Spokane psychologist accused of seducing patient

From KREM and KING 5 TV, with a video report available on at the link.

UPDATE: More in this report from the Spokesman review, which also has a copy of the complaint

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A lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Spokane Monday claims a Spokane psychologist used his position to seduce a patient.

According to the complaint, the Dr. John Moulton committed multiple acts of malpractice and negligence while treating a female patient.

Malpractice cited in the legal complaint against Moulton includes: seeing the patient outside of treatment sessions, buying her alcoholic beverages, consuming alcohol with her, and other boundary violations and negligent acts of both a sexual and non-sexual nature.

Among the allegations detailed in the complaint, Dr. Moulton sent emails to the patient where he admitted to her that he acted like an abusive predator: "I have acted like an abusive predator, which may be the most despicable kind of person there is."

The alleged malpractice began after the patient, who suffered from severe depression, checked herself into Spokane's Sacred Heart Medical Center in April of 2005. The hospital assigned Moulton to be treating psychiatrist. During this two-week hospital stay, the psychologist administered a series of nine electro-shock treatments to patient.

Following discharge from the hospital, the patient returned to her family in Alaska. On June 1, 2005, she again traveled to Spokane and re-entered Sacred Heart for additional treatment for depression. Again, Dr. Moulton was assigned to be her treating psychiatrist, and according to the patient's attorney, Michael S. Kolker, who said it was during the second hospital visit that Moulton told the patient he had feelings for her.

Upon her discharge from Sacred Heart on June 12th, Moulton arranged for the patient to spend time at an in-patient facility in Lake Chelan for continuing treatment for her depression. According to Kolker, Moulton drove the patient to the Spokane airport for the flight to Lake Chelan, and kissed her before she boarded the plane.

On June 23, 2005, the patient returned to Spokane to stay at the home of her brother for continued outpatient treatment with Moulton, whose boundary violations and acts of malpractice continued.

According to Kolker, for nearly a month while he was supposed to treat the patient for depression, Moulton saw the patient almost daily outside of therapy sessions. He took her out to bars and restaurants, consumed alcohol with her, fondled and kissed her.

"When a psychiatrist does it to a patient, it's not dating and it's not a relationship. It's a boundary violation and it is abusive," said Kolker.

Moulton then told the that he loved her and tried to convince her that she was in love with him. They made plans for the future. The suit said Moulton did all of this, knowing the patient was married and the mother of three children. He also knew she was on medication and had giving her multiple sessions of electro shock therapy.

In August, the patient's husband discovered Moulton's malpractice and confronted him. According to allegations in the complaint, Moulton sent the patient and her husband a number of emails in which he admitted and apologized for his misconduct. Excerpts of some of those emails are included in the complaint.

The complaint further alleges that Moulton's negligent conduct caused the patient exacerbated depression, pain and suffering and two suicide attempts.

UPDATE: More in this report from the Spokesman review, which also has a copy of the complaint

More Fallout From ADHD Study - British Peer calls for ADHD care review

From the BBC - While this is a positive step, the Baroness might be shocked if she were to ever learn the actual truth. When disease is profitable, you get more disease.

A peer and neuroscientist will call on ministers to examine how attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is diagnosed and treated in the UK.

Independent peer Baroness Susan Greenfield will raise the issue in the House of Lords on Wednesday.

Her intervention follows a BBC Panorama programme which highlighted US research suggesting drugs are no better than therapy for ADHD in the long-term.

There was also evidence that their use may stunt child growth.

The Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD by the University of Buffalo has been monitoring the treatment of 600 children across the US since the 1990s.

Most of the estimated 500,000 children in Britain with ADHD receive no treatment at all.

But of those that do, most - about 55,000 last year - are prescribed stimulants like Ritalin and Concerta.

Baroness Greenfield will call for a wide-ranging inquiry into the huge increase in ADHD diagnoses.

She said: "As well as assessing ADHD drugs themselves, we also need to find out urgently why there has been such a remarkable increase in the numbers of children being diagnosed with ADHD in the last 20 years or so.

"Could the changes to our ways of living be contributing to this increase?

"The time is ripe for an inquiry exploring the actual causes of ADHD that goes beyond merely evaluating the pros and cons of Ritalin.

"Such an inquiry could consider diverse factors ranging from diet through to screen-based activity and how they may be changing the way both children and adults interact socially.

"Children live a fast-paced, highly interactive, response mode type of existence, and maybe as a result when they go to school they find it harder to sit still."

A Department of Health spokesperson said the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) had advised that drugs should only be used to treat ADHD as part of a comprehensive treatment programme, including behavioural therapy.

"Careful, informed clinical decision-making, involving the parents and child should involve discussion of the benefits versus the risks of all interventions.

"We have also asked NICE to develop a clinical guideline on both the pharmacological and psychological interventions to treat ADHD."

Ritalin: The scandal of kiddy coke

Snippets from a longer story in the Daily Mail

Eight months ago, Daniel, now 14, was put on Risperdal - an antipsychotic drug usually given to schizophrenics.

"It was as if my son had been replaced by a doped-up zombie,' says Hayley, 35, who took him off it a month later.

"I could hardly wake him in the morning. It was as if all his personality was disappearing, like a patient in a mental institution."

Last week, it emerged that around 8,000 British youngsters are being treated with this powerful tranquilliser and another, similar drug called Zyprexa - despite the fact that their dangerous side-effects range from diabetes to brain tumours.

