Protecting Patients from Abusive Repressed Memory Therapy
and Recovered Memory Therapy
Many of my colleagues and I spoke out regarding informed consent rights in psychotherapy in 1994: to the US Congress; to juries; to audiences at CME, CPE, and CLE activities; and to the national media.1
We focused on several goals in Memory Wars I:
• Protecting vulnerable patients and the public from reckless and abusive repressed recovered memory/multiple personality disorder (RRM/MPD) pseudo-treatments
• Relying on the power of the US legal system and the wisdom of citizen juries to enforce important systemic reforms over the objections of powerful, well-financed mental health industry interests (eg, the American Psychiatric Association [APA], the American Psychological Association)
• Using the newly minted Daubert legal process to exclude unreliable theories such as RRM/MPD from courtrooms
• Teaching, enforcing, and protecting the fundamental human right of informed consent for psychotherapy patients
As history clearly shows, in just a few short years (1994-1997), our multidisciplinary methods essentially achieved these goals, thus bringing rapid, yet profound reforms to the US mental health system. Although Memory Wars I brought informed consent to psychotherapy, closed many MPD clinics, revoked the licenses of leaders of the RRM/MPD movement, and informed/warned millions of consumers via international media, the ongoing debate over the role of the science of memory in mental health, law, and public policy—Memory Wars II—continues.
For those who have not had a chance to review actual case files of RRM/MPD clinics, please read the article, “Cult of Madness” by Ann Zimmerman2 to see the kinds of abusive practices we sought to end in Memory Wars I.
Dr Gutheil refers to me as a psychologist-lawyer but omits that I was trained and practiced as a child, family, and adult psychotherapist and researcher. I practiced in universities, hospitals, and medical schools, studying coping and resilience in children and families struggling with serious diseases and disabilities.3,4 In my early career in health care, I never anticipated becoming a lawyer, much less a litigator for mental health reform.
In mid-1997, as Memory Wars I raged nationwide, I gave Dr Gutheil an opportunity to publicly support the universal right of informed consent. He missed the chance. I recall Dr Gutheil answering my cross-examination by saying, “I guess the question is whether there really is any informed consent to psychotherapy, which I’m not convinced about.” A few months after Dr Gutheil’s testimony, the $10.6 million settlement in the Burgus v Braun case and the resulting international media firestorm were the final straws in the dramatic collapse of the RRM/MPD industry. Just a few years later, in 2001, following a string of ongoing licensing revocations and Daubert litigation victories, Dr Gutheil reversed course and publicly adopted our 1994 reform position—that psychotherapy patients should receive the protections of informed consent.6
Further proof that our coordinated collapse of the RRM/MPD industry and the resulting wave of licensing revocations did indeed bring informed consent to psychotherapy includes the work of Dr Paul Fink, former President of the APA. Dr Fink provided documentary evidence that well into the 1990s prominent leaders in psychiatry simply did not believe psychotherapy patients deserved informed consent protections. Dr Fink wrote, “The foes of psychotherapy have developed an interesting tactic—a demand for informed consent for psychotherapy.”
Additional proof that our Memory Wars I victory of 1997 brought informed consent to psychotherapy includes the 1996 APA “Principles of Informed Consent in Psychiatry,” Section 7, which states: “Psychotherapy: Informed consent developed in the context of invasive procedures and has since been extended to treatment with medication. There has always been uncertainty as to the extent to which the doctrine of informed consent is applicable to psychotherapy [italics added].”8(p6) In stark contrast, following our tsunami of coordinated litigation and licensing cases, virtually all experts in psychotherapy, mental health, ethics, public policy, or law—including the once-skeptical Dr Gutheil—have adopted our 1994 reform position that psychotherapy patients do indeed have a fundamental right to informed consent protections. This new and universal acceptance of informed consent protections for psychotherapy patients was surely one of our greatest victories in Memory Wars I.
Dr Gutheil also noted that he testified in the Green v Wallace case—a unique defense verdict. Fortunately for the mental health reform movement, the Green defense verdict had a powerful, paradoxical impact on the settlements of many other cases. Shortly after the Green verdict, the defense attorneys made the extraordinary error of seeking payment of all costs and legal fees from an indigent plaintiff. I remember when defense counsel carefully documented defense costs and fees of over $1.2 million compared with the $40,000 expended by the tiny local plaintiff’s law firm I assisted in that case. Following the Green case “loss,” our settlements were larger and more rapidly obtained. As one defense attorney put it, “The Green case showed us it was possible to defeat you in court, Dr Barden, but only if we outspent you $30 to $1” and “only if we spent over $1 million per patient defending these [RRM/MPD] cases.” In effect, the Green case enhanced our reform work.
