too angry to form a logical argument

[Roma]

I am trying to write a letter to Dr.T. the President of a hospital to rebut his conclusion in response to my request for an apology for the misdiagnosis of multiple personality disorder.

I was misdiagnosed a long time ago by Dr.R. the director of that hospital's psychiatric department when after being asked what I do under stress I replied "switch to auto pilot and keep going".

I wrote Dr.T. last October explaining the problems I have encountered and will continue to encounter because of that misdiagnosis and provided documentation to him proving that I did not have MPD and am perfectly sane.
Two of the world's most highly regarded experts provided letters on my behalf, a psychiatrist from Canada and the other a psychiatrist and professor from Harvard.

I also included documents from several other psychiatrists from John Hopkins, Berkley and Philadelphia. I wrote my letter with the help of my province's Liberal Party leader who is also a doctor who wrote the province's Apology Act and thought I should also receive an apology from the hospital for the misdiagnosis.

So today I received Dr.T.'s response, short and infuriating. He concluded that since multiple personality disorder was in the DSM III when I was given that diagnosis then I was not misdiagnosed.

I am trying to respond to Dr.T.'s conclusion but am too angry to think clearly. What the hell? There are hundreds of diagnosis in that DSM III book but that doesn't mean I have any of them.

How can I argue? I am completely mind boggled (not in the DSM III).

I'm not kidding, I can imagine myself a little old lady in a nursing home some day dealing with that misdiagnosis, kind of worries me.

I've read some of the logical arguments in this philosophy site, I'm sure you guys can think of something. Help , please. Thank-you

[JoeyDonuts]

Is this physician your primary care provider?

Is the diagnosis preventing you from getting the assistance you feel you need?

I'm not being confrontational, I'm just wondering how the diagnosis affects your particular situation.

So today I received Dr.T.'s response, short and infuriating. He concluded that since multiple personality disorder was in the DSM III when I was given that diagnosis then I was not misdiagnosed.

I will say, that looks a little weak. He shouldn't be using DSM-III, DSM-IV was published in 1994 and has had several updates since that time. For one thing, the term "Multiple Personality Disorder" isn't used now. It should be "Dissasociative Identity Disorder." Anyway, klepto- and pyromania are also listed in the DSM. Just because something IS listed in the DSM doesn't mean it was the correct diagnosis in and of itself.

Sounds like you have one arrogant doctor there.

[Roma]

Dr.T. is the President of the St.B. General Hospital, a hospital that I will likely need to go to in this city if I get sick. There's not much choice.

My family doctor of 21 years quit last year but before he left he encouraged me to write that letter to Dr.T. and have all of my old hospital records sealed. Something Dr.T. said would be too much trouble. I don't have a family doctor now.

This diagnosis prevents me from being taken seriously by the staff at that hospital.
For example, every time I am sent to that hospital for test of any kind I am asked at registration "which personality I am".

All symptoms are immediately regarded as psychiatric. I went into premature labor with my second child and was sent to a private room with a security guard outside the door. The Head of psychiatry came with 5 med students because the nurses told him I was switching personalities. I expalined that the nurses were calling me by my middle name instead of my first name but the contractions were so painful I didn't bother to correct the nurses and would answer to whatever the hell name they wanted to call me.

I took a heart stress test and passed out cold on the floor at the second stage, it was recorded as "anxiety".

I broke my jaw and was given valium for a year before any proper x-rays were offered.

[slingblade]

You don't need to talk to the doctor.

You need to talk to a lawyer, who needs to talk to the doctor. Good gravy, what an awful problem. And isn't it nice how it's self-perpetuating, and no one has to take any of your protests or arguments seriously because you're insane? So of course you get angry, but of course, that's a symptom of your illness, so of course they patronize you and use "calming methods" on you, when in truth you could be perfectly calm if they'd just stop treating you as if you're insane!

Augh, that's horrible. Yeah, get a lawyer. And have a hug.

[HansMustermann]

I'll second the "talk to a lawyer" thing.

Even _if_ (ad absurdum) you were insane, what they're doing isn't any kind of sane treatment or attitude. Any kind of psychotherapy is based on listening what the patient has to say, and letting him feel safe and comfortable while he explores his problems and all. Attitudes along the lines of "bwahaha, and which personality are you today" are outright counter-productive, _if_ the purpose is to actually help him/her.

There's also the issue of confidentiality. Depending on how far they go (e.g., if they call you insane in front of other people from your town) they could even be breaking the law. But even if not, it's not the way to get patients open their heart and explore their problems. If you want to psychoanalyze someone and get them to explore their problems, you have to guarantee to them that it stays between you and them, not that they could just as well put it on posters outside.

Now it may sound like I'm treating you as insane, but I'm not. As I was saying, this is an "ad absurdum." If you actually were, they wouldn't (or shouldn't) act that way. Public ridicule is _not_ a way to treat mental problems, it's a way to create or deepen emotional or mental problems.

It seems to me like pure malice, and someone using their position to harrass.

[Soapy Sam]

You don't need to talk to the doctor.

You need to talk to a lawyer, who needs to talk to the doctor.

Augh, that's horrible. Yeah, get a lawyer. And have a hug.

I'm quoting Sling, because I can't say this any better.

Some senior medics have a god complex. All senior lawyers have.
Full house beats two pair.

[phantomb]

Lawyer, definitely. Media involvement might also be worth exploring as this whole thing could definitely turn into a big embarrassment for the hospital. Make sure you're documenting your correspondence with this doctor as well.

[fls]

I am trying to write a letter to Dr.T. the President of a hospital to rebut his conclusion in response to my request for an apology for the misdiagnosis of multiple personality disorder.

I was misdiagnosed a long time ago by Dr.R. the director of that hospital's psychiatric department when after being asked what I do under stress I replied "switch to auto pilot and keep going".

You need to be honest when dealing with this issue. You were not diagnosed as having MPD because you made an off-hand remark. If you were in a situation where you were undergoing evaluation by a psychiatrist, there was some reason(s) for others and/or you to think you may have a mental illness. If you don't recognize and deal with this aspect, when describing the situation to people with psychiatric experience, you will make it difficult to take what you say at face-value.

Instead, if you are upfront about any issues you have, it makes it easier to trust that what you are saying isn't coloured by denial and misinterpretation. Because here's the thing....even if the diagnosis is correct or you have some other psychiatric diagnosis, you were still treated inappropriately and unethically. It would not have been okay for the clerk to ask you which personality you were today, for a security guard to be posted, or for you to be offered valium and to fail to diagnose a broken jaw even if you had MPD. The problem isn't the misdiagnosis (sorta), it's what was done with that diagnosis. And it's important to get those issues addressed. It's bad enough that people encounter prejudice in regards to mental illness from the lay public, but ignorance should not be tolerated in a health care setting.

I wrote Dr.T. last October explaining the problems I have encountered and will continue to encounter because of that misdiagnosis and provided documentation to him proving that I did not have MPD and am perfectly sane.
Two of the world's most highly regarded experts provided letters on my behalf, a psychiatrist from Canada and the other a psychiatrist and professor from Harvard.

I also included documents from several other psychiatrists from John Hopkins, Berkley and Philadelphia. I wrote my letter with the help of my province's Liberal Party leader who is also a doctor who wrote the province's Apology Act and thought I should also receive an apology from the hospital for the misdiagnosis.

So today I received Dr.T.'s response, short and infuriating. He concluded that since multiple personality disorder was in the DSM III when I was given that diagnosis then I was not misdiagnosed.

I suspect that he was simply responding to the contents of your argument. I'm guessing that the letters/documents that you provided from other psychiatrists were not directed at confirming your sanity, but were directed towards the validity of MPD as a diagnosis. And I don't know how you documented that you were sane, but it is unreasonable to ask him to second-guess another physician's diagnosis well after the fact with inadequate information. Even if you can pass on a report from a current psychiatric exam, it doesn't really address whether or not the diagnosis was a reasonable consideration at the time. I wouldn't really expect him to address that aspect, since it is not something he can. What he could have addressed is any problems specific to St. B. that you encountered as a result of this label. But you may not have given him enough information to act upon. He can't act upon gossip among the radiology department support staff, for example.

I am trying to respond to Dr.T.'s conclusion but am too angry to think clearly. What the hell? There are hundreds of diagnosis in that DSM III book but that doesn't mean I have any of them.

Which is why I suspect that you were arguing against the condition and he was simply arguing in kind.

Why were you directing your letter to the president? Why do you want an apology? The conditions that you revealed in your other post are more egregious and they will not be solved when you receive your apology. If an apology is also important to you, then I understand your pursuit of the president. But you would benefit more from exploring some other avenues, I think.

I don't get the impression that you want to become a public figure, so I'm not sure media exposure would be useful. And I'm not sure what the story is, either. There isn't anything newsworthy about the fluidity of diagnoses or that health care workers like to gossip like everyone else. And without damages, what would interest a lawyer (unless you are wealthy and can afford to hire a lawyer to pursue a principle)?

I'm going to give you some specific suggestions in response to your other post. I'm an MD from Canada and I have some familiarity with the area you are located. Feel free to take this to PM.

Linda

[Roma]

Okay, here's the exact lette I wrote:

Dr. T
President and Chief Executive Officer
General Hospital

Winnipeg, Manitoba
R2H 2A6

Dear Dr.T

I write to specifically ask for an apology for the misdiagnosis of multiple personality disorder and consequent multiple personality disorder therapy I endured at the hands of Dr. R, the Former Director of Psychiatry at the St.B, and his staff under his direction.

In October 1986 a University of Manitoba Student Psych. Services counselor, (also his student at the time), arranged for me to bring in an unemployment insurance medical form to get my claim extended based upon stress. After only fifteen minutes in Dr. R’ office he diagnosed me as suffering from multiple personality disorder, he then put out his hand to welcome me to MPD therapy, I put out my hand with the unemployment insurance form in it, he signed it and my life was never the same again.

My family was destroyed from the inevitable false accusations of sexual and ritual abuse that follow a diagnosis of MPD. My parents, both teachers, took early retirement. My family disowned me. My 10 year-old daughter was placed in foster care and secluded from her entire family until she reached adulthood to “protect” her from “the Satanic cult” Dr. R informed CFS my family was involved in.

I could not complete my university degree because of the MPD therapy. I lost my home, lost my career, lost all of my friends, and nearly lost my life several times.

Today I am faced with this misdiagnosis every time I go to a hospital for any type of medical test so I am also asking for my hospital records to be sealed. I told my family doctor, Dr.E that I was going to include in my request for an apology an additional request for my hospital records to be sealed and he emphatically agreed with me.

I am attaching medical assessments written by two of the world’s most highly respected experts regarding their own opinions that I do not have MPD, nor should I ever have been diagnosed with or treated for MPD.

I believe I am owed an apology from the St.B because this misdiagnosis and the subsequent therapy based on this misdiagnosis has ruined not only my life but has had a devastating affect on every member of my family, particularly my daughter who suffered terribly in foster care for eight years.

I thank you for your time and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Ms. Roma Hart

[Roma]

I already spent 11 years dragging a medical malpractice lawsuit through the legal system and had to see it Dismissed Due to Delay because I could not afford to keep it going.

I had a broken foot, that's what the unemployment insurance was for but it ran out. My "clever" girlfriend suggested I could get an extension based on stress, why not go up to the Student Psych Center and have one of their counsellors fill out the unemployment extension form for me. How easy could that be, I was a single mom going to university full time, going back to work in the evenings as a maid with a foot that still hurt so baddly wasn't very appealing, if I could just get that extension to let my foot heal a little more , well why not, stressed? yup that's me.

Problem was that Student Psych couldn't fill out the form, and the doctor I went too see was findig patients with MPD under every rock. A complete lunatic, he went to the States after leaving my home town, that's why almost every expert witness who provided me with those letters is from the States, the reputable psychiatrists HATE him there. But when the patients in the States started suing him my source of funding for my lawsuit dwindled.

I couldn't get justice, but the Manitoba Apology Act was finally passed and received Royal Accent last year so at least, I thought , I could get an apology.

[fls]

Dr.T. is the President of the St.B. General Hospital, a hospital that I will likely need to go to in this city if I get sick. There's not much choice.

My family doctor of 21 years quit last year but before he left he encouraged me to write that letter to Dr.T. and have all of my old hospital records sealed. Something Dr.T. said would be too much trouble. I don't have a family doctor now.

Your family doctor should have helped you find a new doctor before he quit. You need to have family doctor that listens to you, because it sounds like you may need an advocate. I don't know what it's like trying to find a primary care doctor where you are right now. But you probably should make the effort before you run into another problem. You are a young enough woman that you can use the excuse that you need a pap test to get an appointment, right? Be upfront about the problems you've had - "I know I can get anxious or come across as a whiner, but I can still develop medical problems just like anyone else. I need someone who will listen and take me seriously, rather than considering 'anxiety' as the default diagnosis every time I develop a new problem."

This diagnosis prevents me from being taken seriously by the staff at that hospital.
For example, every time I am sent to that hospital for test of any kind I am asked at registration "which personality I am".

This is a PHIA issue. Facilities and health care professionals are governed by the Private Health Information Act. The clerk at the registration desk should not know that you have this diagnosis. Personal medical information can only be released on a need-to-know basis with your permission, so if the clerks know, then someone has violated PHIA. Realistically, MPD is a dramatic diagnosis and people like to gossip even if they're not supposed to. It may be that the word spread a long time ago and it is now common knowledge whose source is untraceable. However, if there is ongoing leakage, this can be addressed. The next time this happens, consider pursuing it. Get the clerk's name and ask how she knows that you have this diagnosis. It may be that the doctor has written in this information on the request form for the diagnostic test. I can't think of any test you could be having where this sort of information would be relevant, though. If that is the case, then complaints should be directed at the doctor. Make a specific complaint about information leakage to the department where it occurred - Registration, Radiology, Emergency, etc. Make a complaint to PHIA and involve the Ombudsman if necessary.

http://www.ombudsman.mb.ca/phia-faq.htm

If you can identify that it was the actions of a specific physician and discussion with that physician is not fruitful, complain to the College of Physicians and Surgeons (http://www.cpsm-secure.com/2_3_complaints.php). It is part of the duty of a physician to maintain confidentiality of the medical records (http://www.cpsm-secure.com/guidelines/117.php).

If it's a matter of 'common knowledge', it's still reasonable to expect the facility to deal with issues of prejudice. Make a complaint to a supervisor if a clerk makes a smart-ass comment.

All symptoms are immediately regarded as psychiatric. I went into premature labor with my second child and was sent to a private room with a security guard outside the door.

That is odd. I don't see how a diagnosis of MPD leads to a security guard. I have to wonder what else is in your history that leads anyone to associate you with a security risk.

The Head of psychiatry came with 5 med students because the nurses told him I was switching personalities.

This isn't unreasonable. It is better to ask an expert to evaluate whether or not there is a concern than to expect a nurse to make that call. And St. B. is a teaching hospital after all.

I expalined that the nurses were calling me by my middle name instead of my first name but the contractions were so painful I didn't bother to correct the nurses and would answer to whatever the hell name they wanted to call me.

How did the nurses know that you were diagnosed with MPD, since this certainly isn't information that would be relevant for your care? If it was the result of looking through your medical record, then I think you have a good case for getting your records altered. If you will notice, on that PHIA link I gave above, it describes the process for getting your records altered. I would consider pursuing the possibility of having all references to that diagnosis expunged if you can document that it was made in error.

I took a heart stress test and passed out cold on the floor at the second stage, it was recorded as "anxiety".

This may not have been unreasonable. You haven't given enough information, but if you passed out during the stress test, they would have been able to determine whether it was due to a physical condition. It may be that you were given the diagnosis of anxiety because they were able to rule-out other causes under those conditions, not because they ignored information in favour of a prior diagnosis.

I broke my jaw and was given valium for a year before any proper x-rays were offered.

That's your problem right there. If you had asked for valium, then they would have taken x-rays in order to justify withholding a possible drug of abuse. :rolleyes:

I think you've made a pretty good case for trying to prevent this diagnosis from following you around. You may have better luck if you start lower - like writing to Medical Records at the hospital. And give PHIA a try, as well. It puts more of the onus on you than is deserved, but you seem willing to put in some effort. And you may be able to get some of the physicians that you identified in your OP to continue to advocate on your behalf.

Linda

[fls]

Okay, here's the exact lette I wrote:

Dr. T
President and Chief Executive Officer
General Hospital

Winnipeg, Manitoba
R2H 2A6

Dear Dr.T

I write to specifically ask for an apology for the misdiagnosis of multiple personality disorder and consequent multiple personality disorder therapy I endured at the hands of Dr. R, the Former Director of Psychiatry at the St.B, and his staff under his direction.

In October 1986 a University of Manitoba Student Psych. Services counselor, (also his student at the time), arranged for me to bring in an unemployment insurance medical form to get my claim extended based upon stress. After only fifteen minutes in Dr. R’ office he diagnosed me as suffering from multiple personality disorder, he then put out his hand to welcome me to MPD therapy, I put out my hand with the unemployment insurance form in it, he signed it and my life was never the same again.

My family was destroyed from the inevitable false accusations of sexual and ritual abuse that follow a diagnosis of MPD. My parents, both teachers, took early retirement. My family disowned me. My 10 year-old daughter was placed in foster care and secluded from her entire family until she reached adulthood to “protect” her from “the Satanic cult” Dr. Colin Ross informed CFS my family was involved in.

I could not complete my university degree because of the MPD therapy. I lost my home, lost my career, lost all of my friends, and nearly lost my life several times.

Today I am faced with this misdiagnosis every time I go to a hospital for any type of medical test so I am also asking for my hospital records to be sealed. I told my family doctor, Dr.E that I was going to include in my request for an apology an additional request for my hospital records to be sealed and he emphatically agreed with me.

I am attaching medical assessments written by two of the world’s most highly respected experts regarding their own opinions that I do not have MPD, nor should I ever have been diagnosed with or treated for MPD.

I believe I am owed an apology from the St.B because this misdiagnosis and the subsequent therapy based on this misdiagnosis has ruined not only my life but has had a devastating affect on every member of my family, particularly my daughter who suffered terribly in foster care for eight years.

I thank you for your time and look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Ms. Roma Hart

I can understand why you want and deserve an apology. I do not know what sort of difference it will make to you - only you can make that determination - but you need more than that.

I guessed that the psychiatrist you were talking about had left the province and therefore was out of the jurisdiction of the College, who would have been responsible for ensuring his practice.

I don't have any personal experience with the debacle that you describe. Obviously this is part of a larger problem that has received well-deserved condemnation, but that doesn't help you personally.

I strongly encourage you to continue trying to get your records sealed and/or changed. I don't know how useful it would be to try and work through Dr. T. if he has already shown that he is reluctant (a far more temperate word than he deserves). If you can, you need to identify people locally who can help you and advocate on your behalf. I would really hope that you can identify a physician or physicians who can help you navigate this. It really should be possible to get this changed, though. I have a few connections, but I think they are less useful than the ones you already have. If you want my help (such as it is), please PM me.

Linda

[Roma]

I always get dizzy when I run, ever since I was little, I told them that and they wouldn't stop the test so I eventually passed out. Nothing much showed up on the first level of the test so they thumbed through my file and decided it was anxiety, though I don't know what so scary about running on a tread mill.

