resident care aids were mandated to work double shifts 4,736 times.
The Department of Community Health hopes to hire a permanent director at KPH before the end of the year.
That person will be charged with reviewing all policies and safety concerns.
As for Michael Rowley, he says he was transferred to another psychiatric hospital on October 10, as the criminal investigation got underway.
DCH expects more information from Kalamazoo Public Safety regarding possible charges by mid-December.
Adverse reactions to antipsychotics, antidepressants, sedatives and anxiolytics, lithium salts or stimulant drugs are responsible for almost 90,000 emergency department (ED) visits each year by US adults, according to a study in JAMA Psychiatry.
The authors estimated the number of emergency department visits for adverse drug events from the therapeutic use of antipsychotics, antidepressants, sedatives and anxiolytics, lithium salts or stimulants using active, nationally representative surveillance data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System – Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance (NEISS-CADES).
They also estimated the number of outpatient visits at which those drugs were prescribed using the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. They used the estimates of ED visits for adverse drug events and of outpatient prescription visits to calculate the number of ED visits for adverse events from a particular psychiatric drug per 10,000 outpatient prescription visits at which the drug was prescribed.
Almost 1 in 5 of those ED visits (19.3%) resulted in hospitalization. Sedatives and anxiolytics, antidepressants, and antipsychotics each caused 20,000 to 30,000 ED visits annually. However, relative to how often each of these types of medications was prescribed at outpatient visits, antipsychotics and lithium salts were more likely to cause ED visits for adverse drug events than were sedatives, stimulants, and antidepressants. Antipsychotics caused 3.3 times more ED visits for adverse drug events than sedatives, 4.0 times more ED visits than stimulants, and 4.9 times more ED visits than antidepressants relative to their outpatient use.
Out of the 83 specific drugs the study looked at, 10 drugs were implicated in nearly 60% of the ED visits for adverse drug events from therapeutic use of antipsychotics, antidepressants, sedatives and anxiolytics, lithium salts or stimulants. Zolpidem was implicated in nearly 12% of all such ED visits and 21% of such ED visits involving adults aged 65 years or older, more than any other sedative or anxiolytic and more than any antipsychotic, antidepressant, lithium salt or stimulant.
“The study highlights the importance of encouraging doctors to be cautious in their prescribing of medications,” said one of the study’s leaders Lee M. Hampton, MD, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's healthcare quality promotion division. “The study findings can also be used to prioritize efforts to reduce the burden of adverse events from the therapeutic outpatient use of psychiatric medications within a given managed care or healthcare system.”
A former unit clerk at Seven Oaks Hospital has been ordered to pay a patient $40,000 in damages after an investigation found the clerk sexually interfered with her.
According to court documents, in December of 2010 the woman, who is now 42, had a panic attack and was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Seven Oaks. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and was being treated for anxiety, depression and alcoholism.
Within days of being admitted, she loaned a DVD to a male unit clerk. The man returned the DVD to her with his number enclosed. She says he openly read her medical files and another patient told her she thought the clerk was flirting with her.
A few days later, the clerk smuggled a cell phone onto the ward for the woman. A statement filed by the woman claims he began texting her sexually provocative messages. He also told her that he loved her and would "always be there for her."
On one occasion he followed her into her room and they kissed. They also met in his vehicle parked outside the hospital for a rendezvous. She applied for a day pass and he drove her to a liquor store and a hotel. Once inside a rented room, they drank large amounts of alcohol and had sex. The next weekend she applied for another pass and they checked in to a CanadInns Hotel and drank large amounts of alcohol.
The following Monday, the patient checked herself out of hospital and the unit clerk stopped texting her and returning her calls. On December 24th, she received a phone call from the man's common-law wife asking her to stop contacting him. The woman says she didn't know the clerk had a partner.
As the woman's condition improved, she realized what had happened and believed her judgment was impaired and the clerk took advantage of her.
A provincial investigation report filed in November of 2011 found that the patient was vulnerable at the time of admission to the facility. It states: "There is evidence that the patient was subjected to sexual abuse by the respondent who was a staff member during her hospitalization and that this abuse caused the patient harm."
The investigation report directs Seven Oaks to "develop and implement an educational strategy for professional boundaries and include all direct care staff who work with psychiatric patients."
Since the incident the woman says she has had bouts of anxiety and depression, suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and had suicidal thoughts. She also says she is now afraid of being admitted to hospital.
Lawyers for the woman have entered into an agreement with Seven Oaks to discontinue the claim against the hospital citing the hospital had minimal liability.
The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) and Seven Oaks Hospital "take the safety and security of its patients very seriously, and are aware of the case."
In a statement the WRHA said when the hospital was alerted by the patient, "Seven Oaks acted immediately by suspending the employee and notifying the Protection for Persons in Care Office (PPCO). Seven Oaks also conducted an investigation which resulted in the employee immediately being placed on leave as of February 16, 2011. As well, the hospital took steps to provide additional training and awareness to program staff about the importance and legal requirement to observe professional boundaries. This training is mandatory and provided annually."
