APA Fellow And President Of Arizona Psychiatric Society Gets Slap On Wrist For Patient Death

The following case was brought to our attention via email, with valuable links to internet references

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APA Fellow And President Of Arizona Psychiatric Society Gets Slap On Wrist For Patient Death

On December 16, 2007 the Arizona Medical Board reprimanded psychiatrist Stephen O. Morris for failure to diagnose and monitor a patient considered to be high risk for drug abuse; for inappropriate prescribing and for inadequate medical records.

Board documents allege that Dr. Morris’ “inappropriate and excessive prescribing” contributed to a 56-year-old patient’s overdose death.

Specifically, the documents state that Dr. Morris, who is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and President of the Arizona Psychiatric Society, “prescribed multiple psychoactive prescriptions often in higher than standard practice doses”; “wrote multiple prescriptions for the same class of medication”; “prescribed methyphenidate [Ritalin] for several months with a higher than necessary number of pills” and “wrote prescriptions too close together in time, indicating over-use or abuse.”

Further, Dr. Morris prescribed both a tricyclic (older generation) antidepressant concurrent with an SSRI (new generation) antidepressant whose interaction results in symptoms of “serotonin syndrome,” exhibited by increasing bodily tremors.

The Board charged Dr. Morris with deviation from the standard of care for failing to have the patient’s tricyclic blood levels monitored while concurrently on an SSRI and for prescribing a large quantity of tricyclic antidepressants and Ritalin to a patient who was a known overdose risk.

It lastly cites that Dr. Morris’ records contain no rationale for the high doses of potentially dangerous drugs he prescribed to the patient, why certain medications or types or combinations were used.

The Board found that his records failed to support diagnosis, justify treatment, accurately document results, indicate advice/cautionary warnings to the patient or provide sufficient information for another practitioner to assume continuity of the patient’s care.

Here is a link to the original Arizona Medical Board Finding

It looks like Psychiatrist Stephen Morris has not suffered any loss in professional status despite the death of his patient.

A Critical History of Psychiatry

A synopsis of the book, as seen on Barely a Blog (now with an updated link)

COERCION AS CURE: A CRITICAL HISTORY OF PSYCHIATRY
By Thomas Szasz

All modern history, as learnt and taught and accepted, is purely conventional. For sufficient reasons, all persons in authority combined, by a happy union of deceit and concealment, to promote falsehood. - - - Lord Acton

For more than a century, leading psychiatrists have maintained that psychiatry is hard to define because its scope is so broad. In 1886, Emil Kraepelin, considered the greatest psychiatrist of his age, declared: “Our science has not arrived at a consensus on even its most fundamental principles, let alone on appropriate ends or even on the means to those ends.”

Contrary to such assertions, I maintain that it is easy to define psychiatry. The problem is that defining it truthfully — acknowledging its self-evident ends and the means used to achieve them — is socially unacceptable and professionally suicidal. Psychiatric tradition, social expectation, and the law — both criminal and civil — identify coercion as the profession’s determining characteristic.

Accordingly, I regard psychiatry as the theory and practice of coercion, rationalized as the diagnosis of mental illness and justified as medical treatment aimed at protecting the patient from himself and society from the patient. The history of psychiatry I present thus resembles, say, a critical history of missionary Christianity.


The heathen savage does not suffer from lack of insight into the divinity of Jesus, does not lack theological help, and does not seek the services of missionaries. Just so, the psychotic does not suffer from lack of insight into being mentally ill, does not lack psychiatric treatment, and does not seek the services of psychiatrists. This is why the missionary tends to have contempt for the heathen, why the psychiatrist tends to have contempt for the psychotic, and why both conceal their true sentiments behind a facade of caring and compassion. Each meddler believes that he is in possession of the “truth,” each harbors a passionate desire to improve the Other, each feels a deep sense of entitlement to intrude into the life of the Other, and each bitterly resents those who dismiss his precious insights and benevolent interventions as worthless and harmful.

Non-acknowledgment of the fact that coercion is a characteristic and potentially ever-present element of so-called psychiatric treatments is intrinsic to the standard dictionary definitions of psychiatry. The Unabridged Webster’s defines psychiatry as “A branch of medicine that deals with the science and practice of treating mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders.”

Plainly, voluntary psychiatric relations differ from involuntary psychiatric interventions the same way as, say, sexual relations between consenting adults differ from the sexual assaults we call “rape.” Sometimes, to be sure, psychiatrists deal with voluntary patients. As I explain and illustrate throughout this volume, it is necessary, however, not merely to distinguish between coerced and consensual psychiatric relations, but to contrast them. The term “psychiatry” ought to be applied to one or the other, but not both. As long as psychiatrists and society refuse to recognize this, there can be no real psychiatric historiography.

