Take Them In, Make Them Worse

I am convinced that our "Behavioral Health Units" are not actually helping people get any better. I have visited three different BHUs - Los Gatos, Fremont and Santa Cruz to talk to patients requesting help, and these are not happy places. Even the Nurses and Techs that work there look like the patients. If it wasn't for the uniforms or which side of the desk they were on, I wouldn't be able to tell. I did not see ONE happy face in there. You ARE supposed to get better.

I've received reports of patients being discharged in the middle of the night and ending up in front of a stranger's doorstep. Someone obviously made up an address or something.

I bring this up as over the last two days there were two incidents:

Saturday at dinner time, I was leaving my house and saw a woman walking down the street, talking to herself. She wasn't talking into a headset or phone so it was clear she was talking to herself. She was pretty disheveled as well. I waited until she walked by before I drove off and as she passed me by, I could hear her swearing to herself and she then spat on me! A huge spray of spit. Just kept on walking. Considering the work that I do, I found this somewhat tragically ironic.

Sunday morning at Long's Drugstore, there was another lady in the store. She was swearing to herself and bitching about how psychiatric drugs are poison and not to take them. She wasn't talking on the phone either. Her appearance was poor and ragged.

My conclusion is that these two ladies had the unfortunate luck of needing help, got themselves into the hands of Psychiatrists who simply drugged them up and let them loose again, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were given shock therapy either. Made them worse.

Foster Care & Same Sex Marriage - The Battle Lines are Starting to Be Drawn

- First of all, from my posting on the Foster Care Study Report, a comment was posted requesting who, what, where on it. Sponsored by the California Mental Health Planning Council with an assist by the Children And Youth Subcommittee. It mentions in the report that a consultant had been hired to analyze and such the data that was gathered but I have not run into who that consultant is. And here is the link to that report which I should have provided initially but I was too lazy.

http://www.dmh.cahwnet.gov/Mental_Health_Planning_Council/docs/FinalReportFosterCareStudy101507.pdf

- A couple of excerpts from the San Jose Mercury News from when the Courts approved Same Sex Marriage:

"Nichole and Jeanine Soterwood of Santa Clara share the same last name, are domestic partners and have completed a civil union ceremony in Vermont... "

...

"And with the family in flux as they adopt a daughter, she feels a little gun shy about planning a wedding, even though she's begun to think about it. "I don't think we'll do it anytime soon," she said." (italics and bold mine)

What if I told you the that the 'daughter' they are talking about should actually be reunified with the family or relative placement? And What if I told you that the family and relatives are actually very concerned about their child being temporarily raised by a same-sex couple? And what if I told you that the Soterwoods are teaching the daughter to call them, "Mommy", and "Mama", which is not being very much appreciated by the family?

Mind you, I said, "What if..."

Stay tuned for when there are no more, "what ifs".

Doctor to Stand Trial in Prozac Death of College Student

The Associated Press Article Last Updated: 06/13/2008 11:08:17 AM PDT

SAN MATEO, Calif.—A Colorado doctor accused of illegally prescribing generic Prozac to a Stanford College student who later committed suicide will stand trial in San Mateo County this fall.

Prosecutors say Dr. Christian Ellis Hageseth prescribed the generic drug called fluoxetine for student John McKay through an online pharmacy in 2005.

At the time of the purchase, Hageseth was not allowed to fill prescriptions because he had a restricted medical license.

McKay committed suicide two months later, leading to charges against Hageseth.

Attorneys for the 67-year-old Hageseth had argued he could not be prosecuted in California because he was not in the state when he prescribed the medication.

The judge in the case has ordered Hageseth to stand trial on Oct. 20 on a single charge of practicing medicine without a license in the state of California.

Foster Care Report

I've been studying a report from the California Mental Health Planning Council, "Foster Care Study Report", dated October 2007. You may be asking why, well, I don't have a book of Fairy Tales (which is quite an inside joke and not a dig on the Report, actually). When I am asked why I am reading it, I usually say, "so that you don't have to."

This sucker is 60 pages long, and I am only on page 20. Plus, throughout the report it alludes to different studies and agencies which I also have to get familiar with. Today, I got through some 10 plus pages while sucking down a Jamba Juice. (I was talking to a judicial officer the other day and I mentioned I was reading this report. The response was some degree of frustration of the amount of reports needing to be read. I'd say. Ironically, I then handed a report to her to read!)

Highlights so far:

To improve accountability there are several components being implemented. I am commenting on just one of them. It is called County Self-Assessments, with the purpose of identifying its strengths and challenges and conducts re-assessments every three-years. EVERY THREE YEARS?!!! That is WAY TOO LONG!!! (Well, in all fairness, there is also the Quarterly County Data Reports which I will get my hands on.)