Hundreds of thousands of others are still being prescribed Ritalin, an amphetamine-like stimulant which has the same effect as "speed" and cocaine, and which, according to new evidence from the U.S., doesn't even work in the long-term.

[...]

Recent findings also suggest that Ritalin can stunt growth as well as causing heart problems, insomnia and weight problems.

In the U.S., there have been 51 deaths among children and adults taking Ritalin since 1999.

According to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, 11 British children on Ritalin have died.

The cause of two deaths was heart-related: one had a heart attack, the other an enlarged heart.

One was recorded as a "sudden death". One died of a brain haemorrhage; another of a swelling in the brain.

Two committed suicide, and the last died of neo-natal respiratory distress syndrome.

Not surprisingly, experts fear that inappropriate drugs are not only being used to control children's behaviour, but are being massively over-prescribed to some children who are simply naughty.

ADHD, they say, is nothing more than a symptom of Britain's time-poor society, where children of parents working long hours are cracking under the strain of family life.

There are criticisms, too, that some doctors dole out pills when therapy would be a safer option.

In the U.S., where one in ten children takes Ritalin and where doctors write two million prescriptions a month, the situation is even worse.

A growing body of experts is even questioning whether ADHD exists at all.

"As a society, we are quick to reach for a pill," says David Healy, one of the world's leading psycho-pharmacology experts, and Professor of Psychiatry at Cardiff University.

"There's much less willingness on the part of the medical profession to say to parents: 'You have an awkward child. You must discipline them.'

"So we prescribe pills instead.

"The drugs used to treat ADHD are the same as speed and cocaine.

"We react with horror to the idea that our kids would use such drugs, but don't react about drugs such as Ritalin being given to them.

"There's a risk that your child won't grow as well.

"There are high risks that children will go on to use street drugs, too, because they will have grown used to their effects."

Professor Healy says anti-psychotic drugs such as Risperdal were used in the Soviet Union to extract information from political prisoners.

"People who took them would tell anything to anyone," he says.

"When you think about giving these drugs to kids, it's a whole new ball game."

Dr Tim Kendall of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who is heading a team drawing up new NHS guidelines for ADHD, insists there is a place for drugs in treatment, but admits: "We have a situation where GPs prescribe anti-psychotics inappropriately.

"There is no real excuse for prescribing drugs which are associated with such severe side-effects."

But even where Ritalin is used, Dr Kendall says guidelines do not make it clear when doctors should diagnose ADHD and when they should prescribe drugs.

"If you diagnose people loosely, you could end up with 16 per cent of the child population with ADHD.

"Under tight criteria, only 1.6 per cent would be diagnosed," he says.

"A generous understanding would be to say that doctors have reached a point where they don't know what else to offer, and they haven't got the right support to help parents."

[...]

Therapist to pay $800,000 in damages

Another case where the penalty is possible not heavy enough. From the Billings Gazette.

A district judge on Thursday approved an $800,000 settlement agreement in a lawsuit filed by a Billings woman against her daughter's psychologist.

Judge Susan Watters said the settlement amount was reasonable considering the damages that Betty Bowman suffered from her family's association with Constance Reynolds, a therapist whose license was revoked in 2004.

Bowman's daughter, Dana Mobley, was a client of Reynolds when the two became lovers. Mobley later died while living with Reynolds.

After the hearing Thursday, Bowman said the settlement brings little relief to a difficult period in her life. Her daughter died in February 2004, and her husband died six months later. She filed the lawsuit against Reynolds in 2005.

"It's hard," Bowman said outside the courtroom. "Losing my whole family and being financially embarrassed. You believe in somebody and trust somebody and then have them turn you upside down and backwards."

In the lawsuit, Bowman claimed the psychologist was negligent and committed malpractice, fraud and identity theft when she began a sexual relationship with her daughter while treating her as a client. The lawsuit stated that Mobley died in part because of medications Reynolds improperly gave to her.

Reynolds, who now lives in Florida and represented herself in the lawsuit, could not be reached Thursday for comment. She did not attend the hearing Thursday.

Despite the settlement, the legal case is not over. Chicago Insurance Co., which provided Reynolds with malpractice insurance, has filed a federal lawsuit against both Reynolds and Bowman, stating that Reynolds' policy does not cover the claims made by Bowman against Reynolds.

Bowman's attorney, Brad Arndorfer, said a judge is expected to rule on the issue early next year.

Reynolds was sued by two other Billings residents, Kelli Van Laanen and Kay Easterling. The women accused Reynolds in separate lawsuits of professional malpractice.

Easterling was in a relationship with Mobley when Mobley and Reynolds began dating. Easterling's lawsuit was settled last year; terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

Van Laanen's case was recently resolved with an agreement by Reynolds to pay Van Laanen $100 a month for three years. If Reynolds fails to make the payments, the agreement states, Van Laanen can seek to collect $80,000 in damages.

Befoare the lawsuits were filed, a state administrative law judge found that Reynolds had an inappropriate relationship with Mobley and recommended the psychologist lose her state license. The Montana Board of Psychology unanimously followed the recommendation in June 2004.

At the hearing Thursday, Missoula psychologist Janet Allison testified by telephone that Reynolds violated her ethical duties to Bowman, who she said trusted Reynolds to care for her daughter.

In a report prepared last year, Allison described Reynolds' actions as "a tragic example" of the harm an unethical psychologist can cause.