Wikipedia says: "Forest Haven was a children's developmental center in Laurel, Maryland. It is sometimes referred to (inaccurately) as "DC Children's Center", although this was not an official moniker.
It was notorious for its poor conditions and abuse of patients. It was shut down in 1991 by a federal court."
We spent more than 5 hours walking around the campus and probably only saw half of the buildings. Just a huge area of urban decay to explore.
An interesting write-up of Forest Haven can be found here:
Apparently she didn't feel like leaving a party to do her job, and then was acting offensively and arrogant, etc -- well you read the story. As reported in the Worcester Telegram
State medical regulators last week suspended the license of a local psychiatrist, who practiced at UMass Memorial Medical Center and at a private practice in Westboro, after the doctor allegedly ignored an on-call assignment last spring and then assaulted two hospital police officers and a nursing supervisor later that day.
Dr. Perveen Rathore, 51, of 5 Arrowhead Lane, Westboro, voluntarily agreed not to practice medicine in early June 2007, shortly after the fracas at UMass Memorial. The state Board of Registration in Medicine yanked her medical license March 5, according to state records.
The board’s order alleges Dr. Rathore was the on-call psychiatrist for UMass Memorial on Sunday, May 20, but refused to come in to evaluate an uncooperative patient because she was at a party at the time.
When she showed up at the hospital later that day — after another psychiatrist had been summoned to do the competency evaluation — Dr. Rathore refused to leave the building and grew increasingly belligerent, according to the order. A nursing supervisor called hospital police when she found Dr. Rathore typing an e-mail in the building after being told to leave several times.
“Two UMass police officers approached the respondent and instructed her to leave the hospital, but the respondent ignored them and kept typing,” the order states. “One of the police officers reached over to shut off the computer monitor, and the respondent struck him.”
When the officers moved to arrest Dr. Rathore, she screamed and fought with them and also struck the nursing supervisor, according to the order.
Dr. Rathore was charged with three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (shod foot), disorderly conduct and trespassing. The charges were later dismissed in Central District Court, according to court records.
UMass Memorial spokeswoman Alison Duffy said the hospital accepted the state board’s disciplinary action against Dr. Rathore.
“She did not practice here after the May 2007 incident. She was removed from service at that point,” Ms. Duffy said.
Dr. Rathore also had a private practice called Child and Family Services of Westborough, according to the report. The West Main Street psychiatric office’s telephone number has been disconnected.
After the incident with UMass Memorial police, the doctor was taken to the emergency room complaining of chest pain. She was civilly committed to Wing Memorial Hospital in Palmer that day and released two days later, according to the order.
Dr. Rathore’s home telephone number in Westboro is unlisted, and her Boston lawyer didn’t return a call yesterday.
The suspension of her medical license could be lifted if she successfully completes a program of behavioral modification and treatment, according to the order.
“The board’s primary goal is always to ensure patient safety, but it always wants to help physicians return to health practice,” said Russell Aims, spokesman for the Board of Registration in Medicine.
We highlight the deficiencies in the psychiatric departments, but it sounds like the whole place is a mess. From the Hartford Courant
Citing multiple lapses in patient care — including four cases in which patients died — the state health department placed Hartford Hospital on probation Friday, demanding sweeping changes in the way the 800-bed teaching hospital delivers care.
"Frankly, we thought we were doing a better job than is identified in the report," said John Meehan, president and chief executive officer of the hospital.
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The disciplinary action — one of the most serious the state can impose — grew out of an investigation that started after the health department received at least 28 complaints from dissatisfied patients or families from 2005 to 2007.
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The fourth death was that of Marcia Maglisco, a Newington grandmother who was taken to Hartford Hospital in October 2007 after her grandson was found dead in a bathtub while she was caring for him.
Although Maglisco was distraught and spoke about suicide, she was discharged from the emergency room several hours after police brought her in. A psychiatrist told her to return to the hospital if she had further problems,the state report says. There was no written documentation of further follow-up instructions.
Maglisco hanged herself in her home a short time later.
[...]
A nurse slapped a distraught psychiatric patient in the face after the patient spit at the nurse, the state says. A psychiatric technician who was punched by a patient retaliated by punching the patient back multiple times.
The report also details deficiencies in the buildings at Hartford Hospital's psychiatric facility, the Institute of Living, that made it possible for patients there to attempt suicide. One patient tried to kill himself by hanging himself from a bedsheet attached to a closet door hinge.
I recently came across this post, complete with YouTube Video as evidence. Originally I found it on an automated website, generated with stolen pages for content. I tracked it back to the original post, and found it was from the fine folks at the Alliance For Human Research Protection.
