By Jennifer K. Woldt |of The Northwestern

Prosecutors say they will recommend a former psychiatrist serve time in prison for having inappropriate sexual contact with a patient he was treating.

Charles D. Morgan, 62, of Neenah pleaded no contest two counts of sexual exploitation by a therapist during a plea hearing before Winnebago County Circuit Court Judge Barbara Key Thursday. In exchange for his plea, two counts of third-degree sexual assault will be dismissed.

Morgan, who was practicing with Affinity Behavioral Health at the time of the contact, faces 25 years in prison and $25,000 in fines when he is sentenced Feb. 27. Key ordered a pre-sentence investigation be completed before sentencing.
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By GAYLE WHITE |The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Thursday, December 18, 2008

In a stern letter to Emory University this week, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley questions whether renowned psychiatrist Dr. Charles Nemeroff has honestly portrayed some of his activities funded by pharmaceutical companies.

Grassley warns school officials of the potential penalties for making false statements or obstructing a congressional examination.

Nemeroff, an internationally known expert on depression, has become a central figure in an investigation this year by the Senate Finance Committee into whether drug company money paid to physicians compromises medical research and scholarship. Grassley (R-Iowa) is the ranking minority member of the committee.

Grassley’s letter, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, questions Emory’s position that some talks by Nemeroff funded by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline were educational and did not involve promotion of Glaxo products.
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By Marija B. Vader
mvader@gjfreepress.com
Grand Junction, CO, Colorado

DENVER — A Grand Junction psychiatrist was charged Wednesday morning in Denver County Court with 19 charges of tax evasion and forgery.

Linda Luther-Starbird, Ph.D., 60, is accused of attempting to evade paying state income taxes, filing a false return and forgery. She appeared Wednesday morning on formal advisement of the charges. Her preliminary hearing is Jan. 7.

She was charged in Denver because the victim in this case — the Colorado Department of Revenue — has its office in Denver, said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the Denver District Attorney’s Office.

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A state official says authorities are investigating allegations of two recent rapes at a psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas.

Police say they are looking at alleged sex assaults on Nov. 14 and Nov. 21 at the Rawson Neal Psychiatric Hospital. Authorities aren’t saying whether the assaults were reported to hospital officials, whether there were witnesses, or whether they were stopped by employees.

by Lorna Benson, Minnesota Public Radio
December 15, 2008

A Minnesota man undergoing electro-convulsive therapy goes before a judge in St. Paul on Tuesday to try to stop the court-ordered procedure. Ray Sandford says he’s losing his memory after having more than 30 treatments so far. His doctors have argued that the procedure is necessary to treat Sandford’s psychotic episodes. Minnesota, like many other states, does not track the number of forced ECTs.

St. Paul, Minn. — Ray Sandford has been getting electro-convulsive treatment, also known as electroshock and ECT, since the end of May. For Ray, the process works like this. Every week or two he is taken to a hospital, where a medical technician attaches electrodes to his head and delivers electrical current into his brain. The current causes a seizure.

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Haunted by the sight of a loved one in danger

By Christina Jewett and Robin Fields

November 23, 2008
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SALEM — Tourists interested in exploring the Oregon mental hospital made famous in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” will have to settle for a virtual visit.

Public interest in visiting the 125-year-old J Building at the Oregon State Hospital soared after the state Department of Human Services sponsored a series of guided tours on Sept 13. State employees led about 200 people through vacated, decaying sections of the building and the sprawling tunnels under it, where some patients had to live.

Publicity from that day led another 1,100 to express interest in visiting the place where the Oscar-winning film starring Jack Nicholson was shot.

But state officials decided against additional tours because of the demands on the staff and looming asbestos and lead paint-removal work.

“The public response to touring the historic J Building has been tremendous,” the agency stated on its Web site. “However, due to the hospital’s current designation as an active construction site, safety protocols prevent us from providing any further public tours of the J Building.

“We are in the process of developing a virtual tour and invite you to check our Web site for this feature and other updates during construction. Thank you for your interest in supporting mental health services for Oregonians.”

Construction of a new 620-bed psychiatric facility is scheduled to begin next year and be completed in 2011. Plans call for preserving the oldest and most historically significant portions of the J Building and tearing down the rest.

The remodeled portions will house a mental health museum and a resting place for the cremated remains of more than 3,000 former patients who died at the state hospital during its first century.

– The Associated Press

JOURNAL EDITORIAL STAFF | Published: August 22, 2008

Once again, this state’s mental-health system has terribly failed. A mental patient at Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro died some time after workers had left him in a chair for 22 hours without feeding or helping him use the bathroom — even as they watched TV, played cards and chatted on a cell phone just a few feet away. That psychiatric hospital, and the state mental health-care system in general, must improve its care.

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TAMPA — In the wake of two recent suicides at Tampa General Hospital, federal regulators are threatening to stop Medicare funding to the hospital, citing serious safety problems in its psychiatric unit.

Regulators found psychiatric patients to be in “immediate jeopardy” in an investigation prompted by the suicides. The hospital has until Sept. 6 to fix the problems or lose funding, said the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

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Cartoons about the psychiatrist’s couch were recently the subject of a museum exhibition. Now, the couch itself may be headed for a museum.

A new study finds a significant decline in psychotherapy practiced by U.S. psychiatrists.

The expanded use of pills and insurance policies that favor short office visits are among the reasons, said lead author Dr. Ramin Mojtabai of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

“The ‘couch,’ or, more generally, long-term psychoanalytic psychotherapy, was for so long a hallmark of the practice of psychiatry. It no longer is,” he said.

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