The writings of historians, physicians, journalists, and others addressing the history of psychiatry rest on three erroneous premises: that so-called mental diseases exist, that they are diseases of the brain, and that the incarceration of “dangerous” mental patients is medically rational and morally just. The problems so created are then compounded by failure — purposeful or inadvertent — to distinguish between two radically different kinds of psychiatric practices, consensual and coerced, voluntarily sought and forcibly imposed.

In free societies, ordinary social relations between adults are consensual. Such relations — in business, medicine, religion, and psychiatry — pose no special legal or political problems. By contrast, coercive relations — one person authorized by the state to forcibly compel another person to do or abstain from actions of his choice — are inherently political in nature and are always morally problematic.

Mental disease is fictitious disease. Psychiatric diagnosis is disguised disdain. Psychiatric treatment is coercion concealed as care, typically carried out in prisons called “hospitals.” Formerly, the social function of psychiatry was more apparent than it is now. The asylum inmate was incarcerated against his will. Insanity was synonymous with unfitness for liberty.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, a new type of psychiatric relationship entered the medical scene: persons experiencing so-called “nervous symptoms” began to seek medical help, typically from the family physician or a specialist in “nervous disorders.”

This led psychiatrists to distinguish between two kinds of mental diseases, neuroses and psychoses: Persons who complained of their own behavior were classified as neurotic, whereas persons about whose behavior others complained were classified as psychotic. The legal, medical, psychiatric, and social denial of this simple distinction and its far-reaching implications undergirds the house of cards that is modern psychiatry.

The American Psychiatric Association, founded in 1844, was first called the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane. In 1892, it was renamed the American Medico-Psychological Association, and in 1921, the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

In its first official resolution, the Association declared: “Resolved, that it is the unanimous sense of this convention that the attempt to abandon entirely the use of all means of personal restraint is not sanctioned by the true interests of the insane.” The APA has never rejected its commitment to the twin claims that insanity is a medical illness and that coercion is care and cure. In 2005, Steven S. Sharfstein, president of the APA, reiterated his and his profession’s commitment to coercion.

Lamenting “our [the psychiatrists’] reluctance to use caring, coercive approaches,” he declared: ” A person suffering from paranoid schizophrenia with a history of multiple rehospitalizations for dangerousness and a reluctance to abide by outpatient treatment, including medications, is a perfect example of someone who would benefit from these [forcibly imposed] approaches. We must balance individual rights and freedom with policies aimed at caring coercion.”

Seven months later, Sharfstein conveniently forgot having recently bracketed caring and coercion into a single act, “caring coercion.” Defending “assisted treatment”–a euphemism for psychiatric coercion– he stated: “In assisted treatment, such as Kendra’s Law in New York, psychiatrists’ primary role is to foster patient improvement and help restore the patient to health.”

Psychiatry and society face a paradox. The more progress scientific psychiatry is said to make, the more intolerable becomes the idea that mental illness is a myth and that the effort to treat it a will-o’-the-wisp. The more progress scientific medicine actually makes, the more undeniable it becomes that “chemical imbalances” and “hard wiring” are fashionable clichés, not evidence that problems in living are medical diseases justifiably “treated” without patient consent. And the more often psychiatrists play the roles of juries, judges, and prison guards, the more uncomfortable they feel about being in fact pseudomedical coercers — society’s well-paid patsies.

The whole conundrum is too horrible to face. Better to continue calling unwanted behaviors “diseases” and disturbing persons “sick,” and compel them to submit to psychiatric “care.” It is easy to see, then, why the right-thinking person considers it inconceivable that there might be no such thing as mental health or mental illness. Where would that leave the history of psychiatry portrayed as the drama of heroic physicians combating horrible diseases?

Alexander Solzhenitsyn is right: “Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.”

Scientific discourse is predicated on intellectual honesty. Psychiatric discourse rests on intellectual dishonesty. The psychiatrist’s basic social mandate is the coercive-paternalistic protection of the mental patient from himself and the public from the mental patient. Yet, in the professional literature as well as the popular media, this is the least noted feature of psychiatry as a medical specialty. Pointing it out is considered to be in bad taste. It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent to which historians of psychiatry as well as mental health professionals and journalists ignore, deny, and rationalize the involuntary, coerced, forcibly imposed nature of psychiatric treatments. This denial is rooted in language.