Four-year old Rebecca Riley' was a casualty of psychiatric "treatment. Her death from a combination of prescribed of toxic psychotropic drugs is a demonstration of medicine derailed from its legitimate therapeutic mission. The public was shocked that when still a toddler--aged 28 months--Rebecca was "diagnosed" with both bipolar disorder and ADHD by a board certified psychiatrist.
But a cadre of child psychiatrists at the nation's most prestigious medical centers, have made their career by working hand in glove with drug manufacturers on whose behalf they test the most toxic drugs in young children and lend their reputations to promote the use of these drugs--and drug combinations for young children--seemingly without regard for children's safety or welfare.
An example of crass commercialism can be seen in a MGH advertisement (2001) posted on YouTube that sought to recruit children as young as 4 to serve as human guinea pigs in one of its numerous lucrative psychotropic drug trials.
The ad is an example of disease mongering and pathologizing childhood behavior. MGH department of psychiatry instills fear in parents by insinuating that their child's behavior problems are biological:
"Your child may be facing a chemical problem that you can't manage without help." "We're Mass General, and we can help." The number given to call is 617-724-4MGH.
A report in the Boston Globe (2005) revealed that "After decades of offering continuing medical education classes in Boston, Harvard Medical School teaching hospital--Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)--last year raised $6.5 million from Cephalon Inc., Janssen Medical Affairs, GlaxoSmithKline, and Wyeth for its 2005 program. The pool of money will allow the psychiatry department to dramatically expand its continuing medical education program with live lectures in 24 cities, teleconferences, and around-the-clock webcasts."
Dr. Robert Birnbaum, medical director of the Division of Postgraduate Education for the psychiatry department insults our intelligence when he claims : "The companies don't have any input into the curriculum, and there is no ongoing dialogue throughout the year."
As Dr. Arnold Relman, a Harvard Medical School professor, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, observed: "I am skeptical that a company would give a lot of money just to be able to say 'We were nice to the Mass. General Hospital."
The widow of an Air Force veteran who jumped from the 10th floor of Tripler Army Medical Center is suing the U.S. government for his death.
The medical malpractice suit, filed last Thursday in U.S. District Court, claims the staff at the hospital ignored the suicidal thoughts of retired Master Sgt. Robert Roth, 50, who worked as a clerk in the records section, said attorney Rick Fried, who is representing Roth's widow, Satsuki Roth.
Tripler, in a short statement, said, "The case will be vigorously defended."
Roth died Jan. 2, about two weeks after he warned doctors he wanted to leap from the top of the hospital or the Makapuu cliffs, according to an internal criminal investigation by the Army.
On Dec. 16, 2006, Roth, of Sioux Falls, S.D., had to "wait several hours" to see an assistant psychiatrist who later released him, saying "he appeared to be OK to go home," the Army report said.
Ten days later, Roth stormed out of the hospital against medical advice after experiencing another long wait caused by the emergency room having only one doctor during the Christmas holiday, it said.
"Twice he basically came to the emergency room, and they ignored him," Fried said yesterday. "He came with a backpack to be admitted."
On Jan. 2, Roth had a doctor's appointment but found the hospital closed because of the federal holiday observing President Gerald Ford's death. He got into the building through an emergency door that had its alarm turned off by other workers, walked up to the 10th floor and plunged 89 feet, landing on a web of air-conditioner pipes.
The suit will seek monetary damages that would be used to care for Satsuki Roth, 47; Robert Roth's 74-year-old mother, Joyce Ulmer; and his 23-year-old son, William Roth, Fried said.
The Arkansas State Medical Board didn’t uncover a new doctor’s April drug arrest in Kansas because he already held an inactive Arkansas medical license and renewals do not require fresh criminal background checks, board officials said Wednesday.
Crossett police officers arrested Paul J. Loop, former psychiatrist at the Ashley County Medical Center, on Dec. 3 after they found crack cocaine hidden in a Tylenol bottle in his pocket.
He joined the Crossett hospital’s staff in late November after resigning Aug. 31 from the Colmery-O’Neil Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Topeka, Kan.
A Topeka police officer arrested Loop just before 8 a.m. on April 17 after he found the doctor in a car sleeping next to drug paraphernalia.
Russ Sword, chief executive officer of the Ashley County Medical Center, was unaware that fresh criminal background checks are not required on renewals and questions the board’s process.
“Hospitals depend on the medical board,” Sword said. “If they don’t do anything, what is the point?” Loop, 46, graduated from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in 1993. He first earned a state medical license in 1997, according to Peggy Cryer, executive secretary for the Arkansas State Medical Board.
The state board received an application to renew his license on Sept. 26.
Instead of a repeat background check, physicians renewing their licenses are only required to pay a fee and report whether they’ve been arrested or convicted of a crime.
Cryer said Loop reported that he had never been arrested on the renewal form.
Bill Trice, the state board’s attorney, said it’s logistically impossible to run background checks every time a doctor renews his license. There are about 10,000 doctors in Arkansas who must renew their licenses annually.
Also, the Arkansas State Police, the agency required by law to run the checks, does not have the capability to store fingerprints from year to year, Trice said.