As the public record demonstrates, multidisciplinary team efforts rapidly and successfully ended Memory Wars I. These efforts closed abusive MPD clinics, ended the national wave of criminal prosecutions based solely on “recovered memory” testimony tainted by suggestive therapy, restricted or revoked the licenses of reckless founders of the RRM/MPD movement, informed millions worldwide via media exposes, generated powerful advances in the science of memory and false memory, and ended debate as to whether informed consent protections should be available to psychotherapy patients.
Although this history of reform is well documented, an essential question remains. Why were these extraordinary multidisciplinary team efforts necessary to stop such clearly abusive and dangerous pseudotreatments? Why did Ken Lanning and the FBI have to spend millions investigating and debunking rather obvious pseudomemories? Why didn’t the mental health “guilds”—psychiatry, psychology, and social work—move to end the RRM/MPD industry, voluntarily bring informed consent protections to psychotherapy, issue national health warnings against dangerous RRM/MPD “treatments,” and quickly close one of the most tragic chapters in the history of the mental health system? Why did they leave it to our multidisciplinary teams, citizen juries, and licensing boards to do the heavy lifting of reform? A final question involves our future mental health system. The next time dangerous mental health quackeries stalk the land, will the guilds act to protect patients, or once again circle the wagons and protect colleagues?
I look forward to working with talented professionals like Dr Gutheil to continually improve the mental health system and ensure that patients receive the fundamental protections of informed consent as well as treatments proven safe and effective by credible, reliable science.
R. Christopher Barden, PhD, JD
RC Barden and Associates
Plymouth, Minn
Dr. Barden was a trained psychologist (Ph.D.), a formerly practicing therapist who became a lawyer. In the article Dr. Barden addresses the manner in which American Psychiatric Association was reformed. The association initially had leadership that resisted Mental Health Reform and resisted the informed consent to a client about the complications resulting from treatment such as the "Recovered Memory Treatment". The collapse of the "Recovered Memory Industry" and the resulting wave of licensing revocations along with lawsuites did in fact bring informed consent to psychotherapy. Lawsuits, judgements and out of court settlements have had a "de facto" impact on the mental health profession even as the associations did not govern in the best interests of the clients. Dr. Barden was instrumental in a number of major court cases that helped stem the use of the abusive recovered memory treatments.
References
1. Barden RC, Meehl PE, Campbell TW, et al. Joint letter to the Congress of the United States of America regarding reform of the mental health system. Manufacturing Victims. Montreal: Robert Davies Publishing; 1996.
2. Zimmerman A. Cult of madness. Dallas Observer. October 14, 1999. http://www.dallasobserver.com/1999-10-14/news/cult-of-madness. Accessed July 10, 2014.
3. Barden RC, Kinscherff R, George W III, et al. Emergency medical care and injury/illness prevention systems for children: an economic-medical-legal-psychological analysis and legislative proposals. I. Harvard J Legislation. 1993;30:461-497.
4. Barden RC. The effects of craniofacial deformity, chronic illness, and physical handicaps on patient and familial adjustment: research and clinical perspectives. In: Lahey BB, Kazdin AE, eds. Advances in Clinical Child Psychology. Vol 13. New York: Plenum Press; 1990:343-375.
5. Barden RC. Cross-examination of Thomas Gutheil, MD, in Green v Wallace, Case No. 96-CVS-5235, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina; 1997:138.
6. Beahrs JO, Gutheil TG. Informed consent in psychotherapy. Am J Psychiatry. 2001;158:4-10.
7. Fink P. The attack on psychotherapy. Clin Psychiatry News. November 1998;26(11):23.
8. American Psychiatric Association Council on Psychiatry and Law. Principles of Informed Consent in Psychiatry. June 1996. http://www.tn.gov/didd/provider_agencies/ProviderManual/Appendix%20U%20-.... Accessed July 14, 2014.
Original accessed 3/30/16 from:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/psychotherapy/letters-editor-response-reforming-mental-health-care/page/0/2
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WARNING
If you are seeking help for personal struggles and a therapist, counselor or friend says that "recovering childhood memories can help you get better" then IMMEDIATELY get up from your chair (or off the couch), run to the door, open it and flee. Hundreds of thousands have lost families, years of productive living and squandered immense wealth with tragedy inducing therapy that produces horrid false memories, splinters families, isolates the client and is documented to cause decline in mental health.
If you are seeking help for personal struggles and a therapist, counselor or friend says that "recovering childhood memories can help you get better" then IMMEDIATELY get up from your chair (or off the couch), run to the door, open it and flee. Hundreds of thousands have lost families, years of productive living and squandered immense wealth with tragedy inducing therapy that produces horrid false memories, splinters families, isolates the client and is documented to cause decline in mental health.
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Grace and I while visiting family in New England
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