Psychiatrists, lawyers, journalists, and medical ethicists routinely call incarceration in a psychiatric prison “hospitalization,” and torture forcibly imposed on the inmate “treatment.” Resting their reasoning on the same faulty premises, psychiatric historians trace alleged advances in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses to “progress in neuroscience.” In contrast, I focus on what psychiatrists have done to persons who have rejected their “help” and on how they have rationalized their “therapeutic” violations of the dignity and liberty of their ostensible beneficiaries.

I regard consensual human relations, however misguided by either or both parties, as radically different, morally as well as politically, from human relations in which one party, empowered by the state, deprives another of liberty. The history of medicine, no less than the history of psychiatry, abounds in interventions by physicians that have harmed rather than helped their patients. Bloodletting is the most obvious example.

Nevertheless, physicians have, at least until now, abstained from using state-sanctioned force to systematically impose injurious treatments on medically ill people. Misguided by fashion and lack of knowledge, sick people have often sought and willingly submitted to such interventions. In contrast, the history of psychiatry is, au fond, the story of the forcible imposition of injurious “medical” interventions on persons called “mental patients.”

In short, where psychiatric historians see stories about terrible illnesses and heroic treatments, I see stories about people marching to the beats of different drummers or perhaps failing to march at all, and terrible injustices committed against them, rationalized by hollow “therapeutic” justifications. Faced with vexing personal problems, the “truth” people crave is a simple, fashionable falsehood. That is an important, albeit bitter, lesson the history of psychiatry teaches us.

One of the melancholy truths of the story I have set out to tell is that, stripped of its pseudomedical ornamentation, it is not a particularly interesting tale. To make it interesting, I have tried to do what, according to Walt Whitman (1819-1892), the “greatest poet “does: He “drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their feet … He says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I may realize you.”

To this end, I have, where possible, cited the exact words psychiatrists have used to justify their stubborn insistence, over a period of nearly three centuries, that psychiatric coercion is medical care.

Psychiatrist accused of Child Molestations has Prostate Cancer

We do not wish this psychiatrist ill. We merely wish for his rapid and full recovery so that he is fully capable of serving the prison sentence he so richly deserves.

Dr. William Ayres, a prominent San Mateo child psychiatrist charged with molesting seven former patients, had his trial date postponed more than three months today because the 76-year-old psychiatrist has prostate cancer.

"He is receiving intense radiation," said Ayres' attorney, Doron Weinberg. "It's interfering with his normal mental and physical functions. It would be difficult for him to undertake a trial at this point."

Ayres, free after posting $750,000 bail, was diagnosed in the fall with cancer and began radiation therapy in January, Weinberg said. Ayres' prognosis was unknown, he said.

"It's an aggressive cancer, but it's also an aggressive treatment," the attorney said.

Ayres' trial had been scheduled to start March 10 in San Mateo County Superior Court. The new trial date is June 23.

The former president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is charged with molesting seven boys between 1988 and 1996. The boys were 8 to 13 when they were molested, prosecutors say.

More than 30 men have accused Ayres of molesting them as boys, authorities have said, but most of those cases are too old to prosecute under state law.

Ayres estimated he had seen about 2,000 patients during 40 years of practice in San Mateo County, including many referred to him by the county's juvenile justice system, its court-appointed attorney program, pediatricians and social workers.

Patients who have accused Ayres of molestations say he told them to undress during sessions in his private office, then fondled them.

Ayres maintains his innocence. Weinberg has said the psychiatrist was conducting legitimate medical exams, and he questioned the credibility of the former patients, including one who is an inmate San Quentin State Prison.

Three of the former patients Ayres is charged with molesting came forward after Ayres' arrest had been widely publicized, and the mother of one asked if there was money involved in raising allegations, Weinberg said.

The defense is trying to have an appellate court throw out evidence that police obtained using search warrants for Ayres' patient records. Ayres' attorneys argue that the doctor's records were legally protected from seizure.

Judge John Runde of San Mateo County Superior Court, who approved the search warrants, rejected the defense argument in December. The issue is now pending before the First District Court of Appeal.

Psychiatrist shortage looms - Lack of popularity puzzles professionals

Now Formally: The decline of Psychiartry, Part 1

It looks like many people who could become psychiatrists are avoiding the job. This is puzzling to medical professionals, some of whom are starting to panic. Of course, we could speculate about the public reputation of psychiatrists as a contributing factor. (Just take a look at the stories published on this site) We will not speculate further in this regard, but can only note that if this trend keeps up, this decline can only lead to the eventual death of the profession as we know it. Snippets from this report out of Iowa

Russell Knight, president and chief executive officer of Mercy Medical Center-Dubuque, recently served on a task force studying Iowa's physician needs.