The doctor told me my jaw pain was TMJ and all I needed were warm baths and to reduce my stress, hence the valium.

Security guard outside the door, I still don't know why. Maybe they were worried about a crazy MPD person roaming around the maternity ward.

During the years that I was in deep MPD therapy with Dr.R. his therapy techniques certainly did cause me to behave like a crazy person, especially with the ultra high drug experiments and several hours of hypnotherapy every week. You can rightly say that I was known, and apparently well remembered.

[fls]

I already spent 11 years dragging a medical malpractice lawsuit through the legal system and had to see it Dismissed Due to Delay because I could not afford to keep it going.

I had a broken foot, that's what the unemployment insurance was for but it ran out. My "clever" girlfriend suggested I could get an extension based on stress, why not go up to the Student Psych Center and have one of their counsellors fill out the unemployment extension form for me. How easy could that be, I was a single mom going to university full time, going back to work in the evenings as a maid with a foot that still hurt so baddly wasn't very appealing, if I could just get that extension to let my foot heal a little more , well why not, stressed? yup that's me.

Problem was that Student Psych couldn't fill out the form, and the doctor I went too see was findig patients with MPD under every rock. A complete lunatic, he went to the States after leaving my home town, that's why almost every expert witness who provided me with those letters is from the States, the reputable psychiatrists HATE him there. But when the patients in the States started suing him my source of funding for my lawsuit dwindled.

I couldn't get justice, but the Manitoba Apology Act was finally passed and received Royal Accent last year so at least, I thought , I could get an apology.

I can't even begin to tell you how disgusted I am by this story. Okay, so maybe you shouldn't have agreed to the diagnosis when he first showed up, but really, how were you to know that it would lead to all this?!!

I would have expected that there would be a group of you locally that had been harmed by this. Is this not the case and you were on your own there?

Linda

[fls]

I always get dizzy when I run, ever since I was little, I told them that and they wouldn't stop the test so I eventually passed out. Nothing much showed up on the first level of the test so they thumbed through my file and decided it was anxiety, though I don't know what so scary about running on a tread mill.

The doctor told me my jaw pain was TMJ and all I needed were warm baths and to reduce my stress, hence the valium.

I'm only being somewhat facetious when I say that if you had asked for valium, your doctor would have done all he could to avoid giving it to you (like doing some diagnostic tests). This is not the first time I've seen something like this.

Security guard outside the door, I still don't know why. Maybe they were worried about a crazy MPD person roaming around the maternity ward.

I bet that was due to your CFS history, not the MPD per se.

During the years that I was in deep MPD therapy with Dr.R. his therapy techniques certainly did cause me to behave like a crazy person, especially with the ultra high drug experiments and several hours of hypnotherapy every week. You can rightly say that I was known, and apparently well remembered.

You can't help that you are known, but you could stop others from finding out as easily. Is it worth your while picking a doctor who is affliated with a different hospital?

Linda

[Roma]

Would my CFS history be in my hospital records?

I know my hospital records are in the old CFS file.

I have an old file in several hospitals in this city, but the main file regarding the initial misdiagnosis and therapy for MPD is in the St.B.
I was hoping to use the letter from Dr.T to help me get rid of all of those file references about MPD that exist at the other hospitals.

The Pain Clinic at the HSC, the emergency ward at a hospital a couple blocks away from my home, the hospital where I had my follow-up outpatient jaw surgery. I planned to take Dr.T.'s letter to the patient reps at those hospitals to have the diagnosis of MPD taken off their files too.

[linusrichard]

You deserve an apology. But you are asking Dr. T. to generate a piece of evidence to be used against his hospital at trial. The only way I see an apology coming your way is either as part of a settlement or part of a judgment. In other words, call a lawyer.

[fls]

You deserve an apology. But you are asking Dr. T. to generate a piece of evidence to be used against his hospital at trial. The only way I see an apology coming your way is either as part of a settlement or part of a judgment. In other words, call a lawyer.

The point of the Apology Act that Roma Hart referred to earlier was to specify that an apology can't be used as evidence. This is supposed to remove a barrier towards obtaining an official apology.

What do you think the hospital is liable for?

Linda

[fls]

Would my CFS history be in my hospital records?

They could be, especially if they were called in at any point where you were using hospital services (ER, inpatient, outpatient program held in the hospital, doctor visits, etc.). The notes of the hospital social workers will be part of your medical record and they would include that information (the social worker would get that info from CFS). Social workers are involved in many departments - particularly psychiatry.

You have the right to look at your records. You should go through them and document where the MPD diagnosis shows up, anyway.

I know my hospital records are in the old CFS file.

I have an old file in several hospitals in this city, but the main file regarding the initial misdiagnosis and therapy for MPD is in the St.B.
I was hoping to use the letter from Dr.T to help me get rid of all of those file references about MPD that exist at the other hospitals.

The Pain Clinic at the HSC, the emergency ward at a hospital a couple blocks away from my home, the hospital where I had my follow-up outpatient jaw surgery. I planned to take Dr.T.'s letter to the patient reps at those hospitals to have the diagnosis of MPD taken off their files too.

Ah, that makes sense.

Linda

[linusrichard]

The point of the Apology Act that Roma Hart referred to earlier was to specify that an apology can't be used as evidence. This is supposed to remove a barrier towards obtaining an official apology.
Oh, then never mind. Thank you.

What do you think the hospital is liable for?
I have no way of knowing what the hospital is liable for, but it sure looks like there's a possibility of a negligence action here. I don't know if it would fall under the label of "malpractice" or not. But the point is less about the hospital being liable than it is about the hospital being sued. Which (given my ignorance about the Apology Act) seemed an awful lot more likely with the apology than without. But with the Apology Act, yes, that makes it different, and hopefully better.

[westprog]

I've read some of the logical arguments in this philosophy site, I'm sure you guys can think of something. Help , please. Thank-you

I would warn that this is a matter of medicine and law, not logic. While logic is certainly used in these field, precedent and authority count for more.

[Roma]

The authority I'm using here is the President of the St.B. Hosp., if he agrees then they will all agree. St.B. is where cardiac patients are sent and with my family history that's in my future.
I want to fight his arrogance with logical argument.

I've gone to the media in the past after my lawsuit was filed but it's old news now and they won't be interested today.

Law is out of the picture now, it was my first avenue but I ran out of money.

In 1991 the police told me that they could press charges for administering a noxious substance and reckless endangerment, but said they would only press charges after the civil suit.

My malpractice statement of claim concerned the misdiagnosis and the illegal medical drug experiments and lack of fiduciary care to a patient.

There are plenty of precedents where people have been misdiagnosed, thanks, I'm using that one in my letter. If you know of any examples off hand that would help.

[fls]

The authority I'm using here is the President of the St.B. Hosp., if he agrees then they will all agree. St.B. is where cardiac patients are sent and with my family history that's in my future.

Would it be possible for you to post his response? It would help in suggesting what sort of arguments may persuade him (or even if persuasion is possible).

To start, I think that if you include what you have stated here about the practical benefits from an apology - a way for that part of your records to be sealed - it makes it more difficult to refuse your request. You could contact the medical records departments of the various places you mentioned to see what sort of proceedure they have for sealing records and whether his statement would be useful. If you could specifically state that a letter of apology would serve as sufficient cause for your records to be sealed at Facility X, it makes it less a matter of principle (which may cause him to react defensively) and more a matter of an appeal for assistance.

Law is out of the picture now, it was my first avenue but I ran out of money.

In 1991 the police told me that they could press charges for administering a noxious substance and reckless endangerment, but said they would only press charges after the civil suit.

My malpractice statement of claim concerned the misdiagnosis and the illegal medical drug experiments and lack of feduciary care to a patient.

It does sound like you could have made a case for malpractice. Putting aside the issue of misdiagnosis (which is not evidence of malpractice), his initial examination was woefully inadequate, and it sounds like there were issues with regards to informed consent. But this is all water under the bridge now.

There are plenty of precedents where people have been misdiagnosed, thanks, I'm using that one in my letter. If you know of any examples off hand that would help.

The sort of precedents you could look for would be apologies coming from hospital officials with regards to malfeasance by some of their staff. There was that incident about 10 years ago at St. B. where a gastroenterology tech wasn't following sterilization techniques and there was transmission of viral hepatitis to a few patients as a result. What happened as a result of that? I'll see if I can find some information on that, but if you know what I'm talking about and whether apologies were issued, that could serve as an example.

Linda

[fls]

This is the story:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/1999/05/20/MB_hospital052099.html

Linda

[Roma]

there was also an apology given to a First Nations woman at St.B. after her surgeon thought it was nice to sew in some steralized "Indian beads" inside her abdomen.
That wasn't a misdiagnosis though, just stupid.

[fls]

Did the hospital issue an apology in this case?

http://www.cirp.org/news/winnipegfreepress2006-07-18/

Linda

[Roma]

I don't know, but it still wasn't a misdiagnosis.

I can't get that letter to copy and paste, if you really need to see it PM me your email and I'll send it that way.

Or wait for my teenager to come home from school and help me.

[fls]

I don't know, but it still wasn't a misdiagnosis.

Oh. I wasn't thinking of misdiagnoses.

I can't get that letter to copy and paste, if you really need to see it PM me your email and I'll send it that way.

Okay.

Linda

[kerikiwi]

My family was destroyed from the inevitable false accusations of sexual and ritual abuse that follow a diagnosis of MPD. My parents, both teachers, took early retirement. My family disowned me. My 10 year-old daughter was placed in foster care and secluded from her entire family until she reached adulthood to “protect” her from “the Satanic cult” Dr. Colin Ross informed CFS my family was involved in.



Accusations(false or otherwise) of abuse do not inevitably follow a diagnosis of MPD

[Roma]

Okay, if you say so. Dr.Colin Ross says that MPD can't exist without it having happened.



http://books.google.ca/books?id=3PkKrgn2CrUC&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=sexual+abuse+%2B+multiple+personality+disorder&source=bl&ots=jAE2GUxYYH&sig=q7OFbOGkvB-m8xILYwW77kGXRqg&hl=en&ei=oUGwSbnSDpauMo-PkIEF&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result

[Skeptical Greg]

This is an interesting discussion but I can't make the connection with " R & P " ..

Can someone help me out ?

[Roma]

philosophy and the logic of argument, I need help constructing a logical argument

MPD is in the DSM therefore I wasn't misdiagnosed,
I could just write back to the Pres. of the hospital and tell him he's a poop head but I think a good logical argument that I was misdiagnosed would be better.

I'm trying to write a letter of rebuttal to Dr.T.'s letter to me and I am having trouble forming that logical argument.

So far I have one from this site:
Premise 1. Many people have been misdiagnosed.

[westprog]

Okay, if you say so. Dr.Colin Ross says that MPD can't exist without it having happened.



http://books.google.ca/books?id=3PkKrgn2CrUC&pg=PA74&lpg=PA74&dq=sexual+abuse+%2B+multiple+personality+disorder&source=bl&ots=jAE2GUxYYH&sig=q7OFbOGkvB-m8xILYwW77kGXRqg&hl=en&ei=oUGwSbnSDpauMo-PkIEF&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result

MPD and recovered memories seem to have a similar scientific basis to homeopathy.

[Baby Nemesis]

Why is this scum allowed to still be working?!

Here's a possible premise or two. I don't know whether it'll be of any help, but it might be worth thinking about.

I came across the name of Colin Ross unexpectedly today in a book I'm reading at the moment. It's about self-harm, but part of a chapter's about MPD/DID. It recommends people go to his website for more information and gives a couple of links. One was to a set of interview questions that he himself developed, which he says should be asked to diagnose DID. It's called The Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule: A Structured Interview. According to the book I'm reading, it's a "highly structured interview, developed by Dr Colin Ross, which takes approximately 30-45 minutes to administer. It
evaluates DSM-IV diagnoses of somatisation disorder, borderline personality disorder, and major depressive disorder, as well as all the dissociative disorders."

The book I'm reading, published a couple of years ago, said it was available to read and free to copy, and gave a link. I followed the link and it didn't work; and now it seems Colin Ross is charging for his papers, including that one. I found it listed on a page of his site. (http://www.rossinst.com/medical_papers.html)

But if it turns out he didn't ask you all the questions he was supposed to, according to his very own paper, before making the diagnosis, then you'll have grounds for suggesting it was a faulty diagnosis.

You might have been through that already though.

It seems it doesn't particularly bother Colin Ross if a diagnosis is faulty, or in fact if the condition is induced by the therapist. It says in an old Independent article about him called American therapy that could blow your minds (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19970209/ai_n14090190)

... But at the same time he does not believe that false memories are necessarily harmful to patients: "There is no evidence that iatrogenic therapy is harmful. It could be that MPD helps you resolve conflicts and deal with them."

No evidence that a condition that was actually induced by the therapist is harmful, especially one like False Memory Syndrome and the like?? Well, he's certainly going against a large body of opinion/evidence there. I wouldn't trust a therapist who was so dismissive of it all, and apparently so unconcerned as to whether a diagnosis was made by the therapist or whether the condition was induced by them. That's only one sentence though, and being only one, it could be argued that it was misunderstood/taken out of context etc. It might be worth finding more quotes by him about that, to firmly establish what his views are on the matter.

That Independent article mentions your name, saying you sued him. I'd guess you were interviewed for it.

I found a Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_A._Ross) about Colin Ross that says things which, if true, suggest his judgment's even more in question! Here's something that can easily be verified by people here:

In 2008, Dr. Ross applied for the James Randi Educational Foundation's One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge with the claim that he can shoot beams of energy out of his eyeballs and cause a speaker, receiving no other input,
to sound a tone. During later correspondence with Dr. Steven Novella of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, he conceded that the equipment he was using was, in fact, a biofeedback machine attached to his laptop, and that the laptop was responding in a well-understood way to an eyeblink. However, he claimed that he could still send
energy beams out of his eyes, and was working on modifying the software to ignore an eyeblink. His claim has not currently been tested by the JREF.

The Wikipedia article mentions your name as well, saying you sued him.

And it says:

According to Dr. Ross' research into Dissociative Identity Disorder, 1% of individuals in the United States suffer from the illness - a number that is at odds with previous psychiatric research. In the early 1990s, however, Ross told the Canadian Broadcasting Company that the number was between 1 in 50 and 1 in 500.

Possibly as high as 1 in 50?? I wonder how many top psychologists would want to accept that idea without question.

[MG1962]

Roma, I know nothing of your circumstances, but is there a chance of moving to a new city and starting fresh. The thought that you could present at a hospital with a heart attack and be diagnosed as a panic attack seems a real possibilty

A possibilty I would prefer not like to consider

[Roma]

My 32 year old daughter lives close by in this city.
During those eight years of her childhood that she spent in the foster care system we were both seriously traumatized by our seperation. She and I cried ourselves to sleep every night, our hearts were completely broken.
I cannot bear to leave her and move somewhere else.

[fls]

Okay.

I've had a chance to look over the documents you sent me.

Unbelievable. And I suspect Dr. R. took advantage of that when he defended himself.

It is surprising that you did not die from his care.

These are the ways in which you were wronged.

1. Dr. R. clearly used you as an experimental subject for a novel drug therapy. This was not merely evidence-based off-label use of a drug. It was a novel therapy he was investigating (even if it was only ever in you) and which he admits (with pride) he subsequently submitted as research. Under those circumstances, he is required to give you complete information as to the nature of the investigation and he is required to have you sign a form documenting informed consent. I'm guessing that he did neither of those things. I'm also guessing that he hid that from the College complaints committee. I think that if you had been properly advised, you would have been able to document his negligence in this regard. The facility (St. B.) has responsibility for research performed on patients in their care and by doctors on their medical staff.

2. Due care was not taken in making the diagnosis. If, as you say, the diagnosis was reached after less than 15 minutes, your initial examination was inadequate. The problem is not in misdiagnosis (which is not sufficient cause for an apology or malpractice), but in the reason for the misdiagnosis. And I think your focus on MPD as a discredited diagnosis allowed Dr. T. and the complaints committee to miss the point. The diagnosis could have been Vaginal Candidiasis and it would still have been unreasonable if made on the basis of an inadequate exam. I don't know if you would have been able to document this. And the reports you provided didn't address this. The facility is responsible for ensuring that the practices of their medical staff are up to professional standards, but they can reasonably point to the results of the College complaint committee investigation as sufficient to indicate his fitness. How detailed was that investigation? You send a letter documenting your complaint, the doctor is sent a copy and asked to respond to your complaints. Then both letters are reviewed by the committee and a ruling is made at that point, or an investigation is ordered with requests for more information. Was an investigation ordered, or was a ruling made on the basis of his response?

3. You were not provided the standard of care with respect to the diagnosis of Depression. In fact, his treatment either caused the problem or would have exacerbated it.

4. Inappropriate remarks by the staff, which would be the responsibility of the facility.

As to a response to Dr. T...

I think you could force the issue by providing documentation of the issues above. However, this would take some work on your part and would make it necessary for you to go back into your old records - something you may not want to revisit.

Depending upon the extent of the investigation by the college (if there was an investigation, there will be a report, even if they found in favour of Dr. R. (if you can give me a date, I may be able to get access)), the reference to the lack of any disciplinary action is not sufficient to get the facility off the hook. First of all, the complaint in question may not have been brought to their attention. Second, other staff members were aware of his treatment and had a duty to speak up. And, if he was publishing research based on your response (which he claims he was), the facility was likely aware (annual reports from the medical staff list published research, scholarly articles, presentations, books or book chapters) and should have ensured that Institutional Review Board approval had been obtained.

I think the point he makes about your medical records is valid. I think you should focus on making sure you don't suffer further consequences from the leakage of this information. You have the right to review your medical records. It will take a bit of work on your part, but you could review your records at the various places you have received care and make sure that there are no references to MPD. If there are, you can ask for a note to be entered that the diagnosis was wrong (you may want to draft a standard note to be placed that sounds official). You are not allowed to change old records unless there is a simple error, but you can add to them as long as it is clear when the addition was made. You may also want to check out notes from support staff like social workers to see if any mention is made of your problems with CFS. Even if your old St. B. records are in long term storage, I still think it is reasonable to ask for a note to be placed with them, as well.

If you want to pursue the issue of misdiagnosis, I would stress the inadequate examination which formed the basis of the diagnosis.

The practical benefit to getting a better response from Dr. T. would be for ammunition if you discover that you need to address the diagnosis of MPD in the medical records at other facilities and you encounter resistance. I don't know if your case against your lawyer is still open and whether it would assist you in that regard. I would think that if you could show you would have prevailed against Dr. R., it would strengthen your claims, but I also think that it would require resources that you don't have.

You said it was okay to put any of the information you sent me into my post. If I understood that wrong, please let me know!

I hope Jon is able to provide you with some additional help as well.

Linda

[Yuri Nalyssus]

Okay.

I've had a chance to look over the documents you sent me...
As one who has been caught out previously you need to remember that this is an open and public forum which ranks quite high with many search engines. Also anyone with a professional or just a casual interest in this case will be googling names and key words right now.

I'm only saying.

Yuri

[Roma]

Yes, post, copy, whatever you want fls.