“Can you see 10,000 physicians traipsing down to State Police headquarters to do a fingerprint card every year ?” Trice said. “We aren’t trying to stop doctors from practicing.” Lisa Robin, senior vice president with the Federation of State Medical Boards, said no state requires fresh background checks during license renewal because of the logistical challenges.
In fact, only half the states in the country have authority by law to conduct background searches at all, Robin said.
In the past we had have a number of stories about psychiatrists and psychologists who plainly miss the boat when it comes to patient diagnosis and evaluations. Given that those clueless wonders were licensed professionals, we cannot help but be alarmed at this report. From the Tampa Tribune.
Veterans who go to James A. Haley VA Medical Center for mental health care are unknowingly treated by psychologists who are inexperienced and not fully licensed, according to a complaint filed last week with a state board.
Hiring unlicensed psychologists is legal, but Haley is skirting the state's requirements by not sufficiently supervising them as they treat patients, the complaint alleges. It was filed with the Florida Board of Psychology by Brian Nussbaum, one of Haley's licensed psychologists.
Nussbaum claims there are 12 unlicensed psychologists on a staff of 34. John Pickens, a regional VA spokesman, acknowledged there are unlicensed psychologists at Haley, but said there are only nine and that they are all closely supervised.
Even nine, if that number is accurate, is too many, Nussbaum said Tuesday.
"Being that they're freshly out of school, and when you're working with a population that is so complex and sensitive as combat veterans, this is not a population that you throw in people who don't have the necessary expertise," he said, adding: "I would hope that the VA would hire the most experienced, qualified psychologists to provide this care."
Nussbaum filed the complaint with the state Board of Psychology, part of the Florida Department of Health, in an effort to draw attention to what he says is a patient care issue.
The board ultimately, though, has no power over the VA hospital, said a health department spokeswoman.
Nussbaum also takes issue with the unlicensed psychologists using the title of "psychologist." Patients don't know they're being treated by someone who is essentially a post-doctoral resident in training, he said. It's not illegal, but it's unethical, he said.
Patients "may not want to see a trainee," said Nussbaum, who is the only psychologist with a license on the staff of four who work in Haley's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinic. "If you're getting heart surgery, you want the licensed, expert surgeon."
The hospital says its unlicensed psychologists are on track to get their licenses, by completing the required 2,000 hours of supervised work - including two hours a week that is directly supervised and one hour a week that is face-to-face supervision.
In his complaint, Nussbaum alleges the unlicensed staffers are not getting that supervision, and that some work in clinics in New Port Richey, Brooksville and Zephyrhills and never even come into the Tampa hospital.
"If you have a complex patient, you need to have a mentor, a colleague that you can go to," Nussbaum said.
Pickens disputed the complaint and said psychology residents get even more than the two hours of direct supervision a week. All notes taken by those psychologists after every session are reviewed and signed by the lead psychologist, he said.
The mental health care veterans are receiving is not suffering, Pickens said, and he pointed out that Haley is a prime place for post-doctoral residents to study.
"Where better for graduate psychologists to learn, to work with veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder?" he said.
Nuerosurgeons usually deal with real medicine, but every so often they get confused when they speak with psychiatrists. This is one of the more reasonable explanations for this reported series of mistakes at a hospital in Rhode Island. As reported in The Day
The head of the neurosurgery department at Rhode Island Hospital has stepped aside while officials investigate three incidents in which surgeons operated on the wrong side of a patient's head.
John Duncan will still see patients but will not run the department, Gail Carvelli, a spokeswoman for the hospital's parent company, Lifespan, said Thursday.
“He has voluntarily stepped aside during this investigative process,” she said.
Since February, three different brain surgeons at the hospital have operated on the wrong side of a patient's head, most recently on Friday. In two cases, the doctors did not realize the errors until after they opened the skull. On Friday, the doctor realized the problem after he made an incision in the scalp.
An elderly man died in August a few weeks after a surgeon mistakenly operated on the wrong side of his head. David Gifford, head of the state Department of Health, said an autopsy was pending, but the department believes his death was not connected to the surgery.
In the other two cases, the patients were OK, the department has said.
The hospital this week was fined $50,000, reprimanded and ordered to make a series of changes including better training and more safeguards.
Rhode Island Hospital is the largest hospital in the state and serves as the teaching hospital for Brown University's Alpert Medical School. It is a private, not-for-profit hospital and performs more than 25,000 surgeries every year, according to its Web site
Reports from the island of Guam, via the Marianas Variety newspaper, regarding what appears to be small time politics and corruption at hospital in the western Pacific. Hopefully this doesn't turn out like another case of Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Reports of violations, mismanagement and clients’ security risks at the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, or DMHSA, have reached the District Court of Guam, which received another letter asking to investigate the agency.