The group found 77 openings for psychiatrists in Iowa, yet an average of only 16 psychiatrists entering the state each year.

Knight said it will take five years to fill Iowa's psychiatrist vacancies if that rate continues. By comparison, obstetrician, cardiologist and general-surgeon vacancies take an average of two years to fill.

[...]

"But there is a shortage of psychiatrists all over the country," Curtis said.

The shortage in Iowa seems more pronounced than elsewhere, however. Knight's task-force research suggests Iowa has half as many psychiatrists per 100,000 residents compared to the national average -- 7.7 versus 15.8.

The statewide psychiatrist shortage has forced some Iowa hospitals to close their inpatient psychiatric units, Knight said, and it is no longer unusual for Mercy's unit to care for patients who have come from 100 miles away.

Psychologist Arrested, Accused Of Sexually Abusing Patient

Just from the sparse details, it sounds a bit weird and somewhat perverted. A Report from WPTZ TV in Plattsburg, NY.

A Bellows Falls psychologist was arrested in January and accused of sexually abusing a patient after DNA evidence was found on her socks, police said.

David Sanborn pleaded not guilty to lewd and lascivious conduct and sexual exploitation of a vulnerable adult in court last Monday.

Police said the patient's husband thought something might be wrong when the woman exhibited child-like behavior after visits with Sanborn. The woman exhibits child-like behavior when she is uncomfortable, her husband said.

Police said the woman's husband had accompanied the woman to sessions until Sanborn suggested she begin coming alone.

Police said the woman trusted and admired Sanborn, sometimes calling him "Lancelot."

Sanborn will be in court again in April.

Judge slams psychologist’s evidence for being out of touch with reality.

Another psychologist who seems to be in a world all their own. Report from South Africa.

A judge trashed the testimony of a psychologist during pre-sentencing evidence of a man convicted of murdering a former senior official in the Premier’s office.

Judge Yusuf Ebrahim lashed out at East London-based psychologist Luyanda Mapekula in the Bhisho High Court yesterday for failing to read his judgment.

Mapekula was testifying during mitigation of sentence of Bonisile Grey, convicted last year of the premeditated murder of Siphiwe Mgoduso. Mgoduso was stabbed at a family member’s funeral in Mdantsane in July 2005.

Ebrahim said he was trying to establish the actual status of Grey’s mental condition after Mapekula testified his “psychology” had diminished prior, during and after the incident. “All I have been asking since (Tuesday) is (whether) the accused is suffering from mental illness or defect,” said Ebrahim.

Mapekula replied that Grey was under severe stress and depressed because of the disintegration of his family. “It is my view that his psychological state was compromised ... there should have been intervention in the form of psychiatric evaluation to return him into a normal state.”


Ebrahim said he could not understand why Mapekula was giving the court such an assessment because it did not seem to link with Grey’s argument that he acted in self-defence.

“Did you read the court’s judgment? Because you are relying on the accused’s version, which by the way this court has rejected. I have difficulty with the way you are speculating about (his mental state). You are acting solely on what the accused has told you.

“You have not read the court judgment and what other witnesses have told the court about the events that happened on the day.”

Mapekula admitted to Ebrahim that she did not interview Qaga – whom Grey regards as his wife – because the psychologist thought she would be hostile.

Sentencing will resume today.

Witnesses bash alleged inaction of Kansas board that regulates doctors

A storm is brewing in Kansas over the passive corruption in the State Medical Board. Obviously, somebody is not doing their job, and the people of Kansas are suffering for it. We highlight a psychiatric case on misconduct in the report, there are others mentioned at the link. As seen in this report.

Too slow to act when doctors misbehave, and far too lenient when it does impose discipline.

Those were complaints raised repeatedly in testimony last week before state lawmakers about the Kansas board that regulates doctors.

The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts has come under intense scrutiny since it came to light that the board did not suspend the license of Stephen Schneider, a Haysville doctor accused of running a “pill mill,” until more than a month after federal criminal charges had been filed against him.

Witnesses testifying before the state Senate’s Health Strategies Committee last week said the board also had reacted sluggishly to other alleged problems.

On Tuesday, board officials will present their side to lawmakers, said committee chairwoman Sen. Susan Wagle, a Wichita Republican.

Andrew Jacobs, a psychologist from Leawood, told the committee Wednesday that he had filed a complaint with the board in 2003 against Overland Park psychiatrist Douglas Geenens.

Jacobs said Geenens had a sexual relationship with his wife, who was Geenens’ patient at the time.