One of the welfare services policy and practice shifts is called, Prevention and Early Intervention. To quote, "the service approach has changed to place a greater emphasis on prevention and early intervention activities as the most effective method of protecting children and decreasing the demand for foster care."

BUT

"the current financing structure creates a financial incentive to place and keep children in foster care."

"This means that there are limited funds available to provide services to families to keep them at home, or return them to their parents. Moreover, funding is scarce for the types of prevention and early intervention services that communities are seeking."

This is the point that has been being used to alleged that Child Protective Services are kidnapping children for 'bonuses'.

However, in January 2007, there supposedly was an exemption or waiver to partly address the above. "The purpose of the waiver is to encourage and allow the use of innovative strategies or intensive services in order to prevent or limit placement in foster care." This waiver ends on December 20, 2011.

Some other bullets of possible interest from the report:

Medi-Cal program expenditures for Foster Care increased 350% over a ten-year period to $3,352 per eligible and the average cost per client was $6,793.

"... it is impossible to judge the quality, availability or the manner in which services are being delivered. "

"More than 700,000 children come into contact with California's child welfare system each year. On any given day, more than 175,000 children are in contact with the child welfare system. However, the majority of children in California's CWS (Child Welfare System) are not in foster care."

"More than 86,000 children were in foster care in 2004, a decline from the 108,000 children who were in foster care in 2000."

"Of the children in foster care about 19,000 will reunify with their parents and 8,000 will be adopted during the course of a year. About 51% of the children in foster care in California have been in foster care for over two years. As these children remain longer in care, their likelihood of being reunified decreases..."

Tomorrow is probably another 10 pages, another Jamba Juice.

Los Altos Psychologist Skates on 3 Year Probation

John N. Marquis, a Los Altos Psychologist was placed on a 3 year probation by the Board of Psychology in March of 2008. According to public documents, Marquis narrowly escaped having his license revoked as he was instead given a number of restrictions to follow or risk having his license canceled.

According to the documents, in 2004, Marquis violated the privacy laws of his client by releasing therapy notes into court records without the express permission of his patient, who at time, was 13 years old. Marquis claimed he had a court order to do so but alas, he could not provide any official court order stating that he was to submit an evaluation report and therapy notes to the court as part of a family custody dispute. To complicate the matter, Marquis prepared reports that are undated, and they were unclear whether the reports generated are of psychotherapy or actual evaluation reports to the court. Further investigation revealed that Marquis was promoting that he specialized in “Evaluations and expert testimony”, however this was found to be just more deception on his part as he did not indicate which areas, if any, he is qualified to perform these evaluations or offer expert testimony.

Marquis did admit, per records, that he deliberately combined the roles of therapist and evaluator and, “continued to believe at the time of the interview that this was ideal behavior for this type of case.” However, Marquis never clarified or recorded with his patient that he was combining the role of evaluator and psychotherapist. (This dual relationship is considered an extreme departure from the standards of care.)

As a further display of arrogance let alone unprofessional conduct, it was found that Marquis had stated he treated sex offenders and was involved in 15-20 court cases in this area, some of which involved courtroom testimony but not written reports, yet he had not had any “significant involvement in Family Court matters, and no involvement at all in such cases for approximately 20 years.” Evidently, Marquis also had ZERO training or experience in family law forensic practice!

Monterey Psychiatrist License Revoked

Monterey Psychiatrist, Richard Seigle’s license was revoked in April of 2008 by the Medical Board of California

In a 50 page document from the Medical Board of California, Seigle was found to be guilty of gross negligence, repeated acts of negligence and incompetence in the treatment of five patients. This included grossly over-prescribing psychiatric medications, prescribing dangerous drugs to patients who were already suffering from withdrawal symptoms, and having sexual relations with a patient.

The sordid details are as follows: Seigle started a sexual relationship with a patient while his own wife was in the hospital. During this relationship, knowing full well that his patient was a recovering alcoholic, he encouraged her to mix medications with alcohol which resulted in her completely falling back into alcohol addiction. Soon after, she, while drunk, attempted to steal merchandise from a store but was caught, arrested and jailed. While Seigle told his ‘patient’ that he was looking forward to getting together with her after she was released, he ultimately told her that he was seeing someone else and could no longer see her.

In an interview with Medical Board Investigators, Seigle denied any sexual relations with the patient, instead attempted to degrade her further by stating, “Knowing her history, she’s accused men of raping her.”, and, “She can be hyper-religious and obsessed about sacrilege…”

To further underscore what a loser Seigle is, he had also lost $1,000,000 of his wife’s money in a Brain Scanning practice, $250,000 of his own investment, had to shut down the business and declare personal and corporate bankruptcy.