Magistrate Judge Joaquin Manibusan Jr., who is the designated special master for the permanent injunction against DMHSA and the Department of Integrated Services for Individuals with Disabilities, or DISID, said this is the second time that the court received an anonymous letter reporting several irregularities in the department.
The first anonymous letter was faxed by DMHSA employees in June, urging a federal takeover of DMHSA and DISID to improve the services to persons with disabilities.
The second letter was sent by a client to the chamber of Judge Manibusan, asking about who runs the mental health department.
According to the anonymous client, despite the designation of Dr. Andrea Leitheiser as acting director of DMHSA, the department is being run by Dr. Judith Avery, the nurse administrator who reportedly approves all the actions taken by the agency.
The letter sender reported that Avery, who was allegedly fired from the Division of Mental Health in the CNMI for illegal practice, is also violating government of Guam rules and regulations for working with Guam Community College at the same time.
As far as the permanent injunction is concerned, the client alleged that Avery wants to keep the situation in the department under her control to protect her standing and her annual salary of $90,000.
The client also noted the lack of security at DMHSA and the new unit that provides housing to clients from the Department of Corrections, adding that “this has become more dangerous for the staffers who work in this building.”
The client also reported that for the past six months, no psychiatrist wants to service DMHSA because they refused to work with Leitheiser, who is earning $120,000 a year, and Dr. Laura Post, whose annual salary is $150,000.
“In the past, there were two psychiatrists (Dr. Renato Gahol and Dr. Ruby Manalastas) who were hired to provide service to DMHSA clients. They felt they were unable to work with these doctors,” the client said.
Recently, a family client filed a complaint against DMHSA for its failure to provide service to a client.
The letter sender told the court that Gahol informed Lt. Gov. Mike Cruz about the situation, but did not act on it because of the permanent injunction pending against DMHSA and DISID.
Last month, the court was forced to send off-island a defendant who terrorized the Andersen Air Force Base after no psychologists or psychiatrists could conduct an examination to determine if he is mentally fit to stand trial or face the charges.
Ricardo Unpingco Palomo Jr. was arrested for terrorizing the AAFB with a handmade explosive device on Sept. 22. After DMHSA did not conduct a forensic evaluation on him, the court ordered the U.S. Marshals to transport the defendant to an appropriate Bureau of Prisons facility so that an appropriate psychiatric or psychological examination can be conducted on him.
The court received a letter from Post stating that DMSHA has concerns about assisting the court on Palomo’s case.
The client added that problems stated in the permanent injunction still exist with no clear answers to address them.
“An investigation into this matter is needed for the welfare of the island clients that need the service,” the client said.
[...]
Two court monitors
Meanwhile, visiting Judge Consuelo Marshall has approved the appointment of two court monitors in connection with the local government’s compliance with court orders related to the permanent injunction imposed on GovGuam, DISID and DMHSA.
Judge Marshall ordered the appointment of James Casey and Dr. James Kiffer to serve jointly as court monitors for a monthly salary of $8,000 each.
The judge said she is persuaded that approving each party’s nominee will enable the parties to finally resolve the case to the benefit of the community, adding that appointing Guam-based monitors is more efficient and less costly than appointing off-island monitors.
The court monitors, who can be removed or replaced by the court if it deems necessary, were ordered to submit a monthly report on or before the first day of each month. The first deadline for their first report is on Jan. 2, 2008.
Because the plaintiffs find the defendants’ proposed list of measurable milestones “too vague and conclusory” to benefit both court monitors, Judge Marshall ordered the parties to meet and confer regarding appropriate measures or additions to the list of measurable milestones.
The court gave both parties until Dec. 14, 2007 to submit the amended list of milestones.
Judge Marshall also ordered the parties to appear for a status conference on March 14, 2008 at 10 a.m. to assess the effectiveness of the court monitor appointments and the defendants’ progress in implementing the amended permanent injunction.
Patience Lucas' life ended on the night of February 1, 2002. She was only 37 years old.
Michael Drumm, attorney, "We believe that she was trying to get to the bus stop on the other side of Grider Street and she collapsed in Grider Street and a few minutes later was run over by a car."
Patience had just been discharged from the Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo. Sharon Whyte tells me her sister was schizophrenic and bipolar.
Sharon Whyte, Patience Lucas' sister, "We loved her, very much. And it was a huge loss in our family."
Just before she was struck by a car that night, a witness said it looked like she was gasping for air and then collapsed in the street. Attorney Michael Drumm is representing the family in a civil lawsuit.
Michael Drumm, attorney, "Clearly the care at ECMC directly caused her death."
That night she was taken to ECMC for a self-induced head injury. She was then transferred to the hospital's psychiatric unit for a mental evaluation.
Sharon Whyte, Patience Lucas' sister, "They never took the time to really care about how to treat her."
In court papers, the family is alleging that ECMC and the attending psychiatrist failed to provide proper and adequate care. A state medical review board noted that patience was detained at the hospital's psychiatric unit for 35 minutes, an insufficient amount of time, the review board found, to do a thorough analysis of her mental status.