In 2004, the board publicly censured Geenens, suspended his medical license for a week and ordered him to submit to supervision of his practice for at least two years by another doctor.

Jacobs told lawmakers the punishment was inadequate, and that since then, he has alerted the board to other claims against Geenens — only to see nothing happen.

“They don’t share with you what is going on. … Once you file a case, you are left out in the cold,” Jacobs said.

Geenens’ former partner, Rory Murphy, told the committee that the board’s decision shocked him because it was so slight compared to the offense.

“I really couldn’t comprehend the decision of the board,” said Murphy, an Overland Park psychiatrist.

Jacobs and Murphy said it was unethical for a therapist to have a sexual relationship with a current or former patient because patients could be easily exploited. Jacobs said he would like to see a law that would make it illegal for doctors to have sex with their patients.

Sen. Phil Journey, a Haysville Republican, said he believes such a law would be a good idea, pointing out that it is illegal for teachers to have sex with students. Extending the law to medical professionals makes sense, he said.

The telephone was disconnected at Geenens’ most recent known office address, and The Star was unable to contact him for comment.

[...]

Hartford Hospital On Probation, - Problems include a variety of psychiatric abuses.

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

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.

[...]

Complaints on the rise against psychiatrists and other doctors

We would like to see a breakdown of the complaint statistics by specialty. There is evidence supporting the notion that there are more sexual misconduct complaints against psychiatrists, for example. A report from Victoria, Australia

Formal complaints about Victorian doctors have jumped significantly, and the number deemed unfit to practice due to serious health issues has also risen, a report has revealed.

A psychiatrist who had sex with two vulnerable patients and a doctor who prescribed illegal levels of morphine were among those to be struck off for serious misconduct.

Figures tabled in State Parliament show there was a 9% jump in professional conduct complaints to the Medical Practitioners Board — from 582 in 2006 to 633 last year.

And 70 doctors were investigated over serious health concerns such as psychiatric illness or drug and alcohol abuse — up from 59 the previous year.

A doctor who made sexual advances to a teenage patient he was counselling for a serious eating disorder was allowed to keep his licence. And a GP who sexually harassed a staff member, putting his hand down her jumper to touch her breast, also escaped with a reprimand.

In a tragic case at the Royal Children's Hospital, a trainee doctor gave a four-week old baby 10 times the appropriate concentration of glucose in a drip, causing irreversible brain damage. The board allowed her to continue practising and ordered her to undergo counselling, feeling she was "genuinely remorseful."

In 16 cases finalised at formal hearings, 15 doctors were found to have engaged in serious professional misconduct. Four were struck off, one had their licence suspended and 10 were either cautioned, reprimanded or ordered to undergo counselling.

The board president, Dr Joanna Flynn, said the rise in complaints was consistent with national and international trends. "It is not unexpected and may reflect gradual awareness within the community of the board and its role in protecting the public," she said.

The Loss of Sadness: How psychiatry transformed a normal emotion into an "illness"

A snippet from this recent report in NewsWeek.

It's hard to say exactly when ordinary Americans, no less than psychiatrists, began insisting that sadness is pathological. But by the end of the millennium that attitude was well entrenched. In 1999, Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" was revived on Broadway 50 years after its premiere. A reporter asked two psychiatrists to read the script. Their diagnosis: Willy Loman was suffering from clinical depression, a pathological condition that could and should be treated with drugs. Miller was appalled. "Loman is not a depressive," he told The New York Times. "He is weighed down by life. There are social reasons for why he is where he is." What society once viewed as an appropriate reaction to failed hopes and dashed dreams, it now regards as a psychiatric illness.

That may be the most damaging legacy of the happiness industry: the message that all sadness is a disease. As NYU's Wakefield and Allan Horwitz of Rutgers University point out in "The Loss of Sadness," this message has its roots in the bible of mental illness, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Its definition of a "major depressive episode" is remarkably broad. You must experience five not-uncommon symptoms, such as insomnia, difficulty concentrating and feeling sad or empty, for two weeks; the symptoms must cause distress or impairment, and they cannot be due to the death of a loved one. Anyone meeting these criteria is supposed to be treated.

Yet by these criteria, any number of reactions to devastating events qualify as pathological. Such as? For three weeks a woman feels sad and empty, unable to generate any interest in her job or usual activities, after her lover of five years breaks off their relationship; she has little appetite, lies awake at night and cannot concentrate during the day. Or a man's only daughter is suffering from a potentially fatal blood disorder; for weeks he is consumed by despair, cannot sleep or concentrate, feels tired and uninterested in his usual activities.