"In my three decades of work in the field, I have never seen a more egregious case of professional violations of ethics or of damage inflicted on clients by a psychologist," Allison wrote.

Bowman testified Thursday that she deeded a house to Reynolds so Reynolds and her daughter would have a safe home to share. Reynolds then took out a mortgage on the home, Bowman said, and never paid her the full price of the house.

Bowman said she loaned Reynolds $10,000 on one occasion and was not repaid, and Reynolds used her credit cards without her permission or knowledge. One credit card debt grew to $13,000, Bowman said, and her credit rating was destroyed as a result.

Bowman told the judge that her husband died six months after her daughter. Although he suffered a terminal illness, Bowman said she believes her daughter's death hastened her husband's death because the two were very close.

After the hearing, Bowman said she still believes Reynolds played a role in her daughter's death, but no criminal investigation was ever conducted. An autopsy found that Mobley died of asphyxiation while heavily drugged.

Arndorfer represented all three women in their lawsuits against Reynolds. He said Reynolds is not practicing psychology in Florida, but may be working as a teacher.

Psychologist Found Guilty in Misconduct case.

Please see our update regarding this story. Many elements of the story seem to be not true, based on false reports to the newspaper in question.

Marek Jantos did have his registration removed, as noted on the website of Southern Australian Psychology Board, having been found "Guilty of gross professional negligence, malpractice and misconduct." The Crown Solicitor made a statement that "it was not the Registrar's case, nor a finding of the board, that Mr Jantos had been engaged, in any way, in sexual misconduct"

Thus the report that Mr. Jantos was guilty of "gross professional misconduct for molesting a patient" is NOT True

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As seen in this report from Adelaide Now.

A psychologist who lectured at Adelaide University has been found guilty of gross professional misconduct for molesting a patient. [NOT TRUE, AS NOTED ABOVE]

Marek Jantos who had connections to the Seventh Day Adventist Church, was finally deregistered on November 11 this year, although police were notified of his actions in 2004.

The South Australian Psychological Board launched an inquiry into Mr Jantos after a patient reported he had sexually abused her with medical instruments and with his hand, and told her not to tell anyone. [NOT TRUE AS NOTED ABOVE]

The inquiry also found he had falsely called himself a doctor, did not follow proper hygiene procedures and, in one case, treated the patient on a sofa in a caravan park cabin in Port Augusta.

The patient first saw Mr Jantos in 2003. After a third consultation at the beginning of 2004, during which Mr Jantos used his whole hand in an "internal massage", the patient described feeling dizzy, sick, deeply distressed and upset and resolved not to see him again.

The board started an inquiry in July 2005.

Mr Jantos is an affiliate lecturer at the University of Adelaide but the institution will review his position this week. He is also the director of the Adelaide-based Behavioural Medicine Institute of Australia, has been published in the Medical Journal of Australia and is understood to have been connected to Adventist Health – the health branch of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Mr Jantos denied the allegations and asked the board to accept "that the allegations made by Patient K are either misguided, a product of the patient's imagination or blatantly false".

When asked whether he considered his actions to be "within the proper bounds of the practice for psychology", he responded that they were.

"I am not saying every psychologist does that but there are certain circumstances if you work with chronic pain conditions pertaining to the pelvic floor that might occur . . . and I won't deny that I have been involved in doing that," he said.

The board found it "incomprehensible" that Mr Jantos thought his actions were acceptable.

"We cannot help but think that no reasonable member of the public would think otherwise either," the board found.

Mr Jantos could not be contacted for comment yesterday.

The Business of Disease

Wired Science has a good story on how big business markets disease for fun and profit.

Here's the Video:

Big Pharma--Tricks of the Trade

From the E Pluribus Media Community

A better new book on the subject is Shyness by Christopher Lane. Both authors document the way in which the American Psychiatric Institute has worked with the big pharmas to redefine mood disorders as mental illness, in order to create a market for anti-anxiety and anti-depression remedies. Here is an excerpt from Levin's article.

Not too long ago, a child who was irritable, moody, and distractible and who at times sounded grandiose or acted without regard for consequences was considered a "handful." In the U.S. by the 1980s, that child was labeled with a "behavioral disorder" and today that child is being diagnosed as "bipolar" and "psychotic" -- and prescribed expensive antipsychotic drugs. Bloomberg News, also on September 4, 2007, reported, "The expanded use of bipolar as a pediatric diagnosis has made children the fastest-growing part of the $11.5 billion U.S. market for antipsychotic drugs."

Both authors are strong on the subject of how the steriotypical upbeat personality type has been defined as a norm for mental health.

Worried about the world? Lost that you may loose your  job and won't be able to put food on the table or get medical care for your kids? Pop a pill. By this account being an "introvert" is a no-no. Big reader, or worse yet someone who likes to research things and write about them, you know an introspective type or maybe just plain shy. These days you may be diagnosed as suffering from a Mood Disorder.

Remember how chemical imbalance in the brain was ostensibly discovered to be at the root of mental illness and drugs like prozac were prescribed to take care of this. Well know it seems that new research indicates its just not so. Levin reprises the new research results in his article and comes to a startling conclusion.

The serotonin-deficiency theory of depression was so successfully marketed that it was news to many Americans when Newsweek's February 26, 2007 cover story, "Men and Depression," mentioned that scientists now reject the theory that depression is caused by low levels of neurotransmitters such as serotonin. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, told Newsweek that "a depressed brain is not necessarily underproducing something."

