Remembering Candace

“Jeane tried everything for Candace — doctors, counselors, drugs. Finally, in April, she brought Candace west to Evergreen for two weeks of a controversial psychotherapy called rebirthing.

Therapists curled Candace into the fetal position inside a flannel sheet and pushed against her from all sides.

She gasped for air. She begged them to stop.

She cried out that she was dying. They said go ahead.

And then she did.”

—Carla Crowder and Peggy Lowe, “Her Name Was Candace,” October 29, 2000, Rocky Mountain News

---

In April 2000, two therapists were accused of killing 10-year-old Candace Newmaker during a "rebirthing” session.

In a press release dated July 16, 2002, the APA president, Paul S. Appelbaum, M.D., said, “Re-birthing techniques have no place in psychiatric treatment. These extreme methods pose serious risk and should not be used under any circumstances.”

Untested, unapproved, and very unfortunate for one little girl.

Psychobabble

“I would like to give the penultimate word on the handbook’s unwarranted aura of scientific precision to Matthew Dumont, a psychiatrist who has written about the DSM* Work Group’s hollow pretensions to scientific authority:

I read the [DSM-III-R] compiler’s Introduction (will I be the only person in the civilized world, except for a few copy editors, to have done so?) and found it an interesting statement, part apologia, part three imperious knocks from the wings. The humility and the arrogance in the prose are almost indistinguishable, frolicking like puppies at play. They say: ‘…while this manual provides a classification of mental disorder…no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept…’ [APA, 1987]. They then provide a 125-word definition of mental disorder which is supposed to resolve all the issues surrounding the sticky problem of where deviance ends and dysfunction begins. It doesn’t.

They go on to say: ‘…there is no assumption that each mental disorder is a discrete entity with sharp boundaries between it and other mental disorders or between it and no mental disorder’ [APA, 1987].

This is a remarkable statement in a volume whose 500-odd pages are devoted to the criteria for distinguishing one condition of psychopathology from another with a degree of precision indicated by a hundredth of a decimal place.”

—Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D., They Say You’re Crazy—How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal (1995, Addison-Wesley), P. 223

*Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Sexual Misconduct

Betrayed by the people they trusted, patients file charges against their therapists. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon practice.

2005, Tampa, FL: former chairman of the University of South Florida’s psychiatry department, Anthony John Reading, gave up his license after several patients complained that he fondled their breasts

2005, Miami, FL: Jose Anibal Cruz was accused of having sex with a patient for eight years—including when she was hospitalized!

2001, Del Mar, CA: psychiatrist and best-selling author, Harold Bloomfield is arrested for drugging and sexually assaulting several of his patients.
---

“According to a report published in August of 1996 by the public health watch dog group, Public Citizen Health Research Group, the number of all doctors disciplined for sexual misconduct doubled from 1990 to 1994. Of the total disciplinary actions taken against doctors, 5.1% were for sexual abuse of patients or other sexual misconduct. The American Psychiatric Association, a professional organization for psychiatrists which enforces its own code of ethics suspends or expels an average of 12 members per year for various forms of patient exploitation, most of them sexual. The Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards estimates 100 Psychologists lose their licenses annually for sexual misconduct. In addition, The American Psychological Association, a professional organization for Psychologists, estimates 10 members are expelled annually for sexual misconduct.”

—“A Thin Line,” Patient/Therapist Sexual Contact, 1998 Dateline, MSNBC

“As many as 7% of psychiatrists admit to having sexual intercourse with patients, despite ethical prohibitions going back to the Hippocratic Oath.”

—Bemmann KC, Goodwin J., “New laws about sexual misconduct by therapists: knowledge and attitudes among Wisconsin psychiatrists, ”Wisconsin Medical Journal, May 1989 (online at www.pubmed.gov)

Ritalin’s Russian Roulette

When an FDA advisory committee recommended a black box warning for Ritalin and similar stimulants, psychiatrist Edward Hallowell said, “Mothers around the country now think they are playing Russian Roulette with their kids."

The drugs, used to treat millions of children—and an increasing number of adults—may have dangerous effects on their hearts. Twenty-five sudden deaths were reported in people taking these drugs.

Cardiologist Steven Nissen said, "Raising blood pressure of a child or adult continuously over many years worries me." And added, "I want the physicians' hands to tremble a bit when they write a prescription for these drugs."

[Data from, “Getting Hyper About Ritalin,” by Claudia Wallis, Feb. 10, 2006, Time.com]

Infants Exposed to Antidepressants

Psychiatric News reports that pregnant woman can pass antidepressants to their unborn babies through amniotic fluid. As a result, some infants have experienced jitteriness, sleeping or eating problems. There was also a rise in cardiac malformation.

According to Ada Loughhead, of the Emory University School of Medicine, "Fetal development occurs in a continuous environment of pharmacologically active drug molecules when mothers are treated with these medications."

[From Psychiatry News, February 3, 2006,Volume 41, Number 3, page 25, American Psychiatric Association]

Get Tough Youth Programs

According to The National Institute of Health, programs for adolescents that employ scare tactics are not effective in deterring criminal behavior.

“The trouble with boot camps, group detention centers and other ‘get tough’ programs is that they bring together young people who are inclined toward violence and teach one another how to commit more crime, the panel said. ‘The more sophisticated instruct the more naive in precisely the behaviors that the intervener wishes to prevent.’"

[From “'Get Tough' Youth Programs Are Ineffective, Panel Says”, by The Associated Press, October 17, 2004]