In response, the hospital's clinical director wrote, "We do not disagree with this finding."
Michael Drumm, attorney, "Not only was she not evaluated properly, but she was literally assaulted by one of the security guards and then physically removed from the hospital."
In a pretrial deposition, the attending psychiatrist says he observed one of the guards holding patience in a headlock, telling her, "I'm going to break your head wide open if you don't shut up." Statements by security personnel on duty that night indicate that she was loud, belligerent and physical. One guard stated that he heard the same psychiatrist say, "Get her out, get her the f--- out of here." Keep in mind it was cold and blustery that night and buses were no longer running.
Michael Drumm, attorney, "No provision was made to transport her home, no effort was made to contact her family, no effort was made to contact her treating psychiatrist or her case worker, none of those things were done in this case."
About ten days earlier, Patience was treated at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center. Attorney Michael Drumm claims that began a chain of events that led to her death the lawsuit alleges the hospital was negligent because it prematurely discharged patience when it was not safe and did so in an improperly medicated condition.
Michael Drumm, attorney, "She was so out of control the next morning that they had to tranquilize her in order to get her out of the hospital."
Niagara Falls Memorial released this statement, "We deny all allegations and intend to vigorously defend against them."
No court case will ever bring back Patience, however, family members are hoping it will shed some light and bring about change.
Sharon Whyte, Patience Lucas' sister, "If this can prevent another family from having to go through what we went through or another mentally ill person having to feel like nobody's listening to them, then this will have been all worth it."
Erie County is named in the lawsuit because it operated ECMC back in 2002, the county attorney's office declined comment on the case, so did the attorney representing two psychiatrists named in the lawsuit.
Jury selection in the civil trial is scheduled for later this week in State Supreme Court.
Jail inmate Brandon Crewe didn't know he was in a Halifax hospital to have his testicle removed - an operation he hadn't agreed to - until hospital staff told him they didn't need his consent. A jailhouse psychiatrist had already waived it for him. But Crewe, whose other testicle was accidentally removed when he was an infant during a hernia operation, has now won the right to decide for himself whether the operation should be performed, and he has been released from hospital.
Crewe, an inmate at the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility in Dartmouth, has a lump in his left testicle, likely due to testicular cancer.
A federal judge has ordered drug companies AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squib to pay a combined $13.6 million in a Massachusetts case that alleged they inflated the so-called "average wholesale price" of expensive, and sometimes life-saving, drugs.
U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris found that the companies "unfairly and deceptively caused to be published false" average wholesale prices of drugs.
As a result, Saris wrote in a judgment dated Thursday, the companies caused "real injuries to the insurers and the patients who were paying grossly inflated prices for critically important, often life-sustaining drugs."
Bristol-Myers Squib said its pricing was fair and it will appeal.
Saris ordered AstraZeneca to pay $12.9 million and Bristol-Myers Squib to pay $695,594 in damages. Those affected by the ruling include insurers who reimbursed Medicare beneficiaries for their co-insurance, and insurers and consumers who made co-insurance payments based on the average wholesale price.
"Bristol-Myers Squib has long maintained that it is not responsible for the averaage wholesale price reimbursement benchmark used by private insurers and Medicare and that its own pricing, sales and marketing practices were fair and reasonable. The company maintains this position and will appeal this decision," said company spokeman Tony Plohoros.
A call to AstraZeneca was not immediately returned on Friday night.
Saris said she decided to double the damages because the conduct was willful on the part of the companies.
"The defendants well understood the devastating impact the mega-spreads had on old and sick patients required to make co-payments they could ill afford," Saris wrote.
Steve Berman, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, praised the decision. "Judge Saris agreed with our damage estimates and did not pull punches in her characterization of the defendants' actions," he said.
Berman said the court has indicated that plaintiffs could expand this case to a nationwide class action lawsuit. The state class action suit was originally filed in 2002 in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts and named 23 pharmaceutical companies. The original suit represented all people who had taken or paid for any one of 37 named drugs.
The former president of McLean Hospital, who acknowledged to regulators in his home state of New York that he had inappropriate sexual contact with a patient, has permanently surrendered his right to practice medicine in Massachusetts, the state Board of Registration in Medicine said Wednesday.
Dr. Jack Gorman, 55, a well-known psychiatrist, abruptly resigned his post at the prestigious psychiatric hospital in suburban Belmont in May 2006 after only four months on the job. At the time, he said he was resigning for personal and medical reasons.
Last month, Gorman signed a consent decree with regulators in his home state of New York, admitting he was negligent when he had inappropriate sexual contact with a female patient on more than one occasion. Officials in New York did not release details, citing confidentiality laws. The Boston Globe has reported the relationship was with a patient at his practice in New York.
Gorman's New York attorney, Anthony Scher, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Wednesday night. Gorman has said in a statement to the Globe he has taken responsibility for his conduct and hopes to continue to make contributions to the field of psychiatry.