He asks the question, why we are seeing the release of these results now and offers an interesting hypothesis that the reason is because the patents on the present generation of anti-psychotic drugs are beginning to lapse. This is clearing the way for a new generation of wonder drugs.

To the delight of Big Pharma, NIMH uses taxpayer monies to fund researchers who are financially connected to pharmaceutical companies. One important example is the "Sequential Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D)," a $35 million U.S. taxpayer-funded study that proclaimed the effectiveness of antidepressant treatment. The results of STAR*D were widely reported by the corporate media.

Unfortunately, the NIMH press release about STAR*D excluded the fact that STAR*D researchers received consulting and speaker fees from the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the antidepressants studied in STAR*D -- and this fact went unreported by the corporate media.

Also not in the press release and unreported is the fact that STAR*D researchers failed to include a placebo control and failed to incorporate relapse rates in the overall results. So in reality, STAR*D antidepressant results were no better than the customary placebo results or the results of no treatment at all -- this also unreported by the corporate media.

Drugs for ADHD 'not the answer'

Well, It seems that the BBC is starting to wake up and get something right

Treating children who have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) with drugs is not effective in the long-term, research has shown.

A study obtained by the BBC's Panorama programme says drugs such as Ritalin and Concerta work no better than therapy after three years of treatment.

The findings by an influential US study also suggested long-term use of the drugs could stunt children's growth.

It said that the benefits of drugs had previously been exaggerated.

The Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD has been monitoring the treatment of 600 children across the US since the 1990s.

'Exaggerated impact'

Most of the estimated 500,000 children in Britain with ADHD receive no treatment at all.

The Department of Health has issued a statement on the treatment of ADHD

But of those that do, most - about 55,000 last year - are prescribed stimulants like Ritalin and Concerta.

The cost of these drugs to the NHS is about £28m.

In 1999, the American study concluded that after one year medication worked better than behavioural therapy for ADHD.

This finding influenced medical practice on both sides of the Atlantic, and prescription rates in the UK have since tripled.

But now after longer-term analysis, the report's co-author, Professor William Pelham of the University of Buffalo, said: "I think that we exaggerated the beneficial impact of medication in the first study.

"We had thought that children medicated longer would have better outcomes. That didn't happen to be the case.

"There's no indication that medication's better than nothing in the long run."

Prof Pelham said there were "no beneficial effects" of medication and the impact was seemingly negative instead.

"The children had a substantial decrease in their rate of growth so they weren't growing as much as other kids both in terms of their height and in terms of their weight," he said.

Aggressive behaviour

The Panorama programme features disturbing footage of a 14-year-old from Stoke-on-Trent, who has been on ADHD medication for a decade.

Craig Buxton's family kept a video diary of his behaviour and captured on camera examples of just how explosive his behaviour can be.

He has self-harmed, suffers night terrors and is aggressive - he recently assaulted three school teachers.

And all I can do is go back to the doctors and say: 'Is there anything more you can do?'

His mother Sharon said things had gone from bad to worse.

"He has broke down and cried when he gets into situations," she said.

"He says: 'Why am I like this mum, I don't want to feel like this, I don't want to be like this, you know, help me'.

"And all I can do is go back to the doctors and say: 'Is there anything more you can do?'

"All they say is, well, we are doing what we can."

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence is currently revising the treatment guidelines for ADHD.

[...]

A case study of unruly science

More reactions to the results of the ADHD brain study. Again, people are struggling to get with the idea that maybe what is called ADHD is really a normal variation in human development, diagnosed by "institutions and families [who] lack the authority, inclination and manpower to handle the misbehaviour of any but the most tranquil pre-adolescent."

If it is a normal variation, is it a disease at all? Or are we running into a case of people who who have been mis-educated into precisely the wrong way to raise kids, say, by leaving them alone to be socialized by sitting in front of a dysfunctional video game, or worse?

From this column

If, say, William Brown, the school-shirking, mischief-prone hero of Richmal Crompton’s Just William stories, were passing through any school system in the English-speaking world today, he would be drugged to the gills.

In the decades since Crompton wrote, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) – the name coined to describe a variety of unproductive and sometimes disruptive childhood behaviours – has become an American obsession. It is now diagnosed in countries other than the US, and in adults as well as children. It has spurred a market for drug treatments that exceeds $3bn annually in the US and could reach £101m ($207m) a year in the UK by 2012, according to recent projections carried out at the University of Heidelberg. A 10th of American boys, by some estimates, take some kind of anti-ADHD drug. “Since ADHD is only treatable, not curable,” ran one report in Medical Marketing and Media last year, “people take drugs for life, equalling a potential boon for pharmaceutical companies”.

The problem is that there is not a clear definition of what ADHD is. There is no test for it. The symptoms laid out in the mental-health diagnostic manual DSM-IV are vague enough (“often does not follow instructions”, “often loses things” etc.) to invite overdiagnosis. Against this will-o’-the-wisp, doctors have deployed the pharmacological equivalent of a howitzer.

Most drugs used against ADHD are strong stimulants, either methylphenidates or amphetamines. They have been abused on US college campuses and carry risks of addiction, hallucinations, heart attacks and strokes. The US Food and Drug Administration has occasionally urged stronger warnings for ADHD drugs and, in 2005, Health Canada briefly suspended sale of the market leader (Adderall XR, made by Shire Pharmaceuticals). In the US, pharmaceutical companies have been faulted for aggressive advertising and lobbying. In the early 1990s, Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) gave $748,000 to Chadd, a sufferers’ advocacy group that was then campaigning to relax regulation of Ciba-Geigy’s drug Ritalin.