I have six crates of evidence up in my bedroom closet that I have kept for times just like this.

My friendly parliamentarian Jon sent me an email yesterday after I asked him if I could use the evidence that I have a gag order on in the next letter, he said yes.

I'll never try to sue a doctor ever again, the laws in Manitoba regarding costs would put me at an unacceptable risk. I have some satisfaction in knowing that his patients in Dallas have successfully sued him for much moola.

There was a complaint sent to the college here and the Texas State Medical Examiners, both found that there was no misconduct even though civil action against him in Texas for medical malpractice was very successful. He was never investigated in Manitoba because he no longer worked in Canada, they just told me over the phone that he would never work here again so not to worry. I will try to use what's in my gag orderd evidence to prove complicity in the college and hospital, which would explain why there would never have been a finding of misconduct from them.

The lawyer I hired for my appeal for the Dismissal due to delay was funded completely by the Manitoba Law Society because he was able to show them that I would have prevailed in the malpractice lawsuit had my previous lawyer not screwed-up.

So I need to change the focus of my letter to Dr.T. away from misdiagnosis to standard of care? I may have lost a few of the more important brain cells back then, I'm confused.

[a_unique_person]

Roma

Their first reply will be an attempt to just brush you off, to see if you will just give up. Just get your facts together, as you are doing here, and keep after them. Don't get angry, that just makes it easy for them to ignore you and focus on your anger, rather than the issue. Just stick to the facts. The least you are entitled to is an apology.

I would think the Dr in question is in the same league as Jayant Patel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayant_Patel. IMHO, a criminal case would be in order, not a civil case.

[mhaze]

....a set of interview questions that he himself developed, which he says should be asked to diagnose DID. It's called The Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule: A Structured Interview. According to the book I'm reading, it's a "highly structured interview, developed by Dr Colin Ross, which takes approximately 30-45 minutes to administer. It evaluates DSM-IV diagnoses of somatisation disorder, borderline personality disorder, and major depressive disorder, as well as all the dissociative disorders."....That's nuts.

Of course I could put this simple statement in more complicated, professional language...

Qualification: I haven't read the article you quote from and take it at face value what you are saying. Of course if the results of the interveiw were considered only suggestive or supportive of many other evidence, that would be another thing.

[fls]

As one who has been caught out previously you need to remember that this is an open and public forum which ranks quite high with many search engines. Also anyone with a professional or just a casual interest in this case will be googling names and key words right now.

I'm only saying.

Yuri

Thank you for that. I have been keeping that in mind.

Linda

[fls]

There was a complaint sent to the college here and the Texas State Medical Examiners, both found that there was no misconduct even though civil action against him in Texas for medical malpractice was very successful. He was never investigated in Manitoba because he no longer worked in Canada, they just told me over the phone that he would never work here again so not to worry. I will try to use what's in my gag orderd evidence to prove complicity in the college and hospital, which would explain why there would never have been a finding of misconduct from them.

Just to clarify, were any complaints made against him prior to his departure from Manitoba?

The lawyer I hired for my appeal for the Dismissal due to delay was funded completely by the Manitoba Law Society because he was able to show them that I would have prevailed in the malpractice lawsuit had my previous lawyer not screwed-up.

That's good information to have.

So I need to change the focus of my letter to Dr.T. away from misdiagnosis to standard of care? I may have lost a few of the more important brain cells back then, I'm confused.

Yeah, standard of care. Misdiagnosis doesn't indicate error or deficiency of care, per se. And as you saw, if you make it about the diagnosis, you won't get anywhere.

Linda

[Roma]

Don't know for sure about any others.

Oh and just for the comedic value of it, in Dr.R's affidavit of defence he said that the reason I was suing him was: unrequited love

[a_unique_person]

Don't know for sure about any others.

Oh and just for the comedic value of it, in Dr.R's affidavit of defence he said that the reason I was suing him was: unrequited love

Are you serious? That is so whacky it sounds almost unbelievable.

[Yuri Nalyssus]

Thank you for that. I have been keeping that in mind.

Linda
I should have said from one who has been caught out of course, I wasn't suggesting you have been caught out, or indeed ever done anything for which you could have been caught out :blush:.

Anyway... back to lurking.

Yuri

[Baby Nemesis]

That's nuts.

Of course I could put this simple statement in more complicated, professional language...

Qualification: I haven't read the article you quote from and take it at face value what you are saying. Of course if the results of the interveiw were considered only suggestive or supportive of many other evidence, that would be another thing.

It may be nuts to think you can diagnose something that major on the basis of a 30-45 minute interview. Without actually seeing his questions though, it would be difficult to make a conclusive comment. The point I was making was that it would seem that Colin Ross didn't even fulfil his own criteria for diagnosis. If he diagnosed Roma on the basis of a 10-15 minute interview, he can't possibly even have asked all the relevant questions he himself recommends people ask!

Oh and just for the comedic value of it, in Dr.R's affidavit of defence he said that the reason I was suing him was: unrequited love

Are you serious? That is so whacky it sounds almost unbelievable.

Not unbelievable at all, nope. In fact, this is just the kind of thing you'd expect from someone with twisted ideas like that, or someone who knows what an easy accusation it is to make. After all, you don't exactly have to put much thought into a defence like that. It probably happens more often than you think, along withth the "You can't trust this person's account of things because they're mentally ill" accusation. You know the kind of thing:

"This man wrongly diagnosed me as having MPD, and it led to my life being shattered."

"This woman's mentally ill. You can tell that by what's gone wrong in her life, and it's what's making her make the accusation. She obviously needs more of my help."

:p

Here's Colin Ross's latest news on his one million dollar challenge application. (http://www.rossinst.com/paranormal_challenge.html) Specially for the irony.

[a_unique_person]

It may be nuts to think you can diagnose something that major on the basis of a 30-45 minute interview. Without actually seeing his questions though, it would be difficult to make a conclusive comment. The point I was making was that it would seem that Colin Ross didn't even fulfil his own criteria for diagnosis. If he diagnosed Roma on the basis of a 10-15 minute interview, he can't possibly even have asked all the relevant questions he himself recommends people ask!





Not unbelievable at all, nope. In fact, this is just the kind of thing you'd expect from someone with twisted ideas like that, or someone who knows what an easy accusation it is to make. After all, you don't exactly have to put much thought into a defence like that. It probably happens more often than you think, along withth the "You can't trust this person's account of things because they're mentally ill" accusation. You know the kind of thing:

"This man wrongly diagnosed me as having MPD, and it led to my life being shattered."

"This woman's mentally ill. You can tell that by what's gone wrong in her life, and it's what's making her make the accusation. She obviously needs more of my help."

:p

Here's Colin Ross's latest news on his one million dollar challenge application. (http://www.rossinst.com/paranormal_challenge.html) Specially for the irony.

I'm just trying to clarify something here. The "Dr R" referred to is in fact, Colin Ross, who wants to go for the million dollar challenge, since he thinks has supernatural powers? :boggled:

[Baby Nemesis]

Yes he is. The very same. From the page I just linked to on his website about his million dollar challenge application, you can follow links to information about his work with trauma disorders, a list of the papers he's written about MPD and other things, find out about him and his career, and so on. He apparently runs "The Colin A. Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma".

[a_unique_person]

Jesus christ, no wonder the hospital hopes Roma will just go away. They could be sued for millions for letting such a crackpot run riot. My link to Patel is looking more relevant than ever. In his case, the hospital didn't want to face up to the fact they had hired a homicidal maniac, the truth was just too awful to face. Looks like a similar case here.

[fls]

Jesus christ, no wonder the hospital hopes Roma will just go away. They could be sued for millions for letting such a crackpot run riot.

How exactly can the hospital be liable for millions because one of their doctors has a weird belief? After all, many doctors hold religious beliefs.

Linda

[a_unique_person]

How exactly can the hospital be liable for millions because one of their doctors has a weird belief? After all, many doctors hold religious beliefs.

Linda

Systemic malpractice. According to Roma, he had a fixation on MPD. Years of misdiagnosis with many victims is not just his problem, it's their problem.

[Baby Nemesis]

Edit: Oh wow, what I responded to has disappeared. Excellent.

[fls]

Systemic malpractice. According to Roma, he had a fixation on MPD. Years of misdiagnosis with many victims is not just his problem, it's their problem.

Now we're back to the beginning.

Are all the physicians who prescribed hormone replacement therapy to women in the 90's guilty of malpractice and are the facilities they worked at liable for millions of dollars for allowing free rein to these crackpots?

Linda

[fls]

Oh no it's OK, I've got over it now. ;)

If she does suffer from psychotic rage, it proves the doctor's even more of an incompetent than we thought. What was he doing diagnosing her with Did, rather than psychotic anger issues. :p

It would perhaps help if you learned up a bit more about the topic under discussion before commenting further, as well as actually reading more of the thread.

It looks like saner heads prevailed and the offending post was removed.

Linda

[a_unique_person]

It looks like saner heads prevailed and the offending post was removed.

Linda

I don't know how many people reported it, but I was one.

[a_unique_person]

Now we're back to the beginning.

Are all the physicians who prescribed hormone replacement therapy to women in the 90's guilty of malpractice and are the facilities they worked at liable for millions of dollars for allowing free rein to these crackpots?

Linda

The two are quite different. HRT is a 'calculated risk', and doctors have to make them every day. If you keep up with the literature, you know what the odds are when you make informed decision. Going against the mainstream and heading off into your own land of imagination and incompetence is entirely different. Patel was a sociopath who literally hacked up people, and killed them, repeatedly. Staff there knew he was incompetent, and those who hired him screwed up when they hired him. Ross is similar. He was not following mainstream practice, he was destroying lives, and I bet you that staff there had an idea what was going on. I see a difference between following science as we best understand it, even though it is sometimes found to be wrong or more problematic that at first thought, and gross incompetence that is tolerated and/or not detected with quality procedures.

[fls]

The two are quite different. HRT is a 'calculated risk', and doctors have to make them every day.

But at the time, it was 'calculated' to be a benefit - something it later turned out was wrong.

If you keep up with the literature, you know what the odds are when you make informed decision.

It turns out that the literature was incomplete.

Going against the mainstream and heading off into your own land of imagination and incompetence is entirely different.

But he didn't. MPD was a mainstream diagnosis at the time. It simply turned out that our understanding about the condition was incomplete.

Patel was a sociopath who literally hacked up people, and killed them, repeatedly. Staff there knew he was incompetent, and those who hired him screwed up when they hired him. Ross is similar.

Excuse me? The staff clearly did not know he was incompetent. It hasn't even been demonstrated now that he was incompetent.

He was not following mainstream practice,

He was following mainstream practice.

he was destroying lives, and I bet you that staff there had an idea what was going on. I see a difference between following science as we best understand it, even though it is sometimes found to be wrong or more problematic that at first thought, and gross incompetence that is tolerated and/or not detected with quality procedures.

Except that he was clearly following science as we best understood it, even though it was later found to be wrong or more problematic than first thought, rather than the latter.

Linda

[Roma]

Well this is very helpful, I knew that I needed intelligent and objective opinions to help me sort through this in a rational and logical way.

I began to remember what the psychiatrist at John Hopkins said to me in 1995,
"even if everything Dr.R. said was true (which it isn't) it would still be malpractice, even more so since his assertions about you would contra-indicate any of the treament he gave you".

I wasn't able to read whatever post had been edited on this site, and fls wrote something
that puzzled me. Dr.R. and the hospital deny with their dying breath that I was ever
given experimental treatments, drugs or otherwise. Apart from Dr.R.'s reluctant answers in his cross examination regarding the quantities of drugs he gave to me I have no evidence that anything was published. That would be a whole new ball game.

There are a couple of references to rage in this site, are you referring to me? That's okay, rage was the most significant side effect I suffered from the ultra high doses of Halcion. The first time Dr.R. gave Halcion to me I told him that I didn't want to take it anymore because it made me feel very upset. Dr.R. replied that Halcion had no side effects and that what I was feeling was another personality coming out. A family member that Dr.R. had talked to told him that I was a sweet person who was just working too hard. Dr.R. insisted that I had a hidden angry personality.

Dr.R. did write a whole paragraph about me in his book Osiris Complex, chapter 14, (talk about "poetic license), I would like to see a copy of the research he wrote about my case especially the drug experiments if you can send them to me please.

[fls]

Well this is very helpful, I knew that I needed intelligent and objective opinions to help me sort through this in a rational and logical way.

I began to remember what the psychiatrist at John Hopkins said to me in 1995,
"even if everything Dr.R. said was true (which it isn't) it would still be malpractice, even more so since his assertions about you would contra-indicate any of the treament he gave you".

I don't want to confuse the issue. I just want to make it clear that it wouldn't have been malpractice to make a diagnosis of MPD. It would have been malpractice to make a diagnosis (any diagnosis - even that of well-established conditions) with an inadequate examination.

The treatment issues are pretty clear.

I wasn't able to read whatever post had been edited on this site, and fls wrote something
that puzzled me. Dr.R. and the hospital deny with their dying breath that I was ever
given experimental treatments, drugs or otherwise. Apart from Dr.R.'s reluctant answers in his cross examination regarding the quantities of drugs he gave to me I have no evidence that anything was published. That would be a whole new ball game.

He made those statements in the deposition you sent me.

There are a couple of references to rage in this site, are you referring to me?

Ignore them. It was from the comment that was deleted. I have some experience with that person from other threads and she/he is definitely not worth your consideration.

That's okay, rage was the most significant side effect I suffered from the ultra high doses of Halcion. The first time Dr.R. gave Halcion to me I told him that I didn't want to take it anymore because it made me feel very upset. Dr.R. replied that Halcion had no side effects and that what I was feeling was another personality coming out. A family member that Dr.R. had talked to told him that I was a sweet person who was just working too hard. Dr.R. insisted that I had a hidden angry personality.

Dr.R. did write a whole paragraph about me in his book Osiris Complex, chapter 14, (talk about "poetic license), I would like to see a copy of the research he wrote about my case especially the drug experiments if you can send them to me please.

I don't have any more information than what you sent. I can see if I can figure out what he's referring to by looking through his published research. The stuff he presented at a meeting(s) may not be available, though.

Linda

[Baby Nemesis]

The first time Dr.R. gave Halcion to me I told him that I didn't want to take it anymore because it made me feel very upset. Dr.R. replied that Halcion had no side effects

Well, apart from his other faults, it seems Dr Colin Ross certainly wasn't up on his research! Apart from the fact that it's very unlikely that there are any drugs in the world with no side effects, the drug Halcion has been rather controversial.

The Dark Side of Halcion (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974042,00.html)
Monday, Oct. 14, 1991

... In the mid- 1980s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began receiving more and more reports of side effects from the drug -- everything from amnesia to agitation. The increase could be explained by the rising number of people taking Halcion, but the drug got some bad publicity when a Utah woman killed her mother while on Halcion and sued the manufacturer. Upjohn settled the case out of court, all the while denying that the drug was to blame for the murder.

Now Halcion is facing its most serious challenge yet. Last week the British Department of Health banned sales of the drug in Britain, citing new evidence that the pill "is associated with a much higher frequency of side effects, particularly memory loss and depression," than similar medications. ...

Halcion acts on the brain's limbic system, which plays a major role in the genesis of sleep and the emotions. Because it lasts in the body only a matter of hours, it can trigger a boomerang effect, unleashing the very anxiety it was meant to tame. Adverse reactions become more common the higher the dose.
Doses of as much as 1.0 mg were once prescribed in Europe, but the recommended dose is now only 0.25 mg. In most cases where Halcion has allegedly been
linked to violent behavior, the people took more than is deemed safe, had been drinking alcohol, or had been on the drug for a long period of time. ...

[a_unique_person]

I don't want to confuse the issue. I just want to make it clear that it wouldn't have been malpractice to make a diagnosis of MPD. It would have been malpractice to make a diagnosis (any diagnosis - even that of well-established conditions) with an inadequate examination.

MPD is a rare diagnosis. If he was making the diagnosis at a higher rate than normal, would that not indicate an error on his part? If he was to make this diagnosis, and it is rare, would he not be advised to seek advice to back him up?

[a_unique_person]

How exactly can the hospital be liable for millions because one of their doctors has a weird belief? After all, many doctors hold religious beliefs.

Linda

If you have ever followed the MDC, it seems to be a magnet for frauds, the sad, the sorry and the delusional.

[fls]

MPD is a rare diagnosis. If he was making the diagnosis at a higher rate than normal, would that not indicate an error on his part?

No. There are several reasons for this. It could be that MPD is generally missed or under-diagnosed. Because of his expertise, he is finding cases that others have missed. Also, if he is known to be an expert in this area, other physicians will preferentially refer patients they think may have this condition to him for care. He could have deliberately moved to an area where the incidence/prevalence may be high.

If he was to make this diagnosis, and it is rare, would he not be advised to seek advice to back him up?

Not if he is the one who is the most knowledgeable in this area.

Linda

[a_unique_person]

No. There are several reasons for this. It could be that MPD is generally missed or under-diagnosed. Because of his expertise, he is finding cases that others have missed. Also, if he is known to be an expert in this area, other physicians will preferentially refer patients they think may have this condition to him for care. He could have deliberately moved to an area where the incidence/prevalence may be high.



Not if he is the one who is the most knowledgeable in this area.

Linda

If I was working in a standard quality control situation, these possibilities would be checked up, not left to chance.

[fls]

If I was working in a standard quality control situation, these possibilities would be checked up, not left to chance.

Are you assuming that it was left to chance in this case?

Linda

[a_unique_person]

Are you assuming that it was left to chance in this case?

Linda

Given the outcomes, I'd be guessing yes.

Doctors have to make life and death decisions every day. There is no way out of that, sometimes the pick the wrong decision, but that is not incompetence, that is just the nature of their work. I think a lot of malpractice suits ignore the reality of medical treatment, and abuse the health system.

This case seems different, if Roma is correct. There was a systemic misdiagnoses, and an inability to realise that the treatment was causing far more harm than it was supposed to be curing over an extended period of time.

Another case that comes to mind is the Chelmsford scandal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Sleep_Therapy

Keeping going, even when it is clear you are not doing any good, but doing harm, is criminal, IMHO.

[Baby Nemesis]

It would be interesting to be able to glean some idea of his motives from somewhere.

Look at this for irony! It may well also be something of concern.

Colin Ross apparently has a conspiracy theory that almost all leading psychiatrists in North America between World War II and the 1970s were working for the CIA doing mind control experiments on people, such as inducing multiple personality disorder in them; but now he, the knight in shining armour, has come to expose and condemn them and their dirty tricks for the world to see, or at least, this is how this article frames it.

This dates back to 1996:

From LEADING PSYCHIATRIST BLOWS WHISTLE ON PROFESSION: PROVES 50+ YEARS OF MIND CONTROL (http://www.whale.to/b/bowart3.html)*

… But there are heroes even among psychiatrists. At least one, a Canadian Psychiatrist, Dr. Colin Ross, has begun to put a lot of time into trying to identify and correct the wrongs done by his countryman Cameron and his peers in the profession.

Ross said: "Virtually every leading psychiatrist in North America between the 1940's and the 1970's was involved in some aspect of the CIA's mind control research."