Horwitz and Wakefield do not contend that the spurned lover or the tormented father should be left to suffer. Both deserve, and would likely benefit from, empathic counseling. But their symptoms "are neither abnormal nor inappropriate in light of their" situations, the authors write. The DSM definition of depression "mistakenly encompasses some normal emotional reactions," due to its failure to take into account the context or trigger for sadness.

That has consequences. When someone is appropriately sad, friends and colleagues offer support and sympathy. But by labeling appropriate sadness pathological, "we have attached a stigma to being sad," says Wakefield, "with the result that depression tends to elicit hostility and rejection" with an undercurrent of " 'Get over it; take a pill.' The normal range of human emotion is not being tolerated." And insisting that sadness requires treatment may interfere with the natural healing process. "We don't know how drugs react with normal sadness and its functions, such as reconstituting your life out of the pain," says Wakefield.

Even the psychiatrist who oversaw the current DSM expresses doubts about the medicalizing of sadness. "To be human means to naturally react with feelings of sadness to negative events in one's life," writes Robert Spitzer of the New York State Psychiatric Institute in a foreword to "The Loss of Sadness." That would be unremarkable if it didn't run completely counter to the message of the happiness brigades. It would be foolish to underestimate the power and tenacity of the happiness cheerleaders. But maybe, just maybe, the single-minded pursuit of happiness as an end in itself, rather than as a consequence of a meaningful life, has finally run its course.

Heath Ledger Died from Overdose of Drug Cocktail of Psychiatric Drug and Pain Medications

Hollywood star Heath Ledger, found dead in his New York apartment two weeks ago, died of accidental intoxication caused by a drug cocktail of psychiatric drugs and painkillers. As seen in this report

Ledger, who scored critical acclaim for his performance as a repressed gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain" in 2005, had six prescription medicines including the drugs marketed as Xanax and Valium in his system when he died.

"Mr Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine," the New York chief medical examiner's office said in a statement.

This echoes the drug death of Anna Nicole Smith from a somewhat similar cocktail last year.

Psychiatrist Faces Sex Charges

A Report from Channel 12 in Cincinatti, Ohio

A local psychiatrist faces allegations he had improper sexual relations with underage patients.

A Hamilton County Grand Jury today indicted Leo Dsouza on four counts of gross sexual imposition. Prosecutors say all four victims were minors. The alleged incidents happened between 2001 and October of 2005.

Dsouza is the subject of two civil lawsuits, both filed in 2006. Each claims he inappropriately touched minor male patients under his care. One patient was 12 years old at the time... that case is set to go to trial in March. In the other lawsuit, Dsouza is accused of ordering an 8 year old boy to undress so he could be examined for sexually transmitted diseases. That lawsuit is set to go the trial in April.

Here are links to our earlier reports on this psychiatrist.

• More Information on Psychiatrist under investigation
• Another man sues psychiatrist over sexual molestation

An Eli Lilly secret memo was accident sent to a NY Times reporter

As Reported on Portfolio.com

When the New York Times broke the story last week that Eli Lilly & Co. was in confidential settlement talks with the government, angry calls flew behind the scenes as the drug giant's executives accused federal officials of leaking the information.

As the company's lawyers began turning over rocks closer to home, however, they discovered what could be called A Nightmare on Email Street, a pharmaceutical consultant told Portfolio.com. One of its outside lawyers at Philadelphia-based Pepper Hamilton had mistakenly emailed confidential information on the talks to Times reporter Alex Berenson instead of Bradford Berenson, her co-counsel at Sidley Austin.

Oops. If and when it settles with the government on the allegations that it had improperly marketed its most profitable drug, Zyprexa, for schizophrenia, it would certainly want to announce the news on terms carefully negotiated in order to create the least possible damage.

No such luck this time.

Disgraced psychiatrist gets jail term for illegal prescriptions

Report via this link

A former psychiatrist from East Stroudsburg has been sentenced to six to 18 months in county jail.

Prosecutors say Harold Pascal illegally prescribed potentially addictive drugs in an overcrowded, poorly run office. Pascal was charged in 2006. He later surrendered his medical license and pleaded no contest to two counts of illegal medical prescriptions and one count of Medicaid fraud.

At Friday's sentencing in Monroe County Court, former co-workers and patients described a different sort of person than prosecutors. They say he was a professional, compassionate doctor who served the community for 26 years.

