Mental illness is at an all-time high, with 40 million Americans affected, according to reports emanating from organized psychiatry. But just how accurate is this account? As you will see, people seeking help from the mental health industry are often misdiagnosed, wrongfully treated, and abused. Others are deceptively lured to psychiatric facilities, or even kidnapped. No matter how they arrive, though, once they are there, inmates lose all freedoms and are forced to undergo dangerous but sanctioned procedures, such as electroconvulsive therapy and treatment with powerful drugs, that can leave them emotionally, mentally, and physically marked for life. Some psychiatric patients are physically and sexually abused. Millions more are told that they need harmful medications, such as Prozac and Ritalin, but are not told of the seriously damaging side effects of these.
Add to all this a mammoth insurance fraud - which we all pay for - and what we have, in sum, is the dark side of psychiatry. Millions of individuals are being grievously harmed by the mental health profession, and it's time that we as a society faced this.
Section Index:
Fraudulent Practices in Mental Health Insurance Scams Patient Brokering Bogus and Nonexistent Treatments Abusive Treatments Your Taxes Pay for This Psychiatric Research Inhumane Treatment Involuntary Commitment Electroconvulsive Therapy Deep Sleep Therapy Sexual AbuseExploitation of Minorities Abuse of Senior Citizens Prozac: A Second Opinion Worthless Clinical Trials The Medical Industrial Complex Side Effects of Prozac Tardive Dystonia and Tardive Dyskinesia Sexual Dysfunction Biochemical Imbalance Dependency Overcoming Depression Without DrugsFraudulent Practices in Mental Health
Fraud in the mental health industry goes beyond being a problem; it's more like an all-pervasive condition. By way of introductory illustration, let's look at the recent legal problems of a company that owned several chains of psychiatric hospitals, National Medical Enterprises (NME). As author Joe Sharkey reported in his book Bedlam1,2 in 1993 the FBI completed its investigation of fraud in NME's psychiatric hospitals and raided several NME facilities, in Texas, Colorado, Indiana, Arizona, Missouri, California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Sharkey described the extent of the morass into which this enterprise had sunk:
"An estimated 130 lawsuits were filed against NME's psychiatric hospitals by patients. Between 1992 and early 1993, three major suits were filed by insurance companies against NME for insurance fraud. These suits identified more than $1 billion in claims paid to NME's psychiatric hospitals. One month after the FBI raids, NME agreed to pay $125 million to settle two of the large insurance company lawsuits. Soon after, they settled the third suit - bringing the total costs in legal fees and settlements to about $315 million....
"In April 1994, NME paid almost $375 million in fines to the US Department of Justice for violations of Federal law. NME had announced that it would completely divest itself of its psychiatric hospitals and reserved $237 million to cover the write-offs for selling them. All told, NME's settlements and fines have totaled $927 million."
Insurance Scams
The wrongdoings of NME are not the exception; indeed, insurance fraud seems to be the bread and butter of the mental health industry. Scams occur whenever a psychiatrist or a psychiatric institution bills Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance companies for work they didn't do, for unnecessary or bogus treatments, or for patients confined against their will. Here are a few examples.
Patient Brokering
Consider this story, carried by the Los Angeles Times in 19943:
"Michael quickly realized that A Place For Us wasn't a place for him. Overweight and suffering from stress, the New Yorker had flown cross country to attend what was advertised as a weight loss clinic in southern California. The airfare was free and the treatment, he was told, was fully covered by his Blue Cross plan. But when Michael reached Los Angeles, he was shocked to see himself booked into a psychiatric hospital in a rundown section of [town] where he was diagnosed as suffering from psychotic depression and bulimia, conditions he denies ever having. Then he was told he couldn't leave. Michael is one of many stories emerging from federal and state lawsuits in Los Angeles in which insurers accuse A Place For Us of enlisting doctors and hospital staff to falsify diagnosis and medical records in order to obtain payment for treatment that, whatever its value to patients, was not covered by their health plans."
Michael's story is not an isolated incident. Overweight people are frequent targets of insurance scams. Patient brokers fraudulently advertise 1-800 numbers on television, and people call in thinking that they are talking to health spa representatives. In actuality, they are speaking to sales agents of psychiatric facilities whose only motive is to determine whether or not potential clients have insurance, since the size of their commission depends upon how many patients they can get into the hospital and how long they can keep them there.
It's hard to believe that this is going on in America, but the reality is that, as a result of gross deception by sales agents, people are frequently unaware of the fact that they are about to enter psychiatric institutions. If an unsuspecting party has coverage, the person is flown free to a facility, usually located in Florida or California. A limo awaits at the airport, and the place seems very accommodating until the person actually arrives at the facility and is locked up against his or her will. Once the person realizes what is going on, it's too late. People who become upset and attempt to leave can be threatened or diagnosed as combative.
Civil litigation attorney Randy Lakel works pro bono to represent patients who were voluntarily committed to psychiatric facilities by deceptive patient brokers. He describes a case involving two men from eastern Pennsylvania who were approached by people in the crowd at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting and taken aside.4 The brokers suggested to them that maybe they needed a little extra help, which could be offered by professionals at overeaters' clinics. The men were lured to the institution under false pretenses and then locked up.
Lakel believes that the problem has reached huge proportions: "...There are federal grand juries investigating this. I've also spoken to general counsel from very large insurance companies that have called me up to inquire whether their insurance company was involved in any of my investigations.... The general impression I got from the mention of a grand jury investigation and the general counsel from a large insurance company was that it was not an isolated incident that I was dealing with."
Cont ...