At a workshop he held at the 9th Annual Western Clinical Conference on Trauma and Dissociation in Costa Mesa, California, last April, Ross offered a preview of the research he's uncovered for a new book. He said, "When I systematically started looking into CIA military mind control, the more I looked, the more solid reality there was there. And as you will see as we go through these slides, and through this talk, it's a completely different deal from SRA. Somewhere out there in the justice system, there may actually be objective evidence where somebody has actually busted a SRA cult. If there is, that information is not generally publicly available to us. It is a fact that we have not nailed down human ritual sacrifice cults in North America if they exist. So it's all conjecture ... I will prove to you, completely locked down, documented, proven, beyond dispute or discussion that intelligence agencies have been creating Manchurian candidates and MPD for operational use since the Second World War."

"This is not a conspiracy theory," he said, "This is a fact." Now that's very amazing," Ross said, "because if you took an opinion poll of all the psychiatrists in the American Psychiatric Association today -- or you took the same poll five years ago, over 99% of the psychiatrists would say 'It's fiction. We know the movie is fiction, Frank Sinatra (in the Manchurian Candidate) did a good job, but there's just no way, it's absolutely impossible.' There might be two outlaw psychiatrists in the whole group who would say that it's possible that Manchurian candidates are real. This is a very, very strange phenomena that actually, in 1996, this is a completely documented fact -- it's a very strange sociological development in the field of psychiatry."*…

"There is something real peculiar about the whole story. It's a very strange story. It tells us that there is something going on in our culture and in the mental health field that is hidden and secret. This is another kind of incest secret in the field of psychiatry that all of these people who have been running psychiatry in the latter half of the 20th century are either directly or loosely connected to a whole huge universe of covert, hidden, secretly funded mind control research, and as emphasized, that's a fact... If, in fact, experimental MPD has been created and has been tight and hard and real enough for operational use by intelligence agencies for the last 50 years, then it is something of interest to the dissociative disorders field. This is profound evidence in favor of the iatrogenic (doctor induced) pathway to DID that I talked about this morning.

"When I combine the expert witness experience that I have had at clinically created iatrogenic DID using the techniques of destructive psychotherapy cults in the course of persuasion, as I described this morning -- when I take that expert witness evidence and see those cases created out of a base of no preexisting DID and then I go to this CIA military mind-control literature, my only possible conclusion is, yes, you can create full tilt DID artificially from ground zero. Also, I have to conclude that you can create any degree of complexity, permutations of false memory that you want. There is absolutely no limit on the quantity, complexity, reality, congruence, plausibility of false memories that you can insert in somebody's mind -- wittingly or unwittingly.

"They didn't tell me that in medical school?

"This is a little sub-paradigm revolution in the DID field.

"There is a huge wealth of information, experimental information, clinical anecdotal information, and operational street smarts knowledge of DID that's been up and running and full tilt in the mental health field for 50 years now. This did not spring out of nowhere in 1980, and we are missing a ton of experimental research data that's still classified that bears directly on this false memory debate that is going on in our society now. And you will see some of the players in this whole scenario of interesting people..." Ross pointed out that it was not just psychiatrists and psychologists involved in the search for the way to create a "psycho-civilized society" but also sociologists, linguists, cyberneticists and other professionals (even a magician or two -- men who were expert in micro-muscle movement reading), people from the World War Two and Cold War generations. …

Hey look. You can see his book about it advertised on his website. (http://www.rossinst.com/cia_doctors.html)

[Rolfe]

:jaw-dropp

And this is the fruitcake that poor Roma had the misfortune to see when all she needed was a sick note....

Rolfe.

[Baby Nemesis]

He's certainly a prolific writer, one not afraid of making bold claims. Another of his books he advertises on his website is called Spirit Power Drawings: The Foundation of a New Science (http://www.rossinst.com/spirit_power_drawings.html)

Spirit Power Drawings lays the foundation of a new science. According to Colin A. Ross, M.D. this new science is a marriage of science, religion and psychiatry. It is an ancient way of knowing that has been lost by modern industrial man. Industrial man has "lost touch" with nature, the senses have been closed up and two profound dissociations or disconnections have emerged.

According to his philosophy, spirit is a general property of matter. He calls this energy, Spirit Power. His new science is based on a form of knowledge that is deeper, more ancient, more sensual, intuitive, and more rooted in the natural world. ...

Art therapy is one thing. But I wonder how much further this goes. "His new science is based on a form of knowledge that is ... more ancient"? :)

And he certainly seems to have a thing about "dissociation".

Not sure anything productive can come of quoting that little gem; but it helps build up a picture of what kind of person he is, which might lead to something worthwhile somehow.

[Roma]

Why, I wondered, was Dr.R. allowed to perform exorcisms on his psychiatric patients in a hospital? So I went to the Deputy Minister of Health a few years ago and asked. I was told that exorcisms were beneficial. :boggled:

Dr.R. also explained to me that the reason no one has ever found the bodies of the babies recovered memory patients and their therapists claimed had been killed during satanic cult rituals was because:
"The women were impregnated by aliens and their babies are beamed aboard spaceships to be raised until eighteen then beamed back down to earth and given jobs with the CIA".
I told that to a recovered memory therapist a few years ago and expected her to laugh but instead she gasped and said "oh, that explains it!"

Anyhooo, this thread is really helping me get the wheels of critical thinking going in what's left of my mind.

First of all I kept thinking that it was impossible to have any diagnosis of MPD removed because the only psychiatrist I ever saw was Dr.R., then today I remembered that other psychiatrists had seen me during that same time too because I had gone to the emergency rooms at other hospitals.

When I collapsed on campus my proffessor called an ambulance and by the time they got there I had stopped breathing and they could barely find a pulse. After I got out of the V. Hospital ICU and was put on a regular ward Dr.R. showed up to visit me. That was the first time I had ever heard doctors yelling at each other in the hallway. Dr.A. at the V. hospital did not believe I had MPD and then he told me I was addicted to Halcion. Dr.R. told me that I wasn't and no one could get addicted to Halcion.

When I was at the M. hosp. after having another serious reaction to Halcion, Dr.L. said I didn't have MPD and told me that I was depressed, put me on amitriptaline and put me in a cab back to St.B. hosp.

So that's two different psychaitrists from two other hospitals at the same time I was a patient of Dr.R., both said I didn't have MPD and their diagnosis were right, I was depressed and addicted to Halcion.

I am still deciding how to address the issue of my treatment at the St.B. hosp.

Dr.R. was a handson young doctor, very charasmatic, the nurses panted after him like puppies and the social workers worshipped him as a God, the doctors not so much, some hated him probably because of his arrogance. He was, after all, the only MPD expert in Western Canada.

Something happened to the nurses medical training and critical thinking abilities under the influence of Dr.R. examples:

I had very unstable blood pressure, 190/180 to 50/40, up and down depending on the reaction I was having to whatever the hell I had been give and how physically weak I was (5'5" 85 lb at one time).
A nurse was taking my blood pressure once and said to me "you know why your blood pressure is like that?" I was going to say something medical but she quickly answered for me: "each of your personalities has its own blood pressure".

I was having convulsions, what I now know were caused by the Halcion, but at the time I was in the hospital the nurses were told to put me (drop me) on the floor in the seclusion room when my personalities did that.

I wish some one would have looked out for me, I told my primary care nurse that the therapy was making me worse and she explained that in MPD therapy it was necessary to get worse before you got better, sort of the recovered memory therapy Mantra that still exists today. She told me that I should thank God for sending me to Dr.R. and even if I didn't get better at least what was learned from my treatment would help other children who were being abused.

My friendly parliamentarian Jon told me to put in my letter of rebuttal to Dr.T. every single adverse event I could remember. Did I already mention that I kept the 6 crates of documents? It cost me $1,000. to pay for all of my hospital records and I still have my daily journals too, except for 6 that Dr.R. "took" with him when he left.

Keep the comments coming, they are really helping. This has now become a matter of principle to me.

[fls]

Given the outcomes, I'd be guessing yes.

Doctors have to make life and death decisions every day. There is no way out of that, sometimes the pick the wrong decision, but that is not incompetence, that is just the nature of their work. I think a lot of malpractice suits ignore the reality of medical treatment, and abuse the health system.

This case seems different, if Roma is correct. There was a systemic misdiagnoses, and an inability to realise that the treatment was causing far more harm than it was supposed to be curing over an extended period of time.

The results were those that were expected according to what was known of MPD and the treatment of such.

Another case that comes to mind is the Chelmsford scandal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Sleep_Therapy

Keeping going, even when it is clear you are not doing any good, but doing harm, is criminal, IMHO.

These things are far clearer in retrospect than they are at the time. I think it is important to recognize what it is that could be considered reasonable based on the information available at that time.

Linda

[Baby Nemesis]

Dr.R. was a handson young doctor, very charasmatic, the nurses panted after him like puppies and the social workers worshipped him as a God, the doctors not so much, some hated him probably because of his arrogance. He was, after all, the only MPD expert in Western Canada.

Something happened to the nurses medical training and critical thinking abilities under the influence of Dr.R. examples:

I had very unstable blood pressure, 190/180 to 50/40, up and down depending on the reaction I was having to whatever the hell I had been give and how physically weak I was (5'5" 85 lb at one time).
A nurse was taking my blood pressure once and said to me "you know why your blood pressure is like that?" I was going to say something medical but she quickly answered for me: "each of your personalities has its own blood pressure".

I was having convulsions, what I now know were caused by the Halcion, but at the time I was in the hospital the nurses were told to put me (drop me) on the floor in the seclusion room when my personalities did that.

The way it seems people will put their critical thinking aside in the face of authority, or even mere peer pressure, even when it means harm could come of it, is quite disturbing, and it would seem it's quite common.

Take the Milgram obedience experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment), for example, where people were told to inflict electric shocks of increasing severity on another person by an authority figure, having been told they were taking part in an experiment to see if people could learn better when they were punished for giving wrong answers. They were told to give the person giving the answers increasingly painful electric shocks when they got the answers wrong, and almost all of them did so, not knowing the electric shocks were fake. Some gave what they thought were very painful electric shocks, even though the person they thought was on the receiving end, who was actually just acting the part, was screaming in pain and saying repeatedly that they had a heart condition. Some people kept giving the shocks even though they themselves were showing signs of stress while doing so. The experimentor concluded that it showed the lengths people would go to in obedience to authority.

On BBC2 just last night, there was a documentary called How to Survive a Disaster (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j7p7z), which mentioned an experiment that was done in the 1960s in New York, where people were told to wait in a room and given paperwork to fill in, and then the experimenters made smoke waft under the door. They reacted with a lot less concern than they should have done. Left to themselves, 75% did eventually investigate in case there was a fire. But when they were accompanied by actors (who they didn't know were actors) who just ignored the smoke, only 10% of them investigated it, even when it got so bad they could hardly see their hands in front of their faces.

The programme went on to talk about the World Trade Center disaster on 9/11, saying that there, too, people at first reacted with far less concern than they should have. Many people took 5-8 minutes to begin reacting after a plane hit, and some didn't even do anything till after 30-40 minutes had gone by. They were taking time to finish emails first, to lock things in safes, to shut down their computers, and other things. The programme said that one reason people can react like that when they're told there's a fire is probably because people nowadays aren't that familiar with fire, so they don't know how quickly it can spread, so they don't feel the need to react quickly if they can't actually see it. But it said that also, it may have been partly to do with peer pressure - if other people didn't seem concerned, people didn't want to risk making a fool of themselves by reacting quickly to something that might turn out to be a non-emergency.

The employees of one company working there, the bank Morgan Stanley, Had been trained to evacuate quickly by having frequent fire drills, and out of 3400 of them, only 13 died. So if the others had been trained like that, far fewer people would have died that day.

So it seems that things like deference to authority figures and peer pressure can influence many people's behaviour, even when it means they put themselves or other people in danger.

But also, it's common for people to get conned because they assume that people in positions of responsibility know what they're talking about, especially if they're using technical language not understood very well by the person they're talking to. Dr Colin Ross seems to have that ability. In his Million Dollar Challenge (http://www.rossinst.com/paranormal_challenge.html) application, he uses technical language that most people without a science background wouldn't understand. I certainly don't. It would be easy for many people to assume language like that was expertise, when in fact anyone who knew their stuff would be able to see mammoth flaws in it.

His behaviour seems in some respects like that of a rogue trader who might charge lots of money for doing work that just didn't need to be done. For instance, a rogue plumber might persuade you that your entire water tank needed replacing, when in reality it was simply a washer costing a few pence that needed changing in a tap in the kitchen sink. A rogue car mechanic might convince you your whole car engine needed replacing, when really all that was wrong was that a little nut had come loose somewhere. A rogue electrician might convince you your whole house needs re-wiring, when in fact you simply have a loose connection in a wire in your vacuum cleaner. Things like that happen all too often. People end up paying loads of money to get problems fixed that don't actually exist. Part of that's because people tend to assume, reasonably, that someone who's trained in a field they themselves haven't been trained in will know a whole lot more about the matter than they do. But also, when someone's using technical-sounding jargon, people who don't understand it can just assume that the person knows what they're talking about, mistaking the gift of using long words for expertise. So they trust their judgment and just do what they say.

I went on a course once where one lecturer in particular had the ability to string together masses of long words, but there was virtually no substance of any practical use in her lectures at all! At first, I thought it might be just me having comprehension difficulties. But when I listened to something else that made much, much more sense, I realised it was her communication style that was the problem. Some people just seem to have the gift of giving some people the impression they're full of wisdom and expertise, when in actual fact, they're just talking finely-worded nonsense.

More thoughts on things later.

[fls]

First of all I kept thinking that it was impossible to have any diagnosis of MPD removed because the only psychiatrist I ever saw was Dr.R., then today I remembered that other psychiatrists had seen me during that same time too because I had gone to the emergency rooms at other hospitals.

When I collapsed on campus my proffessor called an ambulance and by the time they got there I had stopped breathing and they could barely find a pulse. After I got out of the V. Hospital ICU and was put on a regular ward Dr.R. showed up to visit me. That was the first time I had ever heard doctors yelling at each other in the hallway. Dr.A. at the V. hospital did not believe I had MPD and then he told me I was addicted to Halcion. Dr.R. told me that I wasn't and no one could get addicted to Halcion.

When I was at the M. hosp. after having another serious reaction to Halcion, Dr.L. said I didn't have MPD and told me that I was depressed, put me on amitriptaline and put me in a cab back to St.B. hosp.

So that's two different psychaitrists from two other hospitals at the same time I was a patient of Dr.R., both said I didn't have MPD and their diagnosis were right, I was depressed and addicted to Halcion.

Except that physicians disagree on diagnoses all the time and it isn't evidence that Dr. R. was wrong.

The statements that Dr. R. made to you about Halcion were wrong. The problem is that it's a matter of "he said/she said" and you are not credible. There is no point in you making claims about what he said. Even if you were credible, you may easily have been mistaken. What you need is documentation. Because your therapeutic regimen was so unusual, maybe even unique, and contradicted any (even remotely) sensible understanding of the effects of Halcion, the reasoning behind the treatment and fully informed consent needs to be documented in your chart. In this case, the burden of proof is on Dr. R. when it comes to "he said/she said". Lack of documentation would serve as documentation in this case. Also, the notes of other psychiatrists taken from that time might serve as documentation (depending upon what was said). If you are going through with this, you need to be specific, and it has to depend upon something other than your word or your recollection.

I am still deciding how to address the issue of my treatment at the St.B. hosp.

Dr.R. was a handson young doctor, very charasmatic, the nurses panted after him like puppies and the social workers worshipped him as a God, the doctors not so much, some hated him probably because of his arrogance. He was, after all, the only MPD expert in Western Canada.

Something happened to the nurses medical training and critical thinking abilities under the influence of Dr.R. examples:

Nurses are not trained in critical thinking and would not have the medical training to question Dr. R. I don't think these examples can serve as a failure on the part of the health care staff. The expert letter reviewing your records made the best case for any mistreatment since it was based on what reasonably could have been expected of Dr. R., and the state of knowledge at that time. Consider elaborating on the issues raised in that letter.

I had very unstable blood pressure, 190/180 to 50/40, up and down depending on the reaction I was having to whatever the hell I had been give and how physically weak I was (5'5" 85 lb at one time).
A nurse was taking my blood pressure once and said to me "you know why your blood pressure is like that?" I was going to say something medical but she quickly answered for me: "each of your personalities has its own blood pressure".

I was having convulsions, what I now know were caused by the Halcion, but at the time I was in the hospital the nurses were told to put me (drop me) on the floor in the seclusion room when my personalities did that.

I wish some one would have looked out for me, I told my primary care nurse that the therapy was making me worse and she explained that in MPD therapy it was necessary to get worse before you got better, sort of the recovered memory therapy Mantra that still exists today. She told me that I should thank God for sending me to Dr.R. and even if I didn't get better at least what was learned from my treatment would help other children who were being abused.

I haven't been able to review the research that Dr. R. refers to. There are several papers in his C.V. that could be relevant, but they are too old for electronic access and I don't have physical access to a medical library that includes hard copies. There may be something there that would help you, but I can't tell you whether that is the case. If I get a chance, I will try to get more info.

My friendly parliamentarian Jon told me to put in my letter of rebuttal to Dr.T. every single adverse event I could remember. Did I already mention that I kept the 6 crates of documents? It cost me $1,000. to pay for all of my hospital records and I still have my daily journals too, except for 6 that Dr.R. "took" with him when he left.

Keep the comments coming, they are really helping. This has now become a matter of principle to me.

Do you have the records from the other hospitals you mention above? The doctors may have documented their concerns.

Linda

[fls]

I went on a course once where one lecturer in particular had the ability to string together masses of long words, but there was virtually no substance of any practical use in her lectures at all! At first, I thought it might be just me having comprehension difficulties.

Exactly. It's like the Emperor's New Clothes. People will assume that it reflects poorly on them. But one only needs to consider the example of Richard Feynman to realize that even complicated topics can be made understandable when coming from someone who wants you to understand. It is much more revealing to ask, in that situation, why is it that this speaker doesn't want me to understand what they are talking about. Sokal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair) showed us that it's okay to recognize that the emperor is naked.

Linda

[Baby Nemesis]

Jesus christ, no wonder the hospital hopes Roma will just go away. They could be sued for millions for letting such a crackpot run riot. My link to Patel is looking more relevant than ever. In his case, the hospital didn't want to face up to the fact they had hired a homicidal maniac, the truth was just too awful to face. Looks like a similar case here.

I don't personally think that suing the hospital would achieve anything productive, since it might not change anything for the better as regards their employment policies. But I'd like to see a campaign to try to make sure this kind of thing never happens again in any hospital. There might be quite a few ideas people could come up with as to how things could be improved. If people likely to do a lot of damage could be weeded out before they even left college, all the better, although that might be more difficult, because some people might develop their harmful ideas over years.

But I wonder, for example, whether something based to some extent on the questionnaire developed by the researcher on psychopaths, Robert Hare (http://www.beyondbullying.co.nz/snakes_in_suits_spot_the_true_ps.htm) could be developed and used widely:

... Enter the B-Scan. It won't be available to everyone, and it won't be free. ... But they insist that it will do a better job of raising warning flags than traditional screening techniques such as CVs (routinely falsified and seldom checked) and interviews and role-playing ("Psychopaths love this stuff," Hare says. "It's like a game to them.").

