A Commentary on the Dangerousness of a Certain Psychiatrist

An interesting commentary on the dangerousness of a certain psychiatrist, Dr. Eileen Bazelon, as seen in this blog entry - the comments are also a worthy read. This is interesting and certainly worth further investigation given Bazelon's membership in a number of patient's rights organizations.

I didn’t know her name when I was a student at Bryn Mawr College and was in a deep depression my senior year, but I knew the reputation of my college’s psychiatrist and I knew that for me to seek psychiatric help as a student was to risk expulsion, loss of all my hard work thus far and even deeper depression. So despite the fact that I was unable to get myself to go to classes or do any work or even eat except once a day in the evening, I never walked over to the health center because I was not willing to risk losing everything.

I decided it was better to risk losing my life than losing my diploma. In the end a wonderful professor, now gone, walked over to my dorm room and offered to call my parents for me and my dean and did so. The late Katrin Burlin saved me. But she knew better than to refer me to the Health Center (than known as the Infirmary if I recall correctly) too.

I never thought about why she didn’t refer me there until later, but I had been accepted to an Ivy League University for graduate school with a full scholarship and stipend and being expelled by the college’s psychiatrist would have put an end to that.

I am disappointed and angry that the same psychiatrist is hosting a conference on what to do about “dangerous” behavior on campus now.

From all I have heard from more recent graduates, students at Bryn Mawr still have to fear expulsion for being mentally ill and apparently Dr. Bazelon not only does not feel confidentiality is an issue in cases of need to warn but also when she feels like sharing patients/students’ confidential medical information with her daughter as soon after Virginia Tech’s tragedy, her daughter wrote an article for an online publication that gave confidential details of the cases of two expelled former students.

Here I am on the Commitment Taskforce of the Supreme Court Justice’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform all these years later with kidney failure from forced and abusive psychiatric treatment and fear of forced treatment; and the psychiatrist in chief at my alma mater is still working to undermine the rights and the confidentiality of women with psychiatric illness.

How sad.

How scary.

How maddening.

Too bad I already pledged for this year’s alumnae fund.

Conference Asks: What Should Colleges Do About Dangerous Behavior on Campus?

Inspired by the shootings at Virginia Tech, Bryn Mawr resident psychiatrist Eileen Bazelon ‘65 has convened a group of nationally recognized experts to discuss the law and ethics of balancing students’ right to privacy against their own safety and that of their communities. The one-day conference, to take place in Thomas Great Hall on Monday, Sept. 24, is open to college and university administrators, counselors, deans, security officers, legal counsel and other interested parties.

Full story: http://www.brynmawr.edu/news/alum/2007-09/dangerous.shtml