So is ADHD a vital discovery or a popular folly? [...]

The sceptics have lately been getting the better of the argument. This summer, a follow-up to the 1999 Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) – which provides the main evidence for the effectiveness of drug therapy – rescinded a number of the study’s earlier conclusions. Gains from drug treatment evaporate after three years, the follow-up showed, and there is evidence that the drugs stunt children’s growth. William Pelham of the University of Buffalo, one of the researchers involved in the MTA study, said on BBC1’s Panorama on Monday that he now favours behavioural therapies because the familiar drug treatments offer “no beneficial effects – none”.

A fascinating neurological study published this week by the US National Institute of Mental Health holds out promise of resolving many controversies.

[...]

The report seems to suggest that ADHD is a neurological reality, but does not establish that it is, in the long term, either abnormal or permanent. This view was reinforced by a long-term behavioural study by a team of psychiatrists and educators, published in the November issue of Developmental Psychology. Attention skills at the time children entered school were found to be “modestly” associated with school achievement years later, but far less so than early maths and language mastery. Indeed, “socio-emotional behaviours” – presumably including the kind of “acting out” often associated with hyperactivity – “were generally insignificant predictors of later academic performance”.

In a time of scientific upheaval, innovations in treatment can outpace innovations in diagnosis. Sometimes the medical establishment is vulnerable to underdiagnosing, leaving people to suffer unnecessarily. But in recent years, there have been too many incentives to overdiagnose ADHD. Some are financial. Most are social and familial. The world has changed to the point where institutions and families lack the authority, inclination and manpower to handle the misbehaviour of any but the most tranquil pre-adolescent.

[...]

The Ritalin Wars, and The New Religion of ADHD

As snippet from a NY Times column on the recent study about brain development in children

So why, this week, did the gloves come out, with the armies of all that is Good taking on the usual forces of Evil psychopharmacology? Why did my stomach drop so quickly to my knees, why was I so quick to think it possible that, after countless interviews and lectures and hours of reading, I’d simply fallen for a hoax manufactured by the drug companies and wrested upon the innocent?

Facts don’t have much sway when you’re in the grip of a religion. And the beliefs underlying the Ritalin wars (I am using “Ritalin” here as shorthand for the whole practice of diagnosing children and treating them with psychotropic drugs) have truly now become like a creed. They’re only superficially about diagnosis and medication. For most people, they’re more profoundly about a sense of menace bearing down upon the world of our children.

There’s a sense that greater powers, profit-driven and amoral, are pulling the strings in our children’s lives. There’s a sense that those who should best protect us — our government and our doctors — are so corrupted that they can no longer do the job. There’s a sense that childhood has, in many ways, been denatured, that youth has been stolen, that the range of human acceptability has been narrowed for our kids to a point that it has become soul-crushingly inhuman.

The author backs away from this dark vision, saying that maybe it is not so, and muttering about the casualties of these Ritalin Wars, the children. This is certainly a hard pill to swallow for any one.

And yet, as we look back at the other scandals of our age, the Enrons and the Haliburtons, the scandal of the Iraq War, and others, we desperately want the drug industry to be pure as Snow White, and as pristine as the americas before the arrival of the White European. Sadly, it might not be so.

Local psychologist booked on suspicion of raping patient

From KSBY 6

Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Deputies arrest a former clinical psychologist on rape charges. Doctor Fernando Cordero used to work for the county's Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Health Services in Santa Maria.

Deputies say a woman currently in jail accused Cordero of coercing her into a sexual relationship for more than three years by threatening to have her put back in jail. While investigating, another former patient said she was propositioned and accosted by Cordero.

Deputies arrested Cordero at his home in Orcutt last Friday.

Detectives are in contact with a possible third victim and believe there may be more.

See also this report from the Santa Maria Times

An Orcutt psychologist has been arrested on suspicion of raping a 44-year-old female patient while he was working for Santa Barbara County Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Services, sheriff's officials said Thursday.

Fernando Cordero, 65, was arrested at his Orcutt home Nov. 9, according to a Sheriff's Department press release.

The woman, who is now in County Jail on theft charges, told investigators late last month that she was coerced into a sexual relationship with Cordero more than three years ago, when she was his patient at a county ADMHS facility on Foster Road in Santa Maria. He allegedly told her he would put her in jail if she did not comply with his sexual demands.

During the investigation, another former patient of Cordero also came forward with allegations that he had propositioned her to have sex and had physically accosted her, a sheriff's spokesman said.

Cordero apparently “has targeted Hispanic females with past abuse, mental health issues and questionable legal status in the United States,” added Sgt. Erik Raney.

Cordero was jailed on suspicion of committing rape under color of authority and subsequently released, after posting $100,000 bail. No information was available about when his court arraignment is scheduled.

Detectives are asking that anyone with relevant information about Cordero, or other potential victims, call the Santa Maria sheriff's substation at 805-934-6170.

Girls get extra school help while boys get Ritalin

From USA Today. An important insight into another angle on ADHD

At last June's graduation at Franklin High School just outside of Milwaukee, three of the four students who tied for valedictorian were girls. Among the National Honor Society members, 76% were girls. And girls comprised 85% of the students on Franklin's 4.0 honor roll.

The superintendent of schools for this upper-middle-class suburb, Gerald Freitag, investigated those numbers after the parents of a boy filed a complaint. He found that the skewed performances by gender at Franklin pretty much mirror the imbalances across the state — and the nation.