If you are B-Scanned, it won't be you answering the questions. It will be your colleagues, grading your personal style, interpersonal relations, organisational maturity and antisocial tendencies according to 16 buzz words, none of them uplifting. They include the following: insincere, arrogant, insensitive, remorseless, shallow, impatient, erratic, unreliable, unfocused, parasitic, dramatic, unethical and bullying. ...

This was based on the psychopathy checklist (http://www.hare.org/links/saturday.html), originally geared more towards testing prisoners:

... The Psychopathy Checklist consists of a set of forms and a manual that describes in detail how to score a subject in twenty categories that define psychopathy. Is he (or, more rarely, she) glib and superficially charming, callous and without empathy? Does he have a grandiose sense of self worth, shallow emotions, a lack of remorse or guilt? Is he impulsive, irresponsible, promiscuous? Did he have behavioural problems early in life? The information for each category must be carefully drawn from documents such as court transcripts, police reports, psychologists' reports, and victim-impact statements, and not solely from an interview, since psychopaths are superb liars ("pathological lying" and "conning/manipulative" are PCL-R categories). A prisoner may claim to love his family, for example, while his records show no visits or phone calls. ...

How can you tell if your boss is a psychopath? It's not easy, says Babiak. "They have traits similar to ideal leaders. You would expect an ideal leader to be narcissistic, self-centred, dominant, very assertive, maybe to the point of being aggressive. Those things can easily be mistaken for the aggression and bullying that a psychopath would demonstrate. The ability to get people to follow you is a leadership trait, but being charismatic to the point of manipulating people is a psychopathic trait. They can sometimes be confused."

The best way to protect the workplace is not to hire psychopaths in the first place. That means training interviewers so they're less likely to be manipulated and conned. It means checking resumés for lies and distortions, and it means following up references.

Paul Babiak says he's "not comfortable" with one researcher's estimate that one in ten executives is a psychopath, but he has noticed that they are attracted to positions of power. ...

Perhaps if college students, and later colleagues and patients of people like doctors, psychiatrists and others in caring professions, were routinely asked in secret about the performance of individual colleagues and carers, a picture might sometimes emerge that might help build cases against people who were doing a lot of damage. This is only speculative, and the idea would need to be worked on. But maybe something could be made of it, if it's thought there aren't enough checks in place already.

[Baby Nemesis]

Why, I wondered, was Dr.R. allowed to perform exorcisms on his psychiatric patients in a hospital? So I went to the Deputy Minister of Health a few years ago and asked. I was told that exorcisms were beneficial.

I wonder why he thought that. I wonder whether he believed they could do good supernaturally, or whether he thought they could be a source of comfort, and act as a placebo or something. I wonder if he thought there was any evidence of that actually happening, and whether the staff at the hospital did.

It wouldn't surprise me if the opposite happened more often.

I wonder what symptoms Dr. Ross attributed to demons. If,for instance, he exorcised people for a psychological condition such as anxiety, at best, they wouldn't be learning practical ways of dealing with it so they could cope with the symptoms better and prevent relapse later on. And it would hardly be reassuring to them to be told their symptoms were being caused by a demon, especially if and when after the exorcism, the symptoms returned!

Or perhaps he thought he could cure people of MPD by telling them a lot of their personalities were demons, and that when he'd got rid of them, they'd have a lot less of them so they'd be partway healed?

I wish some one would have looked out for me, I told my primary care nurse that the therapy was making me worse and she explained that in MPD therapy it was necessary to get worse before you got better, sort of the recovered memory therapy Mantra that still exists today. She told me that I should thank God for sending me to Dr.R. and even if I didn't get better at least what was learned from my treatment would help other children who were being abused.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a popular myth that a lot of therapy has to make you worse before you get better.

There might not have been many authoritative challenges to the kind of MPD therapy Colin Ross used to treat you with at the time when he was treating you, but if he's still doing the same things to people nowadays that he did to you, he could perhaps be held culpable now for not keeping up-to-date with best therapeutic practice, and perhaps he has been, by people who have sued him recently.

Eek! Look what I've found!

CKLN-FM Mind Control Series --*Part 2 (http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/radio/ckln02.htm)

Producer Wayne Morris Interviews Dr. Colin Ross

* * Second in a Series of Broadcasts aired Sunday April 6, 1997 on CKLN-FM 88.1 in Toronto

[W.M. is Wayne Morris, C.R. is Dr. Colin Ross]

...

W.M. I am wondering from your experience working in Canada, how has the Canadian medical system responded to your findings on MPD research?

C.R. Roughly about the same as in the U.S.A. Overall, there is a lot of skepticism, a lot of political agitation, a fair bit of negative, hostile propaganda, and back-stabbing about it. And then there is also quite a lot of support. Obviously, if I have had sixty professional papers published, I am getting a reasonable reception. The main difference between Canada and the U.S.A. was that in Canada I just couldn't get the financial and clinical support to set up and run a program. And the reason that is possible down here is that there is a private, for profit sector in the mental health system. It is profit driven, it is a business and the hospital that I contract with is traded on the New York Stock Exchange and so on. And since I attract the patients, there is a financial motive for the hospital to be interested in having me provide that service. So that financial motive allows the system to set aside all of these ideological and political debates that go on and so therefore I am able to run a program.

I think anyone seeking therapy should research current best therapeutic practice before going to be treated by a therapist, if they're well enough, and if they have a choice about who they see. There may well be advice on seeking a good therapist on the websites of several reputable organisations to do with therapy, and in their literature.

For instance, here's one check list of things you can expect from a good psychotherapist or counsellor (not psychiatrist), according to one organisation:

An effective counsellor or psychotherapist:

understands depression and how to set about lifting it straight away

can help immediately with anxiety problems including panic attacks, nightmares, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), phobias or other fear-related symptoms [that doesn't mean cure them immediately, but begin to make progress immediately]

is prepared to give advice if needed or asked for

will not use jargon or 'psychobabble'
will not tell you that therapy is likely to be 'painful' (it only becomes painful if the therapist doesn't know what they are doing)

will not dwell unduly on the past

will be supportive when difficult feelings emerge, but will not encourage people to get emotional beyond the normal need to 'let go' of any bottled-up problems

may assist you to develop your social skills so that your needs for affection, friendship, pleasure, intimacy, connection to the wider community etc. can be better fulfilled

will help you to draw on your own resources (which may prove greater than you thought)
will be considerate of the effects of counselling on the people close to you
may teach you to relax deeply
may help you think about your problems in new, more empowering ways
will use a wide range of techniques

may ask you to do things between sessions
will take as few sessions as possible
will increase your self-confidence and independence and make sure you feel better after every consultation.

That's from a fairly new organisation, the Human Givens Institute. There may be similar check lists, or questions people are advised to ask therapists before trusting them to give them therapy, on the websites of organisations with better-established good reputations.

Also, there are lots of different kinds of therapy out there, for instance, a type where you mainly just talk about your feelings and your past while the therapist listens, as opposed to a much more structured type where the therapist guides you to talk about how you can think of improving your life in the future. So the research a person does before they go into therapy could also take into account what they'd like from a therapy session, as well as what kinds work best.

[Morrigan]

This whole story seems straight from a horror movie; a real nightmare. I can only imagine what could happen to patients with mental illness back in periods where such documentation wasn't even available at all, where patients were completely at the mercy of the psychiatrists. :(

You ought to write a book about this.

[Roma]

I think one of the problems is that bad doctors can go from a hospital in one province or country to another one without truthfully disclosing why they really left.

Say that, without naming any names of course, a resident doctor was kicked out of a hospital because of unprofesssional conduct, but left quietly without any record of what he did.
Then he was hired by another hospital but was eventually forced out because of even worse unprofessional misconduct, but because the hospital was complicit it was agreed that he would leave quietly without any record of what he did.
Then he was hired by another hospital where he continued to harm his patients in exactly the same way. He settles his malpractice lawsuits out of court and his lawyers put gag orders on his patients that don't allow them to tell the Colleges or State Boards anything.

His resume' wouldn't send any red flags up and his previous hospitals of employment have agreed to keep things quiet just to get rid of him.

[a_unique_person]

I think one of the problems is that bad doctors can go from a hospital in one province or country to another one without truthfully disclosing why they really left.


Exactly what happened in the Jayant Patel case.

[Baby Nemesis]

I've heard of this kind of thing happening, where workplace bullies/abusers have moved from job to job, getting glowing references from previous employers as kind of bribes to get rid of them without risking bad publicity for the organisation that employed them in the first place.

Here's a story by someone who alleges it happened to someone she knew: Bullying in a small charity in the voluntary sector (http://www.bullyonline.org/cases/case1.htm)

... The realisation that she was not a normal person like the rest of us was just the start of a long bruising battle. It would have been so much easier just to leave but we four oldies decided we had to do something otherwise she'd carry on doing this to other people. We established quickly that legal action would be difficult but nevertheless we started down that route with a grievance procedure. The Witch outmanoeuvred the management committee at every stage, and was able to deflect every allegation whilst blaming just about everyone, except herself, for the failings of the charity, which by this time were apparent and mounting.

After eighteen months of hell, with two early retirements, a near-suicide, a dismissal and a court case, the management committee finally admitted that The Witch might not have been a wise choice after all. Although no-one knows the precise details, it was rumoured that she got a good reference and a promise not to take further action against her. I think the management committee were scared of her and had no idea what to do.

To cut a long story short, the glowing record that she arrived with turned out to be grossly embroidered. The previous charity had told her to leave and given her a reference to expedite her departure and to avoid legal action and bad publicity. It turned out this had happened several times in her career; in fact it appears she's careered from job to job, amassing an impressive CV of names, but always leaving under a cloud, although nothing was ever recorded on paper.

We've lost many good people because of The Witch, but the saddest part is that the charitable work we've achieved in the last two years is a fraction of what we used to do. A new director is in the process of being appointed but most of the staff have become disaffected and many are planning to leave. It's a great shame, and a great waste, especially as this is all down to one person - who, we hear on the grapevine, already has another charity lined up to take her on.

The issue of abusers being given good references and moving on to abuse in different places has even been brought up in the UK parliament.

From an old discussion of a Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill (http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1999/jan/25/sexual-offences-amendment-bill)

People who did not know where to turn go to court when they are 25 or 30 years old and, quite rightly, receive massive damages, which the councils have to pay. The crux of the matter is that, when abuse has been discovered, it has been covered up. That has been the case with teachers. Teachers have told me that they are not happy with the Bill, which they regard as a sledgehammer to crack a nut. They say that the number of teachers involved is very small—certainly only a few get caught and are prosecuted.

As the Utting report showed repeatedly, schools, teachers governors and councils do not want the bad publicity. Cases have been covered up. In the Evening Standard, there was, quite rightly, a big row about Islington council and the extent of child abuse there. It was hushed up, not for political reasons but because of demands by staff and headmasters who do not want other parents to take their children from the school. They do not want parents storming down to the school, protesting and telling teachers that they are not doing their job. That has gone on for years. ...

Does my hon. Friend share with me the concern felt by many that insurance companies effectively compel local authorities to keep their information hidden lest they lose their insurance cover?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. About eight years ago, I was a member of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. We undertook an inquiry into criminal injuries compensation legislation. We considered various cases, one of which involved a man who had sodomised his wife and stepson, for which he had gone to prison. He was beaten up by other prisoners and then put in a claim for criminal injuries. The claim was of course kicked out because he was not entitled to compensation.

In the Select Committee, I asked who had claimed for the boy. There was no answer, only a deadly silence. No one had claimed for him—no councils were claiming for abused children. However, the case started an avalanche of claims. If I remember rightly, the insurance company Municipal Mutual ran into serious difficulties as a result. It put a great deal of pressure on local councils to get rid of the offenders and not to take them to court, because that would have saved them a lot of money. ...

There was obviously a conspiracy of silence. Paedophiles have a network. One can gain access to that on the internet and buy child pornography. They move around the country from the care of one education authority to that of another and start their practices all over again.

The situation has reached the stage where, for some local councils, the most important consideration is not looking after the poor abused child but keeping quiet and not blowing the whistle. Anybody who blows the whistle is ostracised. The average county council or borough council discipline code for employees who have to be sacked or suspended—they can be suspended for six or nine months on full pay—consists of about 200 pages of procedures that must be followed. The union can provide a defence. The whistleblower is hauled up before the inquiry committee and may change his evidence because he is put under pressure. At the end of all that, everybody says of the alleged abuser, "For God's sake, let's get rid of him and move him on." He moves on to abuse again. ...

As the hon. Member for Bassetlaw said, the practice in schools has sometimes been to get rid of abusers as quickly and quietly as possible, by giving them an ultimatum accompanied by a good reference, thereby passing the problem on to another school, but there is scope for considerable argument about how some professions should be dealt with.

I wonder what could be done to change things.

It would seem from the interview clip I quoted in my last post that Colin Ross has flippantly dismissed findings that were sceptical of practices like his. And he must have become aware his practices were doing serious damage. Yet he still carries on.

[Skeptic]

So today I received Dr.T.'s response, short and infuriating. He concluded that since multiple personality disorder was in the DSM III when I was given that diagnosis then I was not misdiagnosed.

Nice logic. Get someone to diagnose him with leprosy. Leprosy is a real skin disease that appears in medical textbooks, isn't it?

[borealys]

Their first reply will be an attempt to just brush you off, to see if you will just give up. Just get your facts together, as you are doing here, and keep after them. Don't get angry, that just makes it easy for them to ignore you and focus on your anger, rather than the issue. Just stick to the facts. The least you are entitled to is an apology.


I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was indeed the case. Administrators and bureaucrats tend not to budge an inch unless you make it clear that you're serious. Even if you can't afford to bring the case back to court, could you get a lawyer to help you draft a second letter? It sounds like the first one you sent was thorough and well-documented, and I'm naive enough to be surprised you got the brush-off, but with a lawyer's help, you could probably put together a letter that makes it clear that you know your rights, and you know what the legal implications of his refusal are. (If you aren't in a position to act on those implications, well, he doesn't have to know that!) Particularly in light of the fact that you are still being treated poorly at his hospital, as a direct result of what was not only a misdiagnosis (which does happen sometimes in spite of a doctor's best effort) but a sloppy diagnosis, he should be worried. There's nothing like vaguely threatening legalese to make something like that clear. :)

Given everything you've said here, there's nothing to conclude other than that you have been terribly, terribly wronged, and an apology is the absolute least they can do.

[Miss_Kitt]

This thread really makes me want to cry--both for you, and for the many people who are harmed by cranks who see Hidden Evil in every shadow, and use drugs and manipulative "therapy" to reinforce their fantasy. The "recovered memory" cranks; the multiple-personality cranks; the UFO abductee cranks; the Satanic Ritual cranks...the list seems to get longer every day.

Girlfriend, you need to get a letter to Oprah!! Or whomever the equivalent is in Canada. That this irrational and irresponsible "treatment" happened years ago does not mean no one will be interested in it. They can use a digital voice-alteration and a pixellated view to interview you, so YOU are not identifiable; and if you have the documentation to back up your complaints, even better.

I am truly amazed that Dr. R's current employer is not interested in their risk of being sued over this kind of shenanigans, since it sounds like he has not changed his stripes at all...

All I can offer is a hug, but here it is: :hug2:

[Neverfly]

The hard part is Fighting Back when you're well aware that the management will not budge. You're well aware that by fighting back you will be labled as a trouble maker, disruptive and the image will be painted of you as the irrational 'bad guy.' for having fought back.
It's not a very fun situation.
being one who fights back anyway, I have been through this several times.

Success is not measured by how often you win, but by whether or not you managed to get under the Bureaucracy's skin before they manage to get rid of you.

[fls]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was indeed the case. Administrators and bureaucrats tend not to budge an inch unless you make it clear that you're serious. Even if you can't afford to bring the case back to court, could you get a lawyer to help you draft a second letter? It sounds like the first one you sent was thorough and well-documented, and I'm naive enough to be surprised you got the brush-off, but with a lawyer's help, you could probably put together a letter that makes it clear that you know your rights, and you know what the legal implications of his refusal are.

What are the legals implications of his refusal?

Linda

[Baby Nemesis]

This thread really makes me want to cry--both for you, and for the many people who are harmed by cranks who see Hidden Evil in every shadow, and use drugs and manipulative "therapy" to reinforce their fantasy. The "recovered memory" cranks; the multiple-personality cranks; the UFO abductee cranks; the Satanic Ritual cranks...the list seems to get longer every day.

It reminds me of the satanic ritual abuse scandals of several years ago, where children were snatched from their communities and taken into care on the basis of very flawed evidence, such as interviews where social workers coached the children to give the answers they wanted.

There was a documentary about one of the scandals on BBC2 in 2006. From a BBC News article: Orkney abuse children speak out (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/5272092.stm)

In 1991, five boys and four girls, aged between eight and 15, were taken from their homes on South Ronaldsay.

The children, who could not be identified at the time, returned to their homes two months later when legal action was thrown out by a sheriff.

They now claim questioning presupposed that there was abuse taking place. ...

Social workers such as Janette Chisholm, who was involved in the questioning of the W family, maintain a child's denial is not proof.

"If it is a secret they'll deny. As long as it's a secret, denial will come for the same reason the secrecy is there - keeping something safe," she said. ...So it seems the children were in a lose/lose situation. If they described abuse, they would be believed unquestioningly. If they denied anything happened, that would also be seen as a sign that they'd been ritually abused because they'd want to keep it a secret.

More detail from an article about it on another website: (http://www.faascotland.co.uk/Orkney%202006.htm)

It was early in the morning of February 27, 1991, that it happened. It was a dark, murky sort of day – like so many February days on Orkney – but brothers Jonathan and Sam were warm and comfortable in their beds.

It happened at 7am. Sam, 15, and 12-year-old Jonathan woke up to find a crowd of police officers and social workers pushing their way into their bedrooms. "It was a strange way to wake up," says Jonathan. "I was told to get dressed and I was watched while I dressed and told we couldn't take anything." ...

Edited for Rule 4.

[Rolfe]

Oh, I saw that film. Janette Chishiolm was creepy. Even after all these years and all the evidence, she sat there with a sly smile on her face saying more or less "they would say that, wouldn't they" about the children's denial of abuse. It was a bit like homoeopathy. Just as there's nothing that can happen that the homoeopath can't interpret as the remedy "working", there was nothing at all that these children could say or do that wasn't interpreted as abuse. Nobody ever paused and thought, suppose none of this happened, what could the children say to get that across to us?

Not long afterwards a local woman remarked that there was never any possibility that the accusations were true. Part of the story involved bizarre satanic rituals with bonfires and nudity and the local minister taking part, all happening in a field which wasn't especially secluded. The woman pointed out that it was completely impossible for this to have happened without anyone else in the community noticing. She actually said, if there had been anything like that going on, I'd have crawled there barefoot over the brambles in the ditch to get a look at it!

But the locals weren't asked if they'd ever seen any of this quite consipicous and bizarre behaviour.

I think Roma's approach has to be very goal-centred. Try to avoid dwelling on things that Ross can defend, and concentrate on the places where he's vulnerable. It can feel very unsatisfactory, as if he's getting away with stuff, but in these cases you really need to figure out where he's legally vulnerable and just home in on that.

