News Alert

The Edmonton Journal, 8/4/07: Disorders plague psychiatrists. Name-calling, factions and conspiracies are common in the "dysfunctional" office of more than a dozen psychiatrists who analyze criminals for the courts, an Edmonton judge has found.

In a 55-page decision released Friday, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Erik Lefsrud ruled that...the department was plagued by infighting and lack of leadership..."a very dysfunctional working environment in which name-calling, finger-pointing, intransigence and conspiratorial workings have thwarted the best intentions of all the psychiatrists involved," he wrote. "How such a group of obviously intelligent professionals could work themselves into such a state is beyond comprehension. "This litigation served...as a forum for a litany of complaints [of] discrimination, intimidation, harassment, mismanagement and lack of effective leadership." The psychiatrists...are highly trained medical doctors who have spent years studying psychiatry.

They regularly write psychological assessments of criminals that are instrumental to the justice system. Lawyers often rely on them in making their arguments before judges, and judges cite their reports in sentencing decisions.

In testimony and letters, doctors in the department told of "politics of intimidation," "gossip and innuendo," as well as "personal attacks" and power struggles. In a letter of resignation on April 1, 2004, one doctor wrote that...."There is a general distrust, apprehensiveness and uncertainty and no one on medical staff knows exactly what is going on, they are totally demoralized, the place is rudderless."

An [Alberta Justice spokesman] said Lefsrud's judgment did not indicate that the dysfunctional environment had affected the psychiatrists' work.

[TBC: This is one more example of the psychological charade that poses as science, is extremely harmful to the practitioner as well as the client, yet continues to draw the masses into its delusion.]