This week, teachers at the middle school feeding into Franklin received training on how to reach out to boys. And high school teachers will continue the gender-sensitivity classes they began last school year.

But reversing the trend will not be easy. In classrooms nationwide, girls are pulling ahead of boys academically. Recent federal testing data show that what starts out as a modest gap in elementary-level reading scores turns into a yawning divide by high school. In 12th grade, 44% of girls rate as proficient readers on federal tests, compared with 28% of boys. And while boys still score slightly higher on federal math and science exams, their advantage is slipping.

Most startling is that little is being done to correct the imbalances. All of the major players — schools, education colleges and researchers — largely ignore the gender gap.

Instead of pursuing sound solutions, many educators merely advocate prescribing more attention-focusing Ritalin for the boys, who receive the drug at four to eight times the rate of girls, according to different estimates. "Too often the first reaction to an attention problem is 'Let's medicate,' " says Rockville, Md., child psychologist Neil Hoffman. "Some schools are quick to recommend solutions before they've fully evaluated the problem."

Playing to girls' strengths

One reason boys are losing academic ground to girls appears linked to a shift by schools to more word-based learning for which girls' brains are believed to have an advantage. Over the years, even math problems have become more word oriented, according to education researchers. But because schools are doing little to help boys adjust, males risk becoming second-class academic citizens. Already the academic success girls enjoy in high school translates into more college acceptances — 56% of the students on campuses are female.

The full impact from this shift is something society has yet to discover. But a drop in earnings for males is one likely result. Workers with only a high school diploma earn $20,000 a year less than those with a bachelor's degree.

One fact explains why educators are ignoring boys' needs: You can't address a problem that you don't admit exists. The U.S. Department of Education concedes that no serious research is available comparing different instructional methods that might help boys. In fact, many education researchers are hostile toward research aimed at exploring gender differences in learning.

Last April, when Kenneth Dragseth, superintendent of schools in Edina, Minn., presented a paper describing his district's gender gap at the American Educational Research Association's annual meeting in Chicago, he says the reception ranged from chilly to hostile. Female education researchers in the audience questioned whether helping boys would mean hurting girls.

Their attitude follows years of lobbying by groups such as the American Association of University Women, which alerted educators to the fact that girls were being shortchanged academically in the fields of math and science. The extra attention helped focus schools on girls' difficulties, but it has made it too easy for educators to overlook the problems of boys. Among them:

•Boys and girls learn differently. The best research on boy-girl learning differences is produced more by accident than by design. The lack of data in this field can hurt girls as much as boys. For instance, as part of an ongoing 20-year dyslexia study focusing on Connecticut schools, Yale neuroscientist and pediatrician Sally Shaywitz discovered that schools were identifying four times as many dyslexic boys as girls. Yet when her team entered schools to screen children, it diagnosed just as many dyslexic girls as boys. Shaywitz found that the mostly female teaching staff was quicker to identify rambunctious boys than quiet girls.

The results are just one example of what might be learned about the role gender plays in education, especially in elementary school, where 85% of teachers are women.

• Future teachers aren't trained to deal with learning differences. Therapist Michael Gurian, author of Boys and Girls Learn Differently!, has visited more than 100 education colleges. But he has not found one that offers courses on male-female brain differences. His discovery explains why many new teachers arrive in classrooms clueless about what teaching techniques might work best for boys' learning styles.

• Boys lack advocates. The special efforts made by schools to steer more girls into advanced math and science classes came after powerful advocacy groups embraced the problem. But Gurian and other advocates for boys say they run into resistance from educators who point to males' success in the workforce as proof that advocacy for boys is unnecessary.

In spite of the lack of research, anecdotal evidence shows that far more effective strategies are available for teaching boys than plying them with Ritalin. Patricia Henley runs a boy-friendly charter school in Kansas that hires many male teachers. It also recognizes boys' natural tendency to favor active learning by conducting more class work on the chalkboard and allowing more student movement within the classroom. And the school trains teachers to deal with boys' particular styles. For instance, because boys volunteer answers more slowly than girls do, teachers are told to count to 10 before calling on a student.

Beginning in the early 1990s, groups such as the American Association of University Women performed an important service by alerting the public to an educational failing. Their persistence helped convince educators that schools were ignoring important problems plaguing girls, such as the loss of self-esteem among middle school girls who had been successful students throughout elementary school.

Today's education system fails many boys. They deserve the same kind of attention to address why they are losing ground.

Help! My doctor's not listening to me

CNN has a series of continuing stories about patients taking control over their own medical care, and the care of people close to them. This snippet caught our attention.

When Shelly's son, Travis, started to misbehave in first grade, her pediatrician diagnosed attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder and prescribed stimulant drugs.

After months on the drugs and several dosage changes, the medications didn't help, says Shelly, who asked that her last name not be used.

Shelly took Travis to another pediatrician, then another and another.

In all, she says, eight doctors prescribed stimulants such as Ritalin -- often increasing the dosage -- even though she explained they hadn't worked before.

"They just kept saying, 'You need to give it time,' " Shelly says. "But he was so jacked up on drugs he couldn't sleep at night. We thought, 'These drugs aren't working, so why do they keep increasing the dosage?' "

Finally, after three years of trying stimulants to treat ADHD, a psychologist diagnosed in Travis a high-functioning form of autism. At 9, Travis stopped the ADHD drugs and started therapy for autistic children.