Under the New York order, Gorman can request that his license there be reinstated after six months. If his license is restored, he would face five years of probation under the supervision of another doctor.
Gorman's Massachusetts license expired in September 2006. His decision to resign his right to renew it permanently removes him from practice in the state, the board said.
Before taking the job at McLean, Gorman became known at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City as a leading researcher on anxiety disorders, depression and schizophrenia. He received his medical license in New York in 1978.
Acadia Pathways Hospital, a psychiatric facility in North Longview, has been forced to move all its patients to other establishments after a state investigation into complaints about patient care and hospital management.
The Texas Department of State Health Services issued an emergency 10-day suspension of Acadia's license on Thursday. The state agency also delivered a notice of violation to Acadia, detailing the department's proposal to revoke Acadia's license.
Acadia administrators are scheduled to meet today with state officials to discuss the violations and determine what needs to be done.
"If we are satisfied that the conditions are successfully addressed, we can ... re-instate the license," said Doug McBride, press officer for the State Health Services Department. "If we're not satisfied, the most severe action would be the revocation of the license permanently, or at least not temporarily."
If Acadia's license is revoked, it would have to reapply for one to operate again.
The state began investigating the facility in October, after a complaint was filed.
There are specific violations listed in the state's notice to Acadia, including an incident in September of a facility psychiatrist physically assaulting a 16-year-old patient.
Other violations are more general, such as Acadia's failure to have a written staffing plan from July to October that was based on the number of patients, the patients' needs, the expertise of the staff and other factors.
Acadia Pathways, owned by Acadia Heathcare, is a 76-bed hospital that treats people of all ages suffering from psychiatric illnesses and chemical dependency, according to its Web site.
The notice from the state department was addressed to Pamela Broughton, listed as Acadia's administrator/CEO on the facility's Web site.
A call placed Monday to Acadia revealed that Broughton no longer works there. Hospital officials would not answer a request for comment on Monday, but said a statement will be made today.
As seen here, and which illustrates another reason why psychiatrists are not taken very seriously
I sit down at the desk, and the psychiatrist starts looking through my papers. “Hello, Dick!” he says in a cheerful voice. “Where do you work?”
I’m thinking, “Who does he think he is, calling me by my first name?” and I say coldly, “Schenectady.”
“Who do you work for, Dick?” says the psychiatrist, smiling again.
“General Electric.”
“Do you like your work, Dick?” he says, with that same big smile on his face.
“So‑so.” I just wasn’t going to have anything to do with him.
Three nice questions, and then the fourth one is completely different. “Do you think people talk about you?” he asks, in a low, serious tone.
I light up and say, “Sure! When I go home, my mother often tells me how she was telling her friends about me.” He isn’t listening to the explanation; instead, he’s writing something down on my paper.
Then again, in a low, serious tone, he says, “Do you think people stare at you?”
I’m all ready to say no, when he says, “For instance, do you think any of the boys waiting on the benches are staring at you now?”
While I had been waiting to talk to the psychiatrist, I had noticed there were about twelve guys on the benches waiting for the three psychiatrists, and they’ve got nothing else to look at, so I divide twelve by three–that makes four each–but I’m conservative, so I say, “Yeah, maybe two of them are looking at us.”
He says, “Well just turn around and look”–and he’s not even bothering to look himself!
So I turn around, and sure enough, two guys are looking. So I point to them and I say, “Yeah–there’s that guy, and that guy over there looking at us.” Of course, when I’m turned around and pointing like that, other guys start to look at us, so I say, “Now him, and those two over there‑and now the whole bunch.” He still doesn’t look up to check. He’s busy writing more things on my paper.
Then he says, “Do you ever hear voices in your head?”
“Very rarely,” and I’m about to describe the two occasions on which it happened when he says, “Do you talk to yourself?”
“Yeah, sometimes when I’m shaving, or thinking; once in a while.” He’s writing down more stuff.
“I see you have a deceased wife–do you talk to her ?”
This question really annoyed me, but I contained myself and said, “Sometimes, when I go up on a mountain and I’m thinking about her.”
More writing. Then he asks, “Is anyone in your family in a mental institution?”
“Yeah, I have an aunt in an insane asylum.”
“Why do you call it an insane asylum?” he says, resentfully. “Why don’t you call it a mental institution?”
“I thought it was the same thing.”
“Just what do you think insanity is?” he says, angrily.
“It’s a strange and peculiar disease in human beings,” I say honestly.
“There’s nothing any more strange or peculiar about it than appendicitis!” he retorts.
“I don’t think so. In appendicitis we understand the causes better, and something about the mechanism of it, whereas with insanity it’s much more complicated and mysterious.” I won’t go through the whole debate; the point is that I meant insanity is physiologically peculiar, and he thought I meant it was socially peculiar.