Rolfe.

[borealys]

What are the legals implications of his refusal?

Linda

Hells, I don't know. That's where a lawyer could be of use.

(My father is a lawyer. Whenever I, or any of my friends, feel that someone in a position of authority might be screwing us around, we ask him what he thinks. Then we repeat his words, sometimes verbatim, to the offending person, sometimes but not always prefaced with the words, "I spoke with a lawyer, and he believes ______." .... Granted, the people we've had to take on were generally smaller potatoes than this character, but in most situations, it's worked like a charm. They don't have to know that the "speaking with a lawyer" was just a chat with a friend's daddy. YMMV, naturally. :))

I guess my thought was, there are a lot of people who will brush you off if they think that they can get away with it, and the only thing to do when dealing with someone like that is to make it very clear that you aren't shutting up or going away, and they may well find themselves in a legal bind if they try to make you. In this particular situation, of course, it's clearly more complicated than that, so, I'll defer to the experts.

[Baby Nemesis]

It reminds me of the satanic ritual abuse scandals of several years ago, where children were snatched from their communities and taken into care on the basis of very flawed evidence, such as interviews where social workers coached the children to give the answers they wanted.

There was a documentary about one of the scandals on BBC2 in 2006. From a BBC News article: Orkney abuse children speak out (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/5272092.stm)

So it seems the children were in a lose/lose situation. If they described abuse, they would be believed unquestioningly. If they denied anything happened, that would also be seen as a sign that they'd been ritually abused because they'd want to keep it a secret.

More detail from an article about it on another website: (http://www.faascotland.co.uk/Orkney%202006.htm)

Sorry, moderators, about the overly-lengthy quote that may have constituted a breach of copyright. I admit to getting carried away with my quoting. While I have absolutely no respect for the person who reported my post that led to most of it being deleted, and in fact feel rather contemptuous of anyone who would do such a thing, given that the information was not put there frivolously, and it was designed to show up the kinds of faults in the system that can lead to injustice, detailing flawed interview techniques that can lead to grave injustices and suffering, which I thought might have a measure of relevance to Roma's case and so give her food for thought, in order that she might possibly be inspired with new ideas to put together a better case for herself, I do understand why a moderator would feel it necessary to edit the post, and respect the decision to do so.

Anyone who wants to read the deleted part of my post can always follow the link though. The link's to quite a long article, so most of what I quoted is a fair way down the page; but you should find it easily - the paragraph beginning the section on the grossly flawed interview techniques of the social workers that led to suffering because of the injustice of the children being taken away begins:

Leading the interviews with the children, in November 1990, was social worker Liz McLean, employed by the RSSPCC.

Just use your browser's search function.

[Baby Nemesis]

I wonder about the motives of people like the ones who interviewed those children and supposedly found evidence of satanic ritual abuse where none existed. Here's a clip from another article, where one of the former children speaks out about the way she was interviewed by one of them: (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/oct/21/comment.children?gusrc=rss&feed=fromtheguardian)

"I was terrified of her. She was very intimidating, very controlling. I was always small when I was a child but she would lean over me. She got very angry. She would want me to agree with what she was saying." Which was? "They were mentioning about private parts, things like that. Asking me, did one of the grown-ups touch you and touch your brothers and sisters in your private parts? They would want me to agree with it. And when Liz McLean couldn't get me to agree with it, she would ask me to draw a picture. So I drew a picture of my pony. That wasn't right. Then I drew a picture of us playing football. That wasn't right. Eventually, she pulled this piece of paper out which had a circle on it, and she said, 'Copy that.' So I drew a circle and she said, 'Draw little stick men round it,' and that's what I did. And she said, 'You're being very good.' And that was the meetings."

That was much of the evidence, it seems.

How in the world did this social worker imagine it was going to be possible for the children to convey to her that nothing had happened if nothing had?! If the children are to be believed, it's as if she'd decided it most definitely had, based on ... well, what? And she decided to make the evidence fit her ideas.

There's someone on a forum I post on sometimes who's become enamoured with the idea that the American government planned the 9/11 attacks. I don't think he's rational enough or has the inclination to weigh up evidence on both sides of the argument and decide on its merits. That might spoil things for him. It's perhaps as if he wants it to be true. He's intrigued to know more information that would suggest they were responsible, describing it as being like an "exciting crime drama". I wonder if some social workers and psychiatrists/psychologists have got so caught up in the excitement of finding scandallous things that support their belief in what they're fixated on that the truth of the matter has become very much secondary to them, as has the well-being of the people they're actually doing therapy on/interviewing.

Or I wonder what other motives such people might have.

[Ivor the Engineer]

SID strikes again.

[Baby Nemesis]

What's that?

[Ivor the Engineer]

What's that?

Oh sorry, I thought you might have been looking at the other thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=137027).

SID = Supplier Induced Demand.

Creating false memories of abuse in patients increases their demand for treatment.

[Baby Nemesis]

Aha. I had a brief look at that thread when it first started, but hadn't looked at it since then till you linked to it.

Yes, maybe some therapists think if they can prolong therapy, it means more demand for their services and thus more money for them. In fact, I once went to a day of lectures where I heard one of those Human Givens therapists that promote those oh-so controversial theories (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=4245940#post4245940) that started the argument in the old personality disorder thread, expressing the view that some therapists actually do think like that. He said it was a lot more sensible to hold the view that you can get just as much money by treating patients in as short a time as possible, because then you get to treat more of them!

[Ivor the Engineer]

Aha. I had a brief look at that thread when it first started, but hadn't looked at it since then till you linked to it.

Yes, maybe some therapists think if they can prolong therapy, it means more demand for their services and thus more money for them. In fact, I once went to a day of lectures where I heard one of those Human Givens therapists that promote those oh-so controversial theories (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?p=4245940#post4245940) that started the argument in the old personality disorder thread, expressing the view that some therapists actually do think like that. He said it was a lot more sensible to hold the view that you can get just as much money by treating patients in as short a time as possible, because then you get to treat more of them!

An important point to remember is while money is an obvious incentive, internal motivations, such as the desire to raise or maintain ones status, can also be powerful factors to consider when thinking about why a medical professional might try to induce patients to undergo treatment they would not if given a more balanced appraisal of a proposed treatment.

[Roma]

Dr.August Piper once told me an old Chinese proverb that could explain why some of the bad therapists continue fraudulent therapy with their patients, it goes:
"He who rides the tiger dares not get off".
A modern translation could be:
"Don't stop or your patients will leave, get better and sue you".

The Manitoba Apology Act protects the Hospitals from legal action:

HER MAJESTY, by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, enacts as follows:

Definitions

1 The following definitions apply in this Act.

"apology" means an expression of sympathy or regret, a statement that one is sorry or any other words or actions indicating contrition or commiseration, whether or not the words or actions admit or imply an admission of fault in connection with the matter to which the words or actions relate. (« excuses »)

"court" includes a tribunal, an arbitrator and any other person who is acting in a judicial or quasi-judicial capacity. (« tribunal »)

Effect of apology on liability

2(1) An apology made by or on behalf of a person in connection with a matter

(a) does not constitute an express or implied admission of fault or liability by the person in connection with the matter;

(b) does not, despite any wording to the contrary in a contract of insurance and despite any other enactment, void, impair or otherwise affect insurance coverage that

(i) is available, or

(ii) would, but for the apology, be available,

to the person in connection with the matter; and

(c) must not be taken into account in determining fault or liability in connection with the matter.

Evidence of apology not admissible in court

2(2) Despite any other enactment, evidence of an apology made by or on behalf of a person in connection with any matter is not admissible in a court as evidence of the fault or liability of the person in connection with the matter.

Coming into force

3 This Act comes into force 90 days after the day it receives royal assent.

It recieved Royal Accent last February.

So how could I possibly make them care if a lawyer was involved since I can't use the apology against them. They don't have to apologize if they don't feel like it do they?

[Baby Nemesis]

An important point to remember is while money is an obvious incentive, internal motivations, such as the desire to raise or maintain ones status, can also be powerful factors to consider when thinking about why a medical professional might try to induce patients to undergo treatment they would not if given a more balanced appraisal of a proposed treatment.

True, there's probably a big ego boost to be gained by having yourself considered an expert, as Colin Ross is in some circles, along with other pioneers in work with people who supposedly had MPD.

I've just found an article about the ways lives have been destroyed by people like that. (http://www.rickross.com/reference/satanism/satanism16.html)

It claims - though how accurately it's portraying the motivations it's difficult to tell:

... In the United States, however, specialists such as Bennett Braun, Corydon Hammond and Colin Ross have received enormous support from books, articles, and conferences where the myths of satanic cults are repeated and elaborated. In the final analysis, such therapists believe in the cults because they want to believe. The sessions in which menacing, evil alters appear provide the same thrill which exorcists experienced hundreds of years ago. It is challenging, exciting, frightening work -- a far cry from the humdrum existence of the routine mental health professional who listens to a boring litany of drab complaints all day long. Yes, it's difficult work --dangerous, in fact, because the cult members may even try to assassinate the therapist. But for the intrepid mind explorer, savior of souls, healer of splintered selves, it is all worthwhile.*

[Baby Nemesis]

Dr.August Piper once told me an old Chinese proverb that could explain why some of the bad therapists continue fraudulent therapy with their patients, it goes:
"He who rides the tiger dares not get off".
A modern translation could be:
"Don't stop or your patients will leave, get better and sue you".

The Manitoba Apology Act protects the Hospitals from legal action:

HER MAJESTY, by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, enacts as follows:

Definitions

1 The following definitions apply in this Act.

"apology" means an expression of sympathy or regret, a statement that one is sorry or any other words or actions indicating contrition or commiseration, whether or not the words or actions admit or imply an admission of fault in connection with the matter to which the words or actions relate. (« excuses »)

"court" includes a tribunal, an arbitrator and any other person who is acting in a judicial or quasi-judicial capacity. (« tribunal »)

Effect of apology on liability

2(1) An apology made by or on behalf of a person in connection with a matter

(a) does not constitute an express or implied admission of fault or liability by the person in connection with the matter;

(b) does not, despite any wording to the contrary in a contract of insurance and despite any other enactment, void, impair or otherwise affect insurance coverage that

(i) is available, or

(ii) would, but for the apology, be available,

to the person in connection with the matter; and

(c) must not be taken into account in determining fault or liability in connection with the matter.

Evidence of apology not admissible in court

2(2) Despite any other enactment, evidence of an apology made by or on behalf of a person in connection with any matter is not admissible in a court as evidence of the fault or liability of the person in connection with the matter.

Coming into force

3 This Act comes into force 90 days after the day it receives royal assent.

It recieved Royal Accent last February.

So how could I possibly make them care if a lawyer was involved since I can't use the apology against them. They don't have to apologize if they don't feel like it do they?

The apology act was probably drawn up to stop the catch 22 situation whereby doctors would often refuse to apologise when mistakes were made, perhaps because they were worried the apology would be used as evidence against them by people who wanted to sue; but many people sued not simply because they were angry about what had originally happened, but because they were angry at not even receiving an apology from a doctor, and so understandably wanted the hospital to be held to account.

I personally think it would be better to try to reason with the hospital to try to get an apology, rather than threatening them with a lawyer. They may not have realised while he was employed there just how much of what he was doing was flawed, since he was an alleged expert in his field.

I think Colin Ross himself, though, ought to be stopped, probably by criminal charges.

[Roma]

Many people, including me, think that he should be in jail for manslaughter because of the patients that died, here and in Texas.

A friend of mine who worked as a private investigator asked the Medical Examiner about the number of Dr.R's patients who died in Manitoba. My friend was told that if a psychiatric patient commits suicide from a drug over dose it is considered a "natural death" and is not investigated.

Here's where I have to put it into a hypothetical for legal reasons. Say, just for example, that a doctor was sending his patients home with leathal amounts of drugs and then phoning them at home pushing to the brink with hypnosis and then telling them that they should commit suicide. Why would a doctor do that?? Say, for example, that a doctor was researching near death "white light" phenomena and was writing a paper on the subject. Anyway, would that be suicide or manslaughter?

Dr.R's web site used to have a research paper he wrote on near death experiences, I wonder how he did his research.

[Roma]

Oh Baby Nemesis you wouldn't be surprised to hear that when Dr.Bennett Braun was being deposed, as the result of a medical malpractice lawsuit, he insisted on having a loaded gun in case his former patient P.B. tried to assasinate him.

[Baby Nemesis]

Many people, including me, think that he should be in jail for manslaughter because of the patients that died, here and in Texas.

A friend of mine who worked as a private investigator asked the Medical Examiner about the number of Dr.R's patients who died in Manitoba. My friend was told that if a psychiatric patient commits suicide from a drug over dose it is considered a "natural death" and is not investigated.

Here's where I have to put it into a hypothetical for legal reasons. Say, just for example, that a doctor was sending his patients home with leathal amounts of drugs and then phoning them at home pushing to the brink with hypnosis and then telling them that they should commit suicide. Why would a doctor do that?? Say, for example, that a doctor was researching near death "white light" phenomena and was writing a paper on the subject. Anyway, would that be suicide or manslaughter?

Dr.R's web site used to have a research paper he wrote on near death experiences, I wonder how he did his research.

That's so freaky I was almost speechless at first.

There ought to be regulations on the amounts of drugs a psychiatrist can prescribe a patient at any one time. If there aren't in some places, the regulations seriously need to be tightened up!

Dr. Ross likes his statistical inflation, doesn't he, it would seem.

If this web page is to be believed: (http://www.unexplainedstuff.com/Afterlife-Mysteries/Individual-Human-Experience-with-Death-and-the-Afterlife-Near-death-experiences-ndes.html)

In 1983, an extensive survey conducted by George Gallup, Jr., found that eight million Americans—5 percent of the adult population—said that they had undergone a near-death experience. A survey conducted in 1991 by Dr. Colin Ross, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, suggests that as many as one in three people have left their bodies and returned— most often during times of crisis, extreme pain, and near-death.

It seems Colin Ross really does have some strange beliefs. I've found a strange article (http://www.actlab.utexas.edu/~vreed/LegionWeb/Writing/Dissociation.html) that mentions some of his research/opinions.

Colin Ross (Ross, 1997) lists 11 dissociative features of the shamans work, and relates each to DID.

So he's comparing DID patients to shamans. While he uses words such as "claim" when referring to what DID patients seem to be perceiving, he doesn't use any skeptical words when referring to the experience of the Shaman, suggesting that he believes Shamans are/were really in contact with spirits, and that he thinks MPD patients might be. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem, if it were not for the possibility that in that case, he might think he has justification for using types of therapy most scientists would shun, such as drug therapy to help them attain their higher levels of consciousness so they can fully explore the spirit world he thinks they could be coming into contact with. That's highly speculative and might not be the case at all, but it suggests a possible connection between his interest in near-death experiences or out-of-body experiences, and his desire to find out more with high doses of whatever drugs he was prescribing, over-and-above any desire he had to cause near-death conditions for research into near-death experiences.

Incidentally, I wonder how a therapist who told patients to commit suicide would then try to ensure they didn't die and avoid suspicion, - phone the emergency services anonymously and say they knew someone at a certain address had attempted suicide, or something?

Whatever the case, he was obviously acting with extreme recklessness.

Here are some of his comparisons, according to the article:

Structured, Meaningful Hallucinations-- Shamans deliberately induced special states of being, in which they could communicate with other realms of being, such as the spirit and animal worlds. Like the "hallucinations" of DID patients, however, these events were not indicative of psychosis, but rather clearly dissociative in nature.

Trance States-- Trance states were essential prerequisites for spirit communication, out of body experiences, possession, etc. DID patients frequently enter trance. One of the major diagnostic criteria for DID is ease of hypnotizability. ...

Possession by the Souls of Ancestors-- In trance states, shamans would often deliberately become possessed by the souls of dead ancestors, who would impart advice and wisdom. It is fairly common for DID patients to have at least one alter who claims to be a dead ancestor.

Possession by Helping Spirits-- These "familiars" were often invoked by shamans during trance states as helpers and guides. DID patients almost always have helper personalities, some of whom claim to be from other dimensions or to be spirits. ...

Out-of-Body Experiences-- A common technique for shamans was astral projection, or out-of -body travel, where they would project themselves into the spirit or real world to accomplish tasks. Many DID patients have had out-of-body experiences, often at the time of childhood abuse, as a means of psychic escape. ...

(The bibliography used in writing the article lists that as coming from: Ross, C. A. (1997), Dissociative Identity Disorder, John Wiley and Sons, New York)

On another website, it says Colin Ross wrote a chapter in his book The Osiris Complex about a woman who he says talked with her dead grandmother, apparently in one of his sessions, who was apparently one of her alters. The write-up says he says he doesn't necessarily believe it was actually her dead grandmother, but that the therapy of thinking she was talking to her was good for her, though it might not have been for another patient. I don't know whether that has any significance at all as regards the idea that he might think high doses of drugs are good for patients because they help them contact some kind of spirit world, so they help them explore things about themselves that need to be got out into the open. My theory might be bunkum and he might have given high doses of drugs for other reasons, though what, I wouldn't know. Perhaps you've got more of an idea.

The article I've just quoted the stuff about shamans from quotes/paraphrases another psychiatrist who's into MPD, Putnam, as saying that some types of alternate personalities will include:

Persecutor Personalities-- These personalities will try to sabotage the patient's life and even inflict bodily harm. They are sometimes responsible for "suicide" attempts which are really cases of "internal homicide", where a persecutor personality attempts to kill the host.

Suicidal Personalities-- As distinct from above, these are personalities driven to kill themselves, as opposed to other alters. They may be unaware of the existence of the host, or other alters.

I don't know if Colin Ross shares that view. But anyone who does, who also had the reputation as an expert, could conceivably cover up suicides that were due to his incompetence, by claiming that the patient had destructive alters, who killed the patient in the end, a manifestation of their mental illness. If it could be proved that the mental illness had been induced by the therapist, then whether or not it could ever be proved that he caused the actual suicide by a drug-and-hypnosis session on one particular night, it might still be possible to get him charged with something criminal.

And is there not a body of psychiatrists he could be brought before, who could make a judgment as to whether he deserves to lose his licence to practice, something equivalent to the General Medical Council (http://www.gmc-uk.org/)?

[fls]

And is there not a body of psychiatrists he could be brought before, who could make a judgment as to whether he deserves to lose his licence to practice, something equivalent to the General Medical Council (http://www.gmc-uk.org/)?

State boards are responsible for licensing physicians and ensuring their practise meets professional standards.

Linda

[Roma]

Dr.R. didn't actually care if a patient he was treating lived or died, he just shrugged his shoulders and said it was "fate". We were all just white rats as far as he was concerned.
He conducted his "experiments" without following any scientific guidlines or proper protocol, just like he presented his amazing scientific discovery of "eye beams of energy" to the James Randi million dollar challenge.

The hospital and psych ward staff should have reported him but I don't know if they could have. I phoned the College and complained to them about a friend of mine who was a patient of his on the psych ward but I was told that only the patient could file a complaint. But just how does a heavily drugged psych patient file a complaint? She died, he shrugged his shoulders. No investigation.