Earlier Story with photos here, and other information here

Psychologist on trial sex charges

From the Eagle Times in New Hampshire

Donald Sanborn III, a local psychologist, has plead not guilty to a variety of sex abuse charges. Sanborn was arrested for lewd and lascivious conduct and exploitation of a vulnerable adult-sexual abuse.

Sanborn has a practice in his home. Under his conditions of release Sanborn can still practice, but not with any female patients or younger patients. He was barred from having contact with the person involved.

According to Bellows Falls detective Jennifer Carroll's affidavit, the victim reported to attorney Robert Fisher on June 13, 2007 that Sanborn had been doing "naughty things" during her psychologist sessions for the last three to four months. This claim was then reported to the police.

On Nov. 13, Carroll met with the victim at the police department. The victim's husband told Carroll she had Disassociate Identity Disorder and Agoraphobia, a fear of being in crowds or open areas. Therefore the victim will act like a 5-year-old when she is "threatened," the affidavit states.

The husband told Sanborn of this disorders and topics that put the victim into a "defensive mode." Sanborn often spoke of these topics, the affidavit states.

The woman started seeing Sanborn in 2003 to help with her disorders, in November 2006 Sanborn allegedly told the victim's husband to let the woman come to therapy along.

He did for approximately six to seven months.

On June 22, 2007 the victim's husband asked his wife why socks were, "balled up in the back of the drawer where they should not have been," the affidavit said. The victim said the socks were the one's "dirtied by Dr. Sanborn."

The victim's husband wrapped the socks in newspaper and took them to the lawyer's office.

On Oct. 29, Carroll told the package and sent to the Vermont Forensic Laboratory for testing. On Nov. 26, the lab report stated one of the socks was positive for "PSA, a protein found in high concentration in seminal fluid," the affidavit says. The other sock had a positive presumptive test for seminal fluid.

On Dec. 18, Carroll was granted a order to collect a swab sample from Sanborn. He submitted swabs on Dec. 26.

A lab report on Jan. 9, 2008 said the primarily reportable types of sperm matched.

Sanborn is scheduled for on April 21.

Psychiatrist loses appeal over sex crimes

A report from the Washington Poston the final failed appeal of a psychiatrist caught doing the wrong thing. Part of a much larger article.

The hearing was entering its 10th hour Thursday night when Arlington County psychiatrist Martin H. Stein learned that his 40-year career as a practicing physician was effectively over.

The Virginia Board of Medicine denied Stein's petition to reinstate the license he surrendered six years ago for his treatment of 10 patients, among them a 4-year-old whose legs he bound with duct tape.

The three-member panel found that Stein had harmed 17 other patients by over-prescribing sometimes dangerous combinations of drugs, diagnosing nonexistent conditions and engaging in unethical behavior with female patients.

Stein, 67, who declared personal bankruptcy five years ago and has been sued more than 15 times since 1995, may reapply or appeal. But both are expensive, time-consuming processes with virtually no chance of success.

Links to earlier Stories

• From the Archives: Va. Doctor's Misconduct Left Trail of Broken Lives
• From the Archives: A Broken Marriage And a 'Life Destroyed'

Psychiatrist Fails to Get License Restored

Via the Washington Post

The Virginia Board of Medicine said last night that it would not restore the medical license of well-known Arlington County psychiatrist Martin H. Stein.

In 2002, Stein was stripped of his medical licenses in Virginia and the District for negligence; inappropriate and excessive prescribing of drugs for patients as young as 4; and sexually intimate behavior with a patient.

During a nine-hour hearing in Richmond, Stein, 67, apologized for "any harm" he caused but told the three-member panel he wanted a second chance to offer "some very special skills." The Maryland psychiatrist treating Stein for bipolar disorder testified that Stein was fit to return to limited practice.

The panel sided with the recommendation of its staff and a director of a program for troubled doctors at Virginia Commonwealth University. Physician Patricia Pade told the board that Stein's problems were the result of "characterological" issues, not just mental illness.

Psychiatrist secretly planned committing Spears to Hospital.

Britney Spears’ psychiatrist has been secretly planning to have the popwreck admitted to the psychiatric unit of UCLA Medical Center for quite some time, according to a Los Angeles Times report. The L.A Times reports that Britney’s admittance was actually a carefully planned event that had been orchestrated over time.

Authorities said the welfare hold was prompted by a telephone call they received from Spears' psychiatrist. It was unclear exactly when they had received the call, but it was apparent that the operation had been carefully planned over a period of time. Unlike the first welfare hold — in which Spears' ambulance was closely pursued by a throng of photographers — vehicles today were blocked from following the same route. The motorcade that whisked Spears to the hospital also showed a large investment in resources. The line of emergency vehicles stretched longer than a football field.

