WHO REALLY LACKS INSIGHT? DR. HAROLD I. SCHWARTZ OR MENTAL HEALTH CONSUMERS AND SURVIVORS?

On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza of Newtown, CT walked into a local elementary school and gunned down 20 little children and 6 of their teachers. 

In the aftermath of this tragic event, citizens of the State of Connecticut have asked themselves what can be done to prevent a situation like this from occurring ever again.  In response, the State Legislature put together the "Task Force to Study the Provision of Behavioral Health Services For Young Adults."  

While testifying before this task force, Dr. Harold I. Schwartz spoke out in favor of his preferred solution -- forced outpatient treatment -- stating, "Chronic schizophrenia and certain other chronic and severe mental illnesses are often marked by denial of illness."  Further, he stated, "The failure to recognize illness and the need for treatment ... is a function of the disease's impact on the brain -- not unlike the stroke victim who is unable to recognize that one side of the body is paralyzed." 

The term that Dr. Harold Schwartz has used to describe this condition is "anosognosia". 

But has anyone considered the capacity for insight that Dr. Harold Schwartz and his psychiatric cohorts showed at the Institute of Living during pedophile priest scandals that hit the Catholic Church and the Institute of Living in the 1990s and the early 2000? 

Has anyone fully examined Dr. Harold Schwartz's disingenuous and self serving explanations for the Institute's culpable actions in certifying pedophile priests as fit to return to work where they inevitably continued on to molest other children? 

Has anyone considered the role of the Institute of Living's psychiatrists who, in three separate extensive evaluations, certified that Dr. George Reardon, who viciously molested up to 130 children for a period of 30 years, was not a pedophile, even though one of his child victims was able to describe his genitals in full detail? 

Further, let us put aside the multiple decades of ongoing and repeated reports from consumers and psychiatric survivors that they were misdiagnosed, wrongly medicated and improperly subjected to unwanted and harmful treatments such as ECT.  Instead, let us focus on the Institute of Living, the foremost proponent of forced treatment laws. 

The treatment that the Institute offers is so extraordinarily negligent and incompetent as indicated by the priest pedophile scandal and the case of Dr. George Reardon that the only conclusion you can draw, in my view, is that the real people who actually lack insight, or have anosognosia, are the psychiatrists at the Institute of Living, not consumers, and certainly not the psychiatric survivors of their wrongdoing. 

For those of you for whom this is news, what is the connection between the Institute of Living and the pedophile priest scandal?  

On March 17, 2002, The Hartford Courant reported that Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the head of the Archdiocese of New York, while bishop of Bridgeport had knowingly allowed several priests accused of multiple acts of sexual abuse to continue working. 

In response to the outrage, the Cardinal wrote a pastoral letter saying that he had sent accused priests "immediately to one of the most prominent psychiatric institutions in the nation for evaluation."  In other words, the priests were sent to the Institute of Living, which had been providing treatment for pedophile priests since the early 1980s and often certifying them as fit to return to work.  

The Institute's director at the time, Dr. Harold I. Schwartz, denied that the Institute had any responsibility for this wrongdoing stating that the Church had withheld information about past complaints of abuse and thus misled them about how bad the situation was with some priests. 

But seriously, is this a legitimate explanation?  Shouldn't even a single incident of child abuse be considered sufficient to bar a priest from returning to work?  Plus, isn't that the work of a psychiatrist, i.e. to ferret out the truth underneath all the lies?

Nonetheless, Dr. Harold Schwartz's statement is simply not correct.  For instance, in the case of Father John Geoghan, who ultimately molested over a hundred young boys, even though the Institute was not aware of every complaint against the priest, they were aware that there had been several confirmed incidents since Father Geoghan himself admitted to them.  Still, according to an article in The New Yorker, the Institute's discharge summary for Father Geoghan was "notable for its sympathetic tone and its reliance on Geoghan's own accounts of his past behavior" and ultimately the Institute recommended that he be allowed to return to work. 


And why did they do this?  For money!  As the New Yorker article states, "The eighties were a decade of ruin for the Institute" according to a former staff member, "In 1981 the institute had three hundred and eighty beds, drew patients from around the country, kept them for months, and had a six-month waiting list.  By 1990, after H.M.O.s had rewritten the rules for private in-patient care throughout the Northeast and elsewhere, the institute had become a cash-strapped regional facility with a hundred and twenty beds, many of them available." 


"Amid fears that the institute might go out of business, the board of directors aggressively expanded its programs for priests...whose care could be provided for by generous third-party payments.  With priests, of course, the pocket was bottomless."  According to this psychiatrist, 'the Church would pay what it took, for as long as was necessary.'  He added that the treatment of troubled priests...soon became one of the institute's most lucrative services."

Does anyone truly want to give Dr. Harold Schwartz and his ilk full authority for running forced outpatient treatment programs for people with mental health disabilities, doctors who in their day had no problem justifying a policy of returning priest pedophiles to situations where they could molest again? 

Dr. Harold Schwartz's second explanation in defense of the Institute in connection to the pedophile priest scandal was that the profession of psychiatry has no way of predicting how any individual might act in the future. 

Yet isn't that what mental health professionals represent that they are capable of doing when they come as experts in termination of parental rights proceedings, or in family court proceedings or criminal proceedings?  Isn't that what they will be doing in coming to probate court to certify that persons with mental health disabilities are incapable of making their own decisions?

How come psychiatrists can deny they are capable of certain kinds of work when it doesn't suit them, but readily take on such tasks when the money is right? 

Dr. Harold Schwartz can point the finger at people who are labeled with mental health disabilities and declare they have no insight, but what about him?  Isn't his defense of the Institute of Living during the pedophile priest scandal sufficient evidence that he himself has absolutely no insight? 

I can understand that we need to address the problem of violence and make sure that incidents such as the Newtown shooting does not happen again.  But I do not believe that the solution is to deny people with mental health disabilities their civil rights and subject them to forced treatment conducted by the likes of Dr. Harold Schwartz whose complete lack of insight is ten times worse and more harmful to society than that of any mental health consumer or survivor.