[Baby Nemesis]

State boards are responsible for licensing physicians and ensuring their practise meets professional standards.

Linda

I wonder if any of Ross's former patients in Dallas has complained about him to their state licensing board.

[Baby Nemesis]

It may well be possible to publicly tarnish Colin Ross's reputation, such that at least some people are warned off going to his treatment facilities or sending their children there, via some kind of media trial, without Roma having to do a thing, and without even the media having to mention Colin Ross's name all that much. He may have walked slap bang into a trap.

James Randi's a famous fella. Colin Ross is a notorious one. We have a perfect opportunity for media intrigue. Colin Ross wants to take the million dollar challenge. So he should. And Randi should use his contacts to ensure the test is as highly publicised as possible, which Ross will like the idea of.

But then, the controversy can begin. Randi can ask a few very pertinent questions of Ross about his work with DID patients. Those news outlets carrying the story should be fed some leads about the suffering MPD diagnoses have caused, and the controversy surrounding whether it's a genuine diagnosis. Critical questions could be asked of Colin Ross. Particularly controversial bits of his books could be quoted. The media doesn't have to put themselves at risk of being sued for libel. They only have to use sources of information that are out in the open, plain for everyone to see, and perhaps ask Colin Ross to explain them. If he doesn't like that, that will be newsworty in itself, along with suggestions that that's rather telling.

Various media outlets could be put in contact with therapists who used to believe they were doing good by taking people through therapy where they aided people to recover supposed repressed memories, but who now believe they were doing a lot of harm. Here's an example of one. (http://www.theeway.com/skepticc/archives29.html) In fact, I've found out that the author of that interview with the retractor therapist is someone who's written a book where he interviewed Colin Ross, Mark Pendergrast, who says that what Colin Ross said made very little sense, but that he even claimed that therapists ought to be allowed to sue parents and others who might have persuaded suggestible patients to retract their memories! Controversial views like that should be questioned very publicly, along with Ross's much more harmful ones.

I've found out that the New York Times did an article about retraction of false memories and MPD. (http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/acocella-hysteria.html) A clip:

How could these things have happened? How could Carlson have believed what Humenansky was telling her? According to Carlson and others now repudiating MPD and recovered-memory treatment—they are called "retractors"—it is not hard, given certain circumstances. One is drugs. MPD patients are often given strong medications, particularly benzodiazepines such as Valium, Halcion, and Xanax for anxiety and insomnia. "I have found that MPD patients can tolerate enormous doses of benzodiazepines," writes Colin Ross enthusiastically in his textbook on the disorder. (In a 1995 court case Ross acknowledged that he had put one patient on fifty-one milligrams of Halcion a day, which is one hundred times the prescribed maximum for that drug.) Sequentially or simultaneously, Carlson, during her time with Humenansky, took Xanax, Valium, and Ativan for anxiety; Pamelor, Desyrel, and Prozac for depression; and Restoril for insomnia,
often in heavy doses. In the words of one retractor, "If you take enough drugs, you can remember about anything."

Colin Ross could be asked about his claim about MPD patients being able to tolerate much higher doses of drugs than most people, and the claim could be scientifically proven false in the media glare. I'm sure there are lots of other claims that could be similarly dealt with.

And plenty of controversy has surrounded the MPD craze, a fair bit of which could be dredged up for background.

I've found out that James Randi is apparently on the advisory board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, an organisation that was started by parents who'd been falsely accused of abuse by their children who'd been in "therapy". So it seems he has some interest and knowledge about the subject. He could perhaps do a little demonstration on television of how it's very easy indeed to implant false memories in someone's mind via hypnosis. Such things have been done before. In one demonstration I heard about on a television programme about consumer cons, a psychologist suggested to several individual volunteer patients several times over weeks that they had been on a balloon ride when they were seven. She asked each one to go home and think about it. They all ended up convinced that they remembered the event. In another demonstration, it was suggested to a woman under hypnosis that she'd been woken up at about 4:00 AM a few nights earlier by a noise that sounded like a car tyre blowing out. Afterwards, she was convinced that it had happened. Before, she'd said nothing like that had happened. She was reminded she'd said that, and she said, "I must have been off my head". There were no doubts in her mind that it had happened.

Randi could perhaps do a TV demonstration of hypnotising someone to remember something similar, to make the point of how easy it could be for therapists to implant false memories in people.

In the interview with the retractor therapist I linked to above, she gives an example of the kinds of leading questions she would ask clients that would help to implant false memories in their minds:

Once I graduated with my masters in 1986, I began to counsel people on a variety of issues, but I also developed a sub-specialty in sexual abuse. In 1990, I ran a sexual abuse group that lasted nine months. While most of the women in the group had always remembered their abuse, there were a few who had vague images or just a gut feeling that they had been abused. I remember conducting a guided imagery session with one such woman. I had her close her eyes, get comfortable, and find the tension in her body. I said to her, "How old are you in this memory?" She said she was about four. I would ask other questions, like, "Do you know where you are? Do you feel like you're inside or out-of-doors?" In my own mind, I did not see this as leading at all. They seemed like innocuous questions. Later, I realized that this was almost like playing scrabble with someone and putting in a little word that suddenly opens up a whole new section of the board. I was helping her to take that little image and let it flow into a specific place. I was actually helping her fill in the details.

Here are some reviews of the hospital facility Colin Ross runs now in Dallas. (http://www.insiderpages.com/b/3722019551) Strangely enough, some are glowing, while others are damning, and there isn't anything in between, apart from the odd comment about some therapy staff being good. None of the reviews describe the therapy techniques. Even the glowing ones didn't say whether anything that happened there had actually helped them to recover in any genuinely substantial way. And some reviews are from people who were there before Colin Ross took over the running of it. But some kind of media investigation into the place might be a good thing. If interviews could be done with people who've been there recently, who wouldn't have to be asked their opinions of the place or about what they thought of Colin Ross, but simply about the kinds of therapy techniques used there, that could even be enough. In fact, there might be detailed information about them available, published by the organisation itself, so not even that would be necessary. James Randi or someone working with him could explain in the media glare just why any therapy techniques they use that are likely to be harmful would be, and inform the public about some better therapy options.

This would all be done in the context of showing the head therapist up when his million dollar challenge application publicly fails.

I don't see this as being an unreasonable thing to try to get arranged. James Randi has publicly discredited people before. According to this Wikipedia article, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hydrick) a fraud who was pretending to be able to do psychic tricks, James Hydrick, was exposed as such by James Randi on a television programme called That's My Line, and that virtually ended Hydrick's own television career. If James Randi is willing to publicly expose frauds like that, and able to cause the collapse of the television career of someone he publicly exposes as a fraud, how much more willing should he be to expose someone who's doing very serious damage; and he should theoretically be capable of putting some kind of dampener on Ross's career via the public exposure.

If anyone would like to contact James Randi, and refer him to this thread for the background, and suggest he does just that, I'd say go ahead.

I'm not called Nemesis for nothing. :D

On the other hand, if anyone knows of any reasons why my suggestions wouldn't work, explain them. They could always be refined. Possibly dropped.

[Roma]

There was some kind of an investigation or hearing last summer, his license was up in August and I was made aware of some people and a reporter in Texas who expressed some kind of interest to the Texas State Medical Board. I don't know the results.

Sorry to be so vague.

[Baby Nemesis]

Oh look what I've found. It seems nothing much can have come of whatever investigation took place. Here's a Texas State Medical Board website, it seems. It's got Colin Ross's address on it, and his licence number. It says his "registration status" is "active".
http://www.dfwdoctor.net/Doctor/33483/Colin-A-Ross

Interestingly enough, people can submit reviews of him to the website. No one's submitted one for him yet.

It's got a typo on it. It says the hospitals he works at are called the "Timerlawn Mental Health System". They missed out the B in Timberlawn.

But it seems they've done something much more egregious than that if they're still letting such a person practice. Still, there is their review system.

Colin Ross's own website says he currently works there:

Please note that the Timberlawn, Forest View and Del Amo Programs are identical treatment programs. All three programs are overseen and directed by Dr. Colin Ross. The treatment approach of the programs is modeled after Dr. Ross's Trauma Model.

The only differentation between programs is Dr. Ross's increased availability to Timberlawn because of its proximity to his residence.

(He doesn't proof-read either!)
http://www.rossinst.com/treatment.html

There are links on the page to what it says are more detailed descriptions of the treatment his programmes provide. But in actual fact, they don't give a clear description of exactly what's involved. For instance, on his page about in patient treatment (http://www.rossinst.com/inpatient.html), it says:

... A didactic approach is also utilized to educate the patient as to the cause and form of his or her difficulties, solicit the patient's intellectual capacity for involvement in treatment and recovery, and demystify and de-stigmatize the patient's perception of his or her problems and diagnoses.

What on earth does that mean, in practical terms?

Still, it's possible to find out more, if you pay for it, (or perhaps it's freely available in libraries, and some of it's online somewhere), since he says,

Overall, we follow the treatment principles described in Dr. Ross' book, The Trauma Model.

It's impossible to tell from his treatment pages themselves whether he's modified his treatment and is practising a more efficacious type of therapy than he did formerly. So it's difficult to tell just how negligent the licensing board were in continuing to allow him to practise.

[Baby Nemesis]

Hey guess what. Colin Ross is trying to get his eye beam energy equipment patented. (http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Colin-A-Ross-Institute-957278.html) You know, the thing he's planning to use in his million dollar challenge. The news is only a few weeks old.

I might be wrong, but I don't think any serious investigation can have been done into Colin Ross by a journalist recently. An albeit fairly quick look in Google didn't turn up anything medical, but just coverage of his million dollar challenge application, like this Dallas Observer blog entry from last August. (http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2008/08/colin_ross_has_an_eyebeam_of_e.php) That article's all about his demonstration of his eye beam energy equipment. I couldn't quickly find any articles in the Dallas Observer itself about Colin Ross, or any on that blog that were more serious. Most of the comments on that blog page are just joking around. They're not taking Colin Ross seriously.

What we need is an investigation that'll just use the million dollar challenge thing as the hook to get the media interested, and to give reporters the excuse they need to convince their editors to let them investigate him.

It'll have to be a good investigation if it's going to have any impact. Here's a lecture by Colin Ross about his research into CIA mind control programmes and the mass conspiracy he says surrounded them. (http://www.whale.to/b/ross.html) In it, he says,

So why is it I am talking about this, and what is it I am trying to say here? Well, one explanation is no one has the faintest idea what I am talking about and I am here talking about it because I am a little wacky. Hopefully by the end of the day, that won't be the conclusion. However, that is a conclusion that unhappily is in print in various esteemed locations such as the British Journal of Psychiatry, Esquire Magazine, and Richard's Ofshe's book, and a CBC film.

Yet it seems the man and his therapy techniques are still going strong, although it's possible he's modified them in the past few years.

In fact, he may well have done. I've discovered that on the website of the Timberlawn Mental Health System he runs, (http://www.timberlawn.com/trauma.htm) where it goes into more detail about the kinds of treatment people get there than it does on Ross's own website.

It says,

The Trauma Program does not utilize regressive treatment modalities such as focusing on the retrieval of repressed memories. The treatment team members work collaboratively emphasizing acute stabilization, improved functioning and self management for the chronic, high cost, high utilization patient with extensive comorbidity.

Hey, so now it seems he's reversed himself, and his therapy involves undoing the damage other therapists have done and getting patients back on their feet again. :p

Yep.

Current research indicates that memory recall is, at best, unreliable. Fortunately, healing does not take place at the level of memory or their retrieval. Rather, healing occurs at the level of processing and integrating feelings, thoughts, and perceptions and re-framing cognitive distortions.

If only it hadn't taken him so long to find that out, or concede it. Here's an article from 1997 about an experiment to see if people developed false memories under hypnosis, even if they were warned they might (http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/hypnome1.htm), which says,

The study included 48 undergraduate students who were shown to be highly susceptible to hypnosis. Prior to hypnosis, 32 of the subjects were read a warning that hypnosis can not make people remember things that they would not normally remember. Additional information highlighting the potential imperfections of memory were read from the guidelines published by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis.

(Bolding mine)

In order to get some idea of how negligent Colin Ross was in researching the latest findings on the reliability of memories under hypnosis, it would be informative to find out when the first guidelines were published by a mainstream psychological organisation that warned that memories recovered under hypnosis aren't reliable.

It's strange that Colin Ross believed memories induced under the amount of drugs he prescribed people could be, though, if he did ever sincerely believe that.

Still, now it would seem he's made his therapy more mainstream. Perhaps that's been done under pressure from therapy organisations, and insurance companies who want the cost of therapy to be as little as possible.

Interestingly enough, in that lecture I linked to earlier, Colin Ross says,

So then somewhere in the course of the residency I get up to speed on dissociative disorders and connect them to childhood abuse and read up on the literature and get a little bit grounded, and the avalanche of MPD cases starts for me in late 1985 into 1986, and I think I have kind of (a little bit) got what's going on and some person comes in and starts telling me about their father was killed by the Mafia and they were taken to a child prostitution brothel and then they were involved in satanic ritual stuff.

So I go "Gee", no books, no literature, nobody ever heard of it, nobody talks about it, totally in outer space, no idea what to do, which way to turn. I go to the Eastern Regional Conference, go to Chicago, find out a little bit, start getting a little bit grounded and the first couple of cases, my personal reaction is, "Gawh!" - this sure sounds real, could be real, it's pretty scary. Wonder if I should let my kids out on Halloween or not. And then the sort
of basic experience is whatever percent of SRA is actually real, it is clear that we got into some sort of hysteria wave in society in general, and in the profession, and a lot of people went a bridge or two too far on their journey, and we had to reign ourselves back in.

(Bolding mine)

Could he be acknowledging that he himself went too far? I wonder what kinds of things he's saying in his latest papers.

[Roma]

Dr.R. has and will continue to work both sides of the fence regarding therapies and conspiracies. He will give a lecture on repressed memory therapy one day and a lecture on false memory the next. He will appear as an expert witness supporting recovered memory therapy while at the same time preparing to be an expert witness against a recovered memory therapist.

I've read and heard his proclamations about how he was just siting there minding his own business not doing a thing when mental patients started coming up to him and telling him all of this amazing stuff. Crap! He's no innocent puppy, as just one of the former patients who have sued him I can tell you that none of us ever wandered into his office and began telling stories of satanic cults and CIA conspiracies to him, and not one of us told him that we had been sexually molested by our fathers, and yet that is what all of us found ourselves being in therapy with him for. We had never met each other, we lived a thousand miles away from each other, the only common denominater was Dr.R.

This leapord has not changed his spots, he is just being more careful about what he says to whomever is asking the questions.

He needed to renew his license last August, I know peole had objected and a reporter was involved. My gag order was like the others and prevented me from giving any information from the depositions to the Texas State Board, but they still have complaints on record.
I see he is working as a "consultant" and wonder if he has any conditions on his renewed license. The last year he was up here working as the Director of Psychiatry he lost his in-patient privileges. He may also be having problems with insurance companies and changes the names of the therapies accordingly; MPD was changed to DID, which was changed to PTSD, inline with whatever they cover. But a rose by any other name....

[Baby Nemesis]

Well, something that seems to back up your claims is that while Colin Ross hinted in that lecture I quoted that he went too far in his therapy, he's still advertising papers he wrote on MPD/DID from those days (http://www.rossinst.com/medical_papers.html), and charging for them, saying,

Dr. Ross has published over 100 scientific papers and chapters in edited books, which are listed below. Most of these articles can be obtained at any medical school library, or contact us for pricing and availability of reprints.

It's difficult to know how incriminating that is though, because it seems we don't have any of the content of those papers to hand. But some of the old ones he's advertising include:

• Diagnosis of Multiple Personality During Hypnosis: A Case.
Ross, C.A.:
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 32(2):222-235, 1984.

• Recognizing Multiple Personality Disorder.
Ross, C.A., Fraser, G.:
Annals of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, 20(5):357-360, 1987.

• Signs and Symptoms of Multiple Personality Disorder.
Ross, C.A., Norton, G.R.:
Modern Medicine of Canada, 42(5):392-396, 1987.

• Inpatient Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder.
Ross, C.A.:
Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 32(9):779-781, 1987.

• Phenomenological Overlap of Multiple Personality Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
Ross, C.A., Anderson, G.:
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 176(5):295-299, 1988.

• Cognitive Analysis of Multiple Personality Disorder.
Ross, C.A., Gahan, P.:
American Journal of Psychotherapy, 42(2):229-239, 1988.

• Techniques in the Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder.
Ross, C.A., Gahan, P.:
American Journal of Psychotherapy, 42(1):40-52, 1988.

• The Dissociative Experiences Scale: A Replication Study.
Ross, C.A., Norton, G.R, Anderson, G.:
Dissociation, 1(3):21-22, 1988.

• Multiple Personality Disorder Patients With A Prior Diagnosis of Schizophrenia.
Ross, C.A., Norton, G.R.:
Dissociation, 1(2):39-42, 1988.

• Multiple Personality Disorder in Canada.
Ross, C.A.:
Psychiatry in Canada, 11-13, January 1988.

• Strategies for Working With A Patient Who Has Multiple Personality Disorder.
Anderson, G., Ross, C.A.:
Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 11(4):236-143, 1988.

And so on and so on.

Interestingly, one paper's called,

• Evidence Against the Iatrogenesis of Multiple Personality Disorder.
Ross, C.A., Norton, G.R., Fraser, G.A.
Dissociation, 2(2):61-65, 1989.

I wonder if it would be possible to find obvious contradictions in his papers from around the same time period.

And it seems he hasn't recanted anything he's written in his books either from those days, if that can be judged by the fact he's still advertising them, with no caveat. (http://www.rossinst.com/shop_books.html)

And wow, some of his books are expensive!

From Amazon: (http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Colin%20A.%20Ross&page=1)

The Trauma Model : A Solution to the Problem of Comorbidity in Psychiatry
by Colin A. Ross (Paperback - Dec 6, 2000)
9 Used & new
from $64.95

Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality (Wiley Series in General and Clinical Psychiatry)
by Colin A. Ross (Hardcover - Oct 30, 1996)
Buy new:*
$145.00 $108.00
26 Used & new
from $88.95

The Osiris Complex: Case Studies in Multiple Personality Disorder
by Colin A. Ross (Paperback - Feb 7, 1994)
Buy new:*
$26.95 $20.48

I found a list of snippets from Colin Ross's book Satanic Ritual Abuse - Principles of Treatment (http://www.culthelp.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1124&Itemid=17)

It goes chapter by chapter. It would seem from that that he has some kind of sick fascination with Satanism, sadism etc. That's just an opinion; but it's interesting that he doesn't get around to actually talking about the "treatment" the book purports to be about till chapter 9. After chapter ten, he goes back to talking about other things.

It's interesting that he claims,

"I have had clinical contact with about 300 cases of MPD....in which the person had memories of involvement in a destructive Satanic cult.....In none of these cases has the reality of the memories been objectively verified, and in several of them collateral history has proven that patient claims of Satanic ritual abuse were false." ...

"...at least 10% of the reported memories could be real; no one knows where the actual figure falls..."

