The psychiatrist slain recently reignites this debate.
Related posts:
- Picking a sleep medication
- Inevitable: NHS forced to ration care
- You’re spending too much time with patients
- When your psychiatrist isn’t nice
- Why suffering patients find their way to psychiatrists
- Op-ed: Doctors are forced into running a business
- MAOIs
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 2 comments }
Happens more frequently than is actually reported. Families have an interest in keeping things out of the press and public eye. One year ago last week my nephew bludgeoned my sister to death. His organic brain disease since birth was progressively complicated by aggressive behaviors, and had psychotic and paranoid tendancies. Obtaining the necessary state hospital commitment was all but impossible until he killed his mother. We managed to keep this quite quet for the sake of the younger kids in their house to buffer the small town gossip. Just as much a statistic as the Doc’s story, but likely not recorded as a violent act by a sick mind in ways easily enumerated.
Gasman, Do you think alot of the problem, especially when dealing with teens, is societies desire to blame the parents?
I worked on an adoloescent psych ward for a time. I was amazed at how many times the conclusion was always…”There is nothing wrong with this kid, its the parents fault.” Many times that was true but not always.
There were some of these kids who had real brain disorders and would just beat the crap out of their mother’s. Then when the parents seek and beg for help, society and the medical profession failed them. Instead of helping, we blamed them. Only when these kids did something really horrible, as what you describe, did the medical profession then realize that maybe they should have listened to the parents.
We once had a 15 year old boy who had been in for multiple admissions He was so violent that his parents were living a nightmare every single day. Finally, he would be going to a long term residential treatment center. His admission there would start on the following Monday and on Friday the physician decided he should go home for the weekend and then be admitted directly to the RTC on Monday. It was a disastrous decision. This boy committed suicide while at home that weekend.
Msybe he could have been saved during his time in RT or maybe not but, I know he deserved to have that chance.
I’m very sorry your family has had to endure this.
Comments on this entry are closed.