Spears earns an estimated $737,000 a month, or about $9 million a year, and has already built up a fortune estimated at $125 million, according to recent court documents in her custody battle with Kevin Federline. So there is first a question of:

Who controls her money if she is in the funny house? Not that anyone was ever motivated by money in Hollywood. No, they are all pure as the driven snow.

The second question is more general about the overall safety of Britney Spears. Hollywood has a long and sordid history on deaths and suicides while under the care of a psychiatrist or two. Anna Nicole Smith and Marylynne Monroe are merely the tip of the iceberg. [I'm working on a list to follow here shortly]

I merely do not want Spears to become another victim of psychiatrists, with us reading about a tragic death some months from now.

But I will not be entering her name in a dead pool either. Not yet.

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UPDATE: In view of a comment we received on this story, this item is of interest.

Spears loses control of her finances under court order.

This is the first third pf the article, more at the link. It should be interesting to see how this plays out as the infighting over her money begins.

Britney Spears has lost control of her assets after a Los Angeles court commissioner placed her estate under temporary conservatorship.

This follows the actions of her desperate parents Jamie and Lynne Spears who went to court this morning to try regain control of their daughter's finances from her manager Sam Lufti.

Her father and a lawyer will now be in charge of the singer's millions and various properties until the next hearing on Febraury 4.

Commissioner Reva Goetz told a packed courtroom: "It is in the best interests of the conservatee to have conservatorship over her person."

Jamie will have the power to "restrict visitors," have around-the-clock security for Britney, and have access to all medical records, Goetz said.

Goetz said conservatorship over the estate was "necessary and appropriate." She gave approval for the singer's father to "take all actions to secure all liquid assets including credit cards."

Meanwhile, the fallen pop princess has been crying in her sleep for her British boyfriend as she struggles to adapt to life at a Los Angeles psychiatric hospital.

Britney was committed to a hospital in Los Angeles in the early hours of Tuesday morning following months of erratic behaviour that saw a court deny her access to her two sons.

Psychiatrist Convicted Of Prescription Fraud Loses Appeal

Report from Maine's WMTW TV

A psychiatrist who founded a methadone clinic in Westbrook has lost his appeal of his conviction and six-month prison sentence for prescription fraud.

A three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston denied the appeal of Dr. Marc Shinderman, who was found guilty in 2006 of writing prescriptions for controlled substances using another doctor's name and drug registration number.

Shinderman, who started CAP Quality Care in 2001, was not licensed to write the prescriptions in Maine and said he believed that the arrangement was acceptable.

In its ruling Tuesday, the appeals court rejected all four of Shinderman's arguments, including the trial judge's refusal to allow jurors to hear his proposed entrapment defense and the use of an obstruction of justice enhancement during sentencing.

Psychologist in Sexual Abuse Case

From the Brattleboro Reformer

Donald Sanborn III, 65, of Bellows Falls, pleaded not guilty Monday to charges that he sexually abused a patient.

Sanborn, a psychologist, has been accused by a patient of doing "naughty things" with her during her sessions for approximately three to four months, according to an affidavit from Bellows Falls Police Officer Jennifer Carroll.

When Carroll spoke to the alleged victim, she writes in the affidavit, the woman seemed "very frightened and closed off" and "asked me several times if I was her friend and asked if I worked for Dr. Sanborn."

The alleged victim's husband told Carroll he used to attend the sessions with his wife. The woman stated that Sanborn had been helpful in the past and referred to him as "Lancelot."

About six or seven months before the sessions stopped, however, the alleged victim's husband states that Sanborn suggested private sessions.

He said that his wife sometimes resorted to the mentality of a 5-year-old when she was uncomfortable and he often observed her in this state after she left her sessions, Carroll reported.

The woman told Carroll that Sanborn had frequently wanted to talk about sex with her and convinced her to participate in sexual activities with him, although she had told him she did not want to.

He allegedly also told her not to tell anyone. She told Carroll that "she was afraid Sanborn would come to her house and get her if she told anyone."

Sanborn was arrested over the weekend after a DNA test was done on a pair of the woman's socks. Carroll reports, "I received a laboratory report stating that the primary reportable types of sperm portions from some of the submissions of the socks matched those obtained from the standard from Donald Sanborn III."

According to a report from the Vermont Forensic Laboratory, though, "the secondary types are too limited to support meaningful conclusions."

Sanborn was released on conditions Monday that he not contact the victim or her husband and that he not see any female or "younger" patients until the case is closed.

If found guilty, Sanborn could face up to 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $10,300, or both.