His behavior improved, his grades went up, and now at 14, his mother says, he's a "model student."

"I cringe and cry when I think back on the three years wasted knocking on doors," she says.

This is a hard won victory, even though we are not thrilled by some of the issues related to the treatment of autism. We are glad to have more people standing up for themselves.

Special Note: Empowered Patient, a regular feature from CNN Medical News correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, helps put you in the driver's seat when it comes to health care.

Dramatic Hike Forecast For ADHD Drugs Spending in UK - Marketing Campaign Projected to be Huge Success

We anticipate that a huge marketing campaign will produce the results anticipate. As seen in this report

The National Health Service in the UK is likely to face a 10-fold increase in the cost of drugs prescribed to children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the decade to 2012.

The research modelled various scenarios to determine possible costs to the National Health Service in England and the statutory health insurance providers in Germany.

Michael Schlander of the University of Heidelberg in Germany created a model based on demographic and epidemiological data, past spending trends, and an assessment of which drugs may soon be available for prescriptions. He calculated a range of the possible costs by varying the assumptions made for factors such as the likelihood of diagnosis and treatment, the level of treatment and the costs of drugs.

The cost of ADHD prescriptions to the NHS in England was £7 million in 2002 and the study predicted that this will rise to somewhere between £49 and £101 million per year by 2012. Prof Schlander stated: "The scenarios developed here strongly suggest that the trend of rising drug expenditures for ADHD may not abate in the near future."

At the same time Schlander emphasized that caution should be exercised when interpreting this data: "The mere focus of the present analysis is budgetary impact," and thus the data "illuminate just one half of the health economic equation; they do not provide information on 'value for money'."

The main characteristics of ADHD are inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. In the USA the percentage of children being treated for ADHD has been estimated at between 2.9 and 4.8%. The ADHD drugs bill in the USA is expected to top $4 billion by 2010 (for adults as well as children). In the UK it is thought that ADHD used to be under-diagnosed. The number of prescriptions is now rising sharply. One new drug that may become available in 2008 in the UK is Vyvanse(r), which is thought to have a lower potential for abuse and overdose than existing ADHD drugs.

Article: Impact of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) on Prescription Drug Spending for Children and Adolescents: Increasing Relevance of Health Economic Evidence, Michael Schlander, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health (in press)

Psychiatrists paid more for doing less, if they do anything at all

Shrink Rap has an interesting insight of private practice shrinks

Many psychiatrists in private practice don't take insurance, or don't 'accept assignment.' They require the to patient pay them and then the patient can submit to his health insurance company and reimbursement is made directly to the patient. This often means that the patient, having gone Out-Of-Network, has a higher co-pay &/or a higher deductible, and the hassle of paperwork. Generally, if a patient sees an In-Network psychiatrist, they make a copay and the hassle of getting the rest of the money falls on the doctor.

Psychiatrists fresh out of school generally go into private practice, because that is where the money is. So how does this work out?

So how and why does any psychiatrist accept insurance? Basically, the insurance companies pay okay for short appointments with a psychiatrist. While there are time standards for coding psychotherapy appointments (25 minutes, 45-50 minutes), nearly everyone charges more per hour for a 25 minute appointment than for a 50 minute appointment, even many of the out-of-network docs. So a psychiatrist who sees two patients in an hour makes more than a psychiatrist who sees one patient in an hour, and often the insurance companies-- perhaps eager to encourage their policy holders to seek psychotherapy with a cheaper provider-- will pay a reasonable amount for a shorter session-- perhaps they make this worth doing. And "Med Management" 90862 for those of you who like CPT codes-- has no time restrictions on it. If a psychiatrist can squeeze four or five patients into an hour, he can do okay by the insurance companies.

So the psychiatric profit margin is in putting patients on drugs, rather than actually sitting down with them, talking things over, and doing something for the human being sitting there in front of them.

It is very easy to make the prediction that psychiatric profit margins will go up with drug usage, and most psychiatrist will develop a lack of interest in doing anything else for their clients except other then prescribing them some pills to pop.

Moody Is the New Bipolar - as mental illness has become extremely profitable, we are seeing more of it.

The following is an introduction to a much longer article, available online via AlterNET and first seen in the November 2007 issue of Z Magazine

In Eugene Jarecki's documentary film Why We Fight, about the U.S. military-industrial complex, U.S. foreign policy critic Chalmers Johnson states: "I guarantee you when war becomes that profitable, you are going to see more of it." Similarly, as mental illness has become extremely profitable, we are seeing more of it.

On September 4, 2007, the New York Times reported, "The number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold from 1994 to 2003 ... Drug makers and company-sponsored psychiatrists have been encouraging doctors to look for the disorder."

Not too long ago, a child who was irritable, moody, and distractible and who at times sounded grandiose or acted without regard for consequences was considered a "handful." In the U.S. by the 1980s, that child was labeled with a "behavioral disorder" and today that child is being diagnosed as "bipolar" and "psychotic" -- and prescribed expensive antipsychotic drugs. Bloomberg News, also on September 4, 2007, reported, "The expanded use of bipolar as a pediatric diagnosis has made children the fastest-growing part of the $11.5 billion U.S. market for antipsychotic drugs."