Yet you say, Roma, that he accused your parents of such crimes? And he's made no attempt whatsoever to personally apologise to them and retract his accusations, or cast doubt on them, saying the memories might not have been real after all? I wonder how many other people are in the same predicament.

Some worthwhile questions James Randi could ask Colin Ross while he's doing the Million Dollar Challenge could be on the lines of:

"Mr. Ross, you claim to believe that most supposed memories MPD patients have told you about in therapy are false. How often have you cautioned them against accusing their parents of the crimes they think they're remembering them committing?"

"If you've ever accused the parents of your patients yourself of such crimes, have you ever apologised to them, explaining that you might have been in error to do so because the memories might not have been reliable?"

"If any of your patients ever told you they'd accused their parents of the abuse they remember them committing in their therapy sessions with you, have you ever told them it would be wise to take back the accusations since their memories might not have been reliable?"

"What was the purpose of encouraging them to think they were remembering more and more episodes of abuse, with more and more gory details? Can you explain exactly how that was therapeutic?"

"Did you ever tell them you thought some of their memories might not be real? If not, why did you think it was necessary for them to both believe their memories were real, and to believe you also believed it?"

"How many MPD patients of yours made a full recovery under your care?"

"Please explain why they had to get so much more mentally unstable than they were when you first started treating them before they got better. Was it really necessary?"

"Did you not know about any alternative treatments that would have been much less distressing to the patients than the therapy you put them through at the time? If you did, how come you preferred your own methods that were more distressing to them?"

"If your therapy techniques were the best, how is it that at the Timberlawn mental health facilities you're currently the director of, the treatment does in fact seem to be different, focusing on helping people change their thinking patterns to ones that distress them less, thus encouraging mental stability, rather than the delving into past memories you apparently thought it was so necessary for patients to do in your therapy in the past?"

"Would you agree that you made mistakes in your therapy techniques?"

"If so, are you still selling papers and books that encourage the kinds of treatments you now believe were mistaken? If you are, how can you justify that?"

"If you did make mistakes, what mistakes do you now believe you made?"

"Would you like to publicly apologise now for all the mistakes you made?"

"If you don't believe you made mistakes, can you explain why encouraging patients to recover memories of abuse under the influence of hypnosis and drugs was good for them?"

"You're down on record as claiming that MPD patients can tolerate much larger doses of drugs like Halcion than most people can. In fact, it's been reported that you've prescribed patients 100 times the normal dose! Can you explain just how you came to the conclusion that they can tolerate much higher doses than most people?"

"What exactly is it about an MPD patient that would enable them to tolerate much higher doses than most people?"

"What was the purpose of giving them such high doses?"

"Can you point to any therapeutic breakthroughs that contributed significantly to their recovery, that were made under the influence of such high doses of drugs?"

"Even though the doses of drugs were so high that people's lives might have been put at risk, do you still stand by giving people such high doses? Would you do it today? If so, just why do you think it would be necessary? If you wouldn't, why not?"

And so on. I don't see any reason why James Randi couldn't ask such questions publicly, as well as exposing the therapy techniques involved in the creation of multiple personality disorder, without actually saying Colin Ross specifically did those.

[Roma]

[QUOTE=Baby Nemesis;4546509]
And it seems he hasn't recanted anything he's written in his books either from those days, if that can be judged by the fact he's still advertising them, with no caveat. (http://www.rossinst.com/shop_books.html)

"How many MPD patients of yours made a full recovery under your care?"

If you read the case tudies of Dr.R's patients in "Osiris Complex" you'll see that none of his patients ever get better.

"Did you not know about any alternative treatments that would have been much less distressing to the patients than the therapy you put them through at the time? If you did, how come you preferred your own methods that were more distressing to them?"

Yes, lawyers have asked him that in their depositions. He never answers.:covereyes

"If your therapy techniques were the best, how is it that at the Timberlawn mental health facilities you're currently the director of, the treatment does in fact seem to be different, focusing on helping people change their thinking patterns to ones that distress them less, thus encouraging mental stability, rather than the delving into past memories you apparently thought it was so necessary for patients to do in your therapy in the past?"

Because Timberlawn was sued along with Dr.R.:crowded:

"Would you agree that you made mistakes in your therapy techniques?"

He never agrees to that.

"If so, are you still selling papers and books that encourage the kinds of treatments you now believe were mistaken? If you are, how can you justify that?"

Selling, hell he's still going around the world teaching that crap.

"What exactly is it about an MPD patient that would enable them to tolerate much higher doses than most people?"

He can't and won't explain the drugs, and his patient's records get "lost" if they sue him. He had a look of phoney disbelief when my records were read to him during the deposition. His lawyers tried to get them barred from court claiming "irrelevence".:boggled:
/QUOTE]

[Baby Nemesis]

He's still teaching that stuff? Then it seems yet again that he doesn't really care about the damage he's done, especially since he knows it's possible to get better results with other methods, judging by the fact they use different ones at Timberlawn.

If he could be interviewed on some popular television programme, and all he managed to do was bluster around fishing for answers he couldn't really find in response to searching questions, that would probably look incriminating enough. Ah yes, I think what we need is a televised cross-examination of the man. :)

[Roma]

Well he certainly does have a magnificant ego and would love to be interviewed on television.

CBC did a documentary on him many years ago and won a prize for that show, but Dr.R's lawyers managed to threaten the television statio with a lawsuit if they ever aired it again.:eye-poppi

60 Minutes interviewed him too but once again his lawyers put the Kibosh on it.:covereyes

The Learning Channel interviewed him back in 2000, or so, and showed that patients from here were being sent down to Dallas for treatment with him for MPD. :boggled:

I remember watching him on the Rosanne Barr show explaining how he was helping that three faces of eve person sue her former psychiatrist for writing a book about her without permission. Quite a lot of gall for him considering I had just finished reading a book he had written containing case studies of several of his former patients without ever getting consent from any of them, "Osiris Complex". He even plagerised my stolen journals in it. :mad:

The last T.V. station to interview him, last year I think, was the Space Station. :rolleyes:

Yup, it would be great to watch him dig himself into another hole bragging about himself :dig:

[Baby Nemesis]

I suppose any TV channel he was on would have to have good lawyers of its own then, to advise them on what they could get away with without too much risk, and to argue with Ross's own lawyers to put them off suing them.

[Harpyja]

Just a note on the title of his book - what does he mean by "Osiris Complex?" Does he honestly believe that MPD sufferers have some sort of connection with immortality or the afterlife?

[Roma]

Dr.R explains in the introduction of the book "Osiris Complex":

"In the Isis-Osiris myth from ancient Egypt, Osiris is murdered by his jealous brother Set, who cuts him into pieces and scatters them far and wide. Isis then gathers her brother Osiris's fragments together, re-intergrates them, and resurrects Osiris in a new form: this healing of the traumatized self is my task as a therapist.

My guess is that Dr.R. is comparing himself to a Greek God :rolleyes:

[IndridCold]

I don't think MPD is real. Any time I've seen it was a person just trying to get attention and/or an actor.

[Baby Nemesis]

I don't think MPD is real. Any time I've seen it was a person just trying to get attention and/or an actor.

"trying to get attention"? You'd know that, because of course, your magic powers of analysing motives at a glance are legendary, as we all know. :p

If you'd actually been paying any attention to this thread - and I suggest you do so before ever contributing again - you'd have realised:

A. that things are much more complex than that; and B. that the issue of it not being real (as a pre-existing condition, but created by misuse of hypnosis and drugs by psychiatrists ), is one of the pivotal arguments that was used to try to argue the case against the man under discussion.

Please learn up on things before commenting further. For instance, here's a good article: Multiple Personality Disorder: Witchcraft Survives in the Twentieth Century (http://www.csicop.org/si/9805/witch.html)

[Baby Nemesis]

The Wikipedia article on Colin Ross (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_A._Ross) has been updated recently. It says:

- In 2008, Dr. Ross applied for theJames Randi Educational Foundation's One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge with the claim that he can shoot beams of energy out of his eyeballs and cause a speaker, receiving no other input, to sound a tone. During later correspondence with Dr. Steven Novella of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, he conceded that the equipment he was using was, in fact, a biofeedback machine attached to his laptop, and that the laptop was responding in a well-understood way to an eyeblink. However, he claimed that he could still send energy beams out of his eyes, and was working on modifying the software to ignore an eyeblink. His claim has not currently been tested by the JREF.

Not really the kind of behaviour one would expect from a professional psychiatrist. But then, no surprise there. :(

If when a date is finally set for the test, anyone hears when it is, it would be interesting to know.

[Baby Nemesis]

Hey, look what I've found:

Dr. Colin Ross Expects to Have the Last Laugh, Accepts Tongue-in-Cheek “Award” from James Randi Educational Foundation (http://www.dpkpr.com/en/rel/423/)

DALLAS, April 14, 2009 – Noted psychiatrist and author Colin A. Ross, M.D., whose research into a new science and medicine focused on the human body’s electromagnetic field is described in his new book, Human Energy Fields ... is proving to have a good sense of humor. He has accepted the “Pigasus Award” from the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) with a smile.

The Pigasus Award is given each year, “To the scientist or academic who said or did the silliest thing related to the supernatural, paranormal or occult.” ...

The JREF has ridiculed Dr. Ross since he filed his challenge application. James Randi wrote on his web page: “You think you’ve seen every sort of claim that could be thrown at the JREF…. Most have been preposterous, silly, irrational, and/or astonishing. Now we have one that is all of those…Dr. Colin A. Ross.” ...

[Roma]

Thank-you Baby Nemesis, I'm going to let the FMSF cyber support group see that. :D

[Belz...]

A little late but...

MPD ? I thought there were like 20 confirmed cases in history, or something.

It's amazing, and frustrating, that some shrinks actually diagnose these en-masse, as though it were so easy to spot and label. Hell, some patients have allegedly hundreds of personas. Really ? Hundreds ? That's a sharp doctor, right there.

[Cayvmann]

Don't know for sure about any others.

Oh and just for the comedic value of it, in Dr.R's affidavit of defence he said that the reason I was suing him was: unrequited love

Now that's what I call a class act.

Sorry you have had to go through all of this. Just think of all the people who are in prison serving very long sentences for next to nothing, and this guy is still out walking the streets, screwing up people's lives.

[Cainkane1]

I am trying to write a letter to Dr.T. the President of a hospital to rebut his conclusion in response to my request for an apology for the misdiagnosis of multiple personality disorder.

I was misdiagnosed a long time ago by Dr.R. the director of that hospital's psychiatric department when after being asked what I do under stress I replied "switch to auto pilot and keep going".

I wrote Dr.T. last October explaining the problems I have encountered and will continue to encounter because of that misdiagnosis and provided documentation to him proving that I did not have MPD and am perfectly sane.
Two of the world's most highly regarded experts provided letters on my behalf, a psychiatrist from Canada and the other a psychiatrist and professor from Harvard.

I also included documents from several other psychiatrists from John Hopkins, Berkley and Philadelphia. I wrote my letter with the help of my province's Liberal Party leader who is also a doctor who wrote the province's Apology Act and thought I should also receive an apology from the hospital for the misdiagnosis.

So today I received Dr.T.'s response, short and infuriating. He concluded that since multiple personality disorder was in the DSM III when I was given that diagnosis then I was not misdiagnosed.

I am trying to respond to Dr.T.'s conclusion but am too angry to think clearly. What the hell? There are hundreds of diagnosis in that DSM III book but that doesn't mean I have any of them.

How can I argue? I am completely mind boggled (not in the DSM III).

I'm not kidding, I can imagine myself a little old lady in a nursing home some day dealing with that misdiagnosis, kind of worries me.

I've read some of the logical arguments in this philosophy site, I'm sure you guys can think of something. Help , please. Thank-you
When did this happen? I had a nervous breakdown in 1971 and they put me on valium, thorazine and stellazine. It was no picnic. I got well but if I ever get sick again I won't take a phenothiazide again even if I do go bonkers again.

[Roma]

Started for me in 1986 when Dr.R came to Winnipeg after he was kicked out of the residency program in Edmonton. It ended for me when Dr.R was kicked out of the St.B. Hosp. in 1991 and went to Dallas.

[Roma]

Baby Nemesis there is more in that Pigasus Award news story:

“I am not the first unconventional thinker who has had to endure the snickering of cynics and skeptics, so I happily accept this recognition,” said Dr. Ross. “Every significant scientific advance faces resistance, but it is time that the JREF stop ridiculing me and tests the protocol.”

Dr. Ross says his claim is a testable scientific hypothesis for which he has solid evidence. He explains on the Colin A. Ross Institute Web site (www.rossinst.com) that the energy emitted through his eyes is electromagnetic (EM) energy in the 0-40 Hz frequency range with amplitude in the 0-50 micro-volts range. These are the same brain waves that emerge through the skull. Dr. Ross captures this energy with an electrode and neurofeedback equipment. The software plays a tone in response to detecting the EM energy emerging through his eyes.

The JREF has accepted Dr. Ross’ challenge as a claim of the paranormal, insisting that no energy is emitted from the eyes.
Other 2009 Pigasus awardees include the producers of Ben Stein’s film, “Expelled,” and actress Jenny McCarthy for promoting her view that vaccines are contributing to the increase in autism in the United States.

*) The awards are announced via telepathy, winners are allowed to predict their victories, and the Flying Pig trophies are sent via psychokinesis by the James Randi Edicational Foundation: "We send; if they don't receive, that's probably due to their lack of paranormal talent".

Links:
Swift article on Dr. Ross : http://www.randi.org/site/swift-blog/211-swift-august-22-2008.html#i4
Dallas Observer Article 1: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2008/07/does_colin_ross_also_know_wolv.php
Dallas Observer Article 2: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2008/08/colin_ross_has_an_eyebeam_of_e.php

[Baby Nemesis]

Oh I see, it's a flying pig award, signifying disbelief in the claim, not an award symbolising the sentiment, "You are a pig". :D Perhaps Randi should do one of those. :)

Wow, Ross is certainly making some bold claims! If Truthers are out to make the American government look bad, what about this!

From the Swift newsletter: (http://www.randi.org/site/swift-blog/211-swift-august-22-2008.html#i4)

He says he has researched the CIA for twenty years, particularly in respect to operatives there who have become deceased:

I have in my possession about 80 of the 149 sub-project files which I obtained through FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] filing requests with the CIA on each deceased investigator of interest… brain electrode implants were done by the CIA with intelligence funding and combined brain implants with large numbers of drugs including hallucinogens… MKULTRA [a secret mind-control project by the CIA] alone included four sub-projects on children, one was conducted at the International Children's Summer Camp in Maine by an unwitting investigator. The MKULTRA sub-project file in my possession for this project states that "the CIA's interest in this research was in establishing contact with foreign nationals of potential future operational use by the CIA. The children who served as subjects in the project were as young as eleven years old."

American government guilty of child abuse then, according to him.

[Baby Nemesis]

I wonder how much James Randi knows about Colin Ross's unscrupulous behaviour with patients. His Swift article was all about Colin Ross's claims, but it didn't say anything at all about the MPD controversies.

So Roma, I found a thread a little while ago from last year where you said something about having documents about Ross's treatments, where someone advised you to send them to someone who works for James Randi and gave you an email address. Did you do that and ever hear anything back, that you can mention? Do they know all about that stuff now?

[Roma]

Yesiree Bob, James Randi knows all.

[Baby Nemesis]

Ha! Let's hope something comes of it, like some potential Ross patients hearing about his reputation and avoiding him, so they don't risk being harmed.

[Roma]

Or some of his old patients who want to sue him, I'll help :D

[Roma]

It may be worth keeping in mind that CBS owns the Showtime cable
channel, and that's the channel presenting the series about a woman
with MPD: "United States of Tara."

Well, it may also be worth keeping in mind that Dr. Colin Ross is one
of the two psychiatrists that CBS lists as being paid as consultants
for that series.
_______________________________________________
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Fms-news@lists.seas.upenn.edu
http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/fms-new

I'm afraid you can hear the following on
www.westwoodone.com/pg/jsp/osgood/transcript.jsp?pid=26528

SHOW ARCHIVES
05/01/09 8:25 AM

[Baby Nemesis]

It may be worth keeping in mind that CBS owns the Showtime cable
channel, and that's the channel presenting the series about a woman
with MPD: "United States of Tara."

Well, it may also be worth keeping in mind that Dr. Colin Ross is one
of the two psychiatrists that CBS lists as being paid as consultants
for that series.
_______________________________________________
Fms-news mailing list
Fms-news@lists.seas.upenn.edu
http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/fms-new

I'm afraid you can hear the following on
www.westwoodone.com/pg/jsp/osgood/transcript.jsp?pid=26528

SHOW ARCHIVES
05/01/09 8:25 AM

Wow, what do some people have to do to stop being presented as experts or paid as consultants! :-7

Oh look. There's an event on in Los Angeles in June, where someone who claims to have been a victim of CIA mind control is speaking, along with Colin Ross, and one or two famous people. (http://kpfk.org/eventcal/kpfkeventcalendar.html?task=view_detail&agid=672&year=2009&month=06&day=05)

Also scheduled to appear is comedian Roseanne Barr. In addition to being a champion for the rights of abused children everywhere, she was treated by Dr. Colin Ross for DID recovery.

[Roma]

Good Lord !!

Well I try my best to stop him. There were at least 4 lawsuits in the U.S. where my old medical records were used to either support lawsuits brought against him or impeach him as an expert witness. If you hear about a lawsuit that he is involved in or someone who is using him as an expert just let me know and I will make sure he's recognized for the fruitcake he truly is.

[Baby Nemesis]

I've noticed the Wikipedia article about Colin Ross has recently been modified. Some of the most controversial things have been edited out. That includes this bit I quoted earlier in the thread:

According to Dr. Ross' research into Dissociative Identity Disorder, 1% of individuals in the United States suffer from the illness - a number that is at odds with previous psychiatric research. In the early 1990s, however, Ross told the Canadian Broadcasting Company that the number was between 1 in 50 and 1 in 500.

[Roma]

Ross adjusts his research to whomever he is presenting it to.

Ross has also told the National Inquirer that 1 out of every 4 people "leave their bodies" in out of body experiences.
He also refereed the phd thesis of his favorite pupil Lynn Ryan that included "scientific data" that up to 25% of the students at the University of Manitoba had multiple personality disorder. (my alma mater)

[Baby Nemesis]

Hehehehe! There's a page on Colin Ross's website now that complains about James Randi's attitude to his million dollar challenge application. (http://www.rossinst.com/darkness_radio_interview.html) He says skepticism ought to involve a more sophisticated approach than mere ridicule!

Of course, as I said myself in a previous post (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4535837#post4535837), I myself think it would be good if Randi did more. ... More of what? ... Well, that's where me and Ross differ. :D

[Roma]

Good Lord Baby Nemesis ! That has got to be the craziest psychiatrist on earth, oh except for some of his colleages, now there are some real lunatics....
Did I ever mention that while he was on his way to testify as an expert witness for the defence in the Carlson VS Dr.H trial he performed an exorcism on the said colleage and lunatic Dr.H. while in a plane on their way to Minnesota.

http://www.topsmileys.net/smilies/silly/fryingpan.gif (http://www.topsmileys.net)


Here's the case:

http://www.stopbadtherapy.com/resource/article/diane1.shtml