Up until this time, although I had been unfriendly to the psychiatrist, I had nevertheless been honest in everything I said. But when he asked me to put out my hands, I couldn’t resist pulling a trick a guy in the “bloodsucking line” had told me about. I figured nobody was ever going to get a chance to do this, and as long as I was halfway under water, I would do it. So I put out my hands with one palm up and the other one down.
The psychiatrist doesn’t notice. He says, “Turn them over.”
I turn them over. The one that was up goes down, and the one that was down goes up, and he still doesn’t notice, because he’s always looking very closely at one hand to see if it is shaking. So the trick had no effect.
Finally, at the end of all these questions, he becomes friendly again. He lights up and says, “I see you have a Ph.D., Dick. Where did you study?”
“MIT and Princeton. And where did you study!”
“Yale and London. And what did you study, Dick?”
“Physics. And what did you study?”
“Medicine.”
“And this is medicine ?”
“Well, yes. What do you think it is? You go and sit down over there and wait a few minutes!”
So I sit on the bench again, and one of the other guys waiting sidles up to me and says, “Gee! You were in there twenty‑five minutes! The other guys were in there only five minutes!”
“Yeah.”
“Hey,” he says. “You wanna know how to fool the psychiatrist? All you have to do is pick your nails, like this.”
“Then why don’t you pick your nails like that?”
“Oh,” he says, “I wanna get in the army!”
“You wanna fool the psychiatrist?” I say. “You just tell him that!”
After a while I was called over to a different desk to see another psychiatrist. While the first psychiatrist had been rather young and innocent‑looking, this one was gray‑haired and distinguished‑looking–obviously the superior psychiatrist. I figure all of this is now going to get straightened out, but no matter what happens, I’m not going to become friendly.
The new psychiatrist looks at my papers, puts a big smile on his face, and says, “Hello, Dick. I see you worked at Los Alamos during the war.”
“Yeah.”
“There used to be a boys’ school there, didn’t there?”
“That’s right.”
“Were there a lot of buildings in the school?”
“Only a few.”
Three questions–same technique‑and the next question is completely different. “You said you hear voices in your head. Describe that, please.”
“It happens very rarely, when I’ve been paying attention to a person with a foreign accent. As I’m falling asleep I can hear his voice very clearly. The first time it happened was while I was a student at MIT. I could hear old Professor Vallarta say, ‘Dee‑a dee‑a electric field‑a.’ And the other time was in Chicago during the war, when Professor Teller was explaining to me how the bomb worked. Since I’m interested in all kinds of phenomena, I wondered how I could hear these voices with accents so precisely, when I couldn’t imitate them that well … Doesn’t everybody have something like that happen once in a while?”
The psychiatrist put his hand over his face, and I could see through his fingers a little smile (he wouldn’t answer the question).
Then the psychiatrist checked into something else. “You said that you talk to your deceased wife. What do you say to her?”
I got angry. I figure it’s none of his damn business, and I say, “I tell her I love her, if it’s all right with you!”
After some more bitter exchanges he says, “Do you believe in the supernormal?”
I say, “I don’t know what the ‘supernormal’ is.”
“What? You, a Ph.D. in physics, don’t know what the supernormal is?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s what Sir Oliver Lodge and his school believe in.”
That’s not much of a clue, but I knew it. “You mean the supernatural .”
“You can call it that if you want.”
“All right, I will.”
“Do you believe in mental telepathy?”
“No. Do you?”
“Well, I’m keeping an open mind.”
“What? You, a psychiatrist, keeping an open mind ? Ha!” It went on like this for quite a while.
Then at some point near the end he says, “How much do you value life?”
“Sixty‑four.”
“Why did you say ‘sixty‑four’?”
“How are you supposed to measure the value of life?”
“No! I mean, why did you say ‘sixty‑four,’ and not ‘seventy‑three,’ for instance?”
“If I had said ‘seventy‑three,’ you would have asked me the same question!”
The psychiatrist finished with three friendly questions, just as the other psychiatrist had done, handed me my papers, and I went off to the next booth.
While I’m waiting in the line, I look at the paper which has the summary of all the tests I’ve taken so far. And just for the hell of it I show my paper to the guy next to me, and I ask him in a rather stupid‑sounding voice, “Hey! What did you get in ‘Psychiatric’? Oh! You got an ‘N.’ I got an ‘N’ in everything else, but I got a ‘D’ in ‘Psychiatric.’ What does that mean?” I knew what it meant: “N” is normal, “D” is deficient.
The guy pats me on the shoulder and says, “Buddy, it’s perfectly all right. It doesn’t mean anything. Don’t worry about it!” Then he walks way over to the other corner of the room, frightened: It’s a lunatic!
I started looking at the papers the psychiatrists had written, and it looked pretty serious! The first guy wrote:
Thinks people talk about him.
Thinks people stare at him.
Auditory hypnogogic hallucinations.
Talks to self.
Talks to deceased wife.
Maternal aunt in mental institution.
Very peculiar stare.
(I knew what that was–that was when I said, “And this is medicine ?”)
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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