Psychopathologizing young people is not the only reason for the dramatic rise in sales of such antipsychotics as Eli Lilly's Zyprexa and Johnson & Johnson's Risperdal (each, in recent years, grossing annually from $3 to $4 billion). Much of Big Pharma's antipsychotic boon is attributable to generous U.S. government agencies, especially Medicaid. The Medicaid gravy train has been fueled by Big Pharma corruption so over-the-top that it has been the subject of recent media exposures.

The Associated Press, on August 21, 2007, reported, "A groundbreaking Minnesota law is shining a rare light into the big money that drug companies spend on members of state advisory panels who help select which drugs are used in Medicaid programs for the poor and disabled." Those advisory panels -- dominated by physicians -- have great influence over the $28 billion spent by Medicaid on drugs, but only Minnesota, Vermont, and Maine require drug companies to report monies paid to physicians. The AP article focused on John E. Simon, a psychiatrist on the Minnesota advisory panel since 2004, who received $489,000 from Eli Lilly between 1998 and 2006. The top drugs paid for by Minnesota Medicaid, according to the AP article, have been antipsychotic drugs, especially Eli Lilly's Zyprexa.

Another Case of Kids Over-Medicated on Psych Drugs

A report from Corpus Christi, Texas

The parents of three elementary students who showed up for school seemingly under the influence of drugs were back in court Tuesday to see if a judge would allow them to keep the children temporarily.

The kids, ages 6, 9 and 10, reportedly have been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. They have been living with their paternal grandparents since they were taken from their mother and stepfather in September.

Tuesday judge Carl Lewis decided Tuesday the children would remain with the grandparents for at least the next 30 days.

In the courtroom, the kids' mother Jennifer Bartley and stepfather Edward Bartley avoided KRIS-TV cameras, and they would not say on-camera whether they intentionally overmedicated their children. But, police said, on Sept. 14, the children appeared drunk as the couple dropped off two of Jennifer's three children at Luther Jones Elementary

Investigators later found out the 10-year-old daughter tested positive for a drug similar to Xanax, a drug not prescribed to her.

A court document recently obtained by 6 News...read, "the children were admitted into the hospital for over a week". It went on to say, "there was sexual acting out by (the 10-year-old) with (the 6-year-old.)"

The document outlined a family service plan outlining tasks Jennifer and Edward Bartley must complete, including placing the children's medications in a lock box that includes a sign-in sheet listing times and dates medications are given.

The couple was also order to undergo family counseling. The Bartleys, along with the children's father, Joshua Davenport, also must submit to random drug testing.

Davenport did not want to talk on camera, but he told the judge he no longer uses drugs and that he hopes to get custody of his children someday.

The court did allow for the parents to see the children once a week.

Davenport said the 9-year-old suffers from bipolar disorder and ADHD, and he has been admitted into Padre Behavioral Hospital. Court documents said the child has made little progress with his conditions.

The other two children reportedly were also seeing a psychiatrist.

Lewis said he will review the case again in 30 days.

A police investigation has not determined whether the parents unnecessarily drugged the children. If it does, however, whoever is to blame could face a charge of injury to a child or endangering a child.

Hopefully this won't turn into another case where a psychiatrist misdiagnosed a case of child abuse as ADHD. Tragically, there is an awful chance that it will.

Fortunately, no child was killed due to drug side effects. Tragically, the psychiatrist in charge of this fiasco is not likely to be investigated.

Normal Variations in Brain Development Misdiagnosed as ADHD

As seen in this ABC News Report, regarding new research in ADHD

"In children with ADHD, the brain matures in a normal pattern but is delayed by three years in some regions, when compared to children without the disorder," said the study's lead investigator, Dr. Philip Shaw, a child psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Seeing as there are well known variations for humans reaching sexual maturity, ranging from age 12 (and younger) to age 18 (and older), it is not surprising that there would be a similar variations in brain development. In fact, it would not surprise me if it followed a bell curve distribution.

As a comparison for numbers, in 1998, a study suggested that approximately 7 to 10 percent of the adult population was left-handed. Studies indicate that left-handedness is more common in males than females.

Similar numbers are reported for ADHD. It is argued the condition labeled ADHD is a disease, when left handedness is obviously not a disease.

There is a distinct possibility that the condition labelled ADHD is NORMAL and is in fact a prosurvival variation in development.

It now seems that these normal variations will be seized on as an excuse to drug children if they are not meeting certain social standards for behavior.

Normal variations should never be turned into a medical condition, and served up as an excuse for drugging kids.

Because the brain matures at a variable rate up to three years later (or earlier) than the average, it seems that the best treatment is TIME, not drugs.

Child psychiatrist suspended

As seen here

A child psychiatrist from Rye has been banned from practice by the General Medical Council, pending the outcome of a GMC investigation into matters relating to him.

The decision means that Hartmut Steffen, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, will remain suspended until 23 April, 2008.

No details of the circumstances leading to imposition of the ban are given in the decision, which has just been published.

However, a spokesman for the GMC said cases such as this are referred to the Interim Orders Panel when a doctor is facing allegations of such a nature that it may be necessary for the protection of members of the public, or otherwise be in the public interest or in the interests of the doctor, for the doctor's registration to be restricted whilst the allegations are resolved.

The spokesman said that considerations taken into account included preserving public trust in the medical profession and maintaining good standards

Without evidence, we can only speculate as to the actual reasons behind the suspension. Typical reasons in recent years involve drugs, sex, or both, with tax fraud bringing up tyhe rear.

Man fights to keep his testicle, Psychiatrist had waived his rights to keep it.

As seen in this report

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.

At least he gets a chance to decide his own fate.