I know your question is titled "legal advice," so I feel sort of bad
about warning you at the outset that this answer is not legal advice
and should not be construed as such. If you do decide to pursue this
through legal channels, please consult with lawyer first.
I can, however, try to point you in the direction of the appropriate
authorities, resources, and precedent that might help you in your
situation.
The short answer to your question is that you can file a complaint
against a psychiatrist in California through the Medical Board of
California:
http://www.medbd.ca.gov/
Their complaint information page is here:
http://www.medbd.ca.gov/complaint_info.htm
Read through this and then select Consumer Complaint Form about 2/3
down the page to file your complaint. There are separate areas for the
patient name and your name, so it appears that you can file a
complaint on the behalf of a family member.
Note that this is a PDF form, so you'll need to have Acrobat Reader
installed to see it. (Ask for a clarification if you need help with
this.) You will need to fill out this form with detailed information
about your complaint, and then print it out and mail it to this
address:
Medical Board of California
Central Complaint Unit
1426 Howe Avenue, Suite 54
Sacramento, CA 95825-3236
If you'd like to get some background information or learn more about
the standards and governing bodies involved, this is a two-prong
issue, as a psychiatrist is both a medical doctor and a mental health
worker, so you should be able to pursue this through the governing
bodies for both of those areas.
First, this page provides an overview of how to check on the
qualifications of a mental health professional, and who the governing
bodies are for each type:
http://psychologydoc.com/check_qualifications_of_therapist.htm
Scroll down the page a little to see the following text under
"Psychiatrist":
"A psychiatrist must hold a license as a medical doctor in the state
in which he practices. You can check to see if a physician is
licensed by contacting the appropriate state agency. For example, in
California you may check on information about psychiatrists, through
the Medical Board of California, which licenses physicians,
investigates complaints and takes disciplinary action. The website
address is: www.medbd.ca.gov.
The California Psychiatric Association can be reached at (916)
442-5196 or at its website at www.calpsych.org
The Orange County Psychiatric Society can be reached at (714)
978-1160.
It is important to know that any physician can call himself a
psychiatrist although physicians get minimal training in
psychiatry in medical school. If you consult a psychiatrist, you want
to make sure that he does have proper training in the field of
psychiatry. Feel free to ask him where he took his post-graduate
residency training in psychiatry and ask if he is board certified in
psychiatry. You can verify his board certification at:
www.certifieddoctor.org/scripts/verify.asp"
Note that that last URL there is out of date, and the current working
address to check a doctor's certification is:
http://www.abms.org/
You will need to register to use their search service, but there is no
fee involved, and the only required fields are email address and first
and last name. I created an account to make sure this works, and it
seems to be fine. You can search either by name and location or by
specialty and location. On doing a random search, the entries I found
listed the names of the boards that certified the doctors in question.
Any medical doctor can practice as a psychiatrist, but many
psychiatrists will also be certified by the American Board of
Psychiatry and Neurology. They have a webpage describing the
certification requirements here:
http://www.abpn.com/geninfo/what_psychiatrist.html
The webpage for the California Psychiatric Association is, as
mentioned in the text above, at:
http://www.calpsych.org
From this page, you can select the area of California the pyschiatrist
practices in. I checked the Orange County and Central California
sites, and the Orange County didn't appear to have any resources
available specifically for consumers, but the Central California site
had several resources listed on this page:
http://www.cencalpsych.org/consumer.shtml
Most of these links appear to be general information and not specific
to Central California, so you might want to look through it regardless
of where in California you are.
One other thing that may be of interest to you is the case of Gary
Ramona of Napa Valley. His daughter, while in college, began seeing a
therapist who convinced the daughter that she had repressed memories
of sexual abuse by her father. Mr. Ramona successfully sued the
therapists for planting these ideas in his daughter's mind, and the
case was the basis for a push for new standards in licensing for
mental health professionals in California.
A book about the case, Spectral Evidence, is available from Amazon
here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395718228/qid=1028263046/sr=8-16/ref=sr_8_16/002-3921001-2781656
This page provides an outline of the case in an article titled, "Legal
Duty of Therapists to Third Parties," which outlines law and precedent
that provides a right of action not only to psychiatric patients, but
to their loved ones as well:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p990851.html
I realize that you don't give the specifics of your case, and it
likely has nothing to do with recovered memory syndrome, but a great
deal of precedent and previous work has been done in this area on
behalf of family members of patients who have been turned against
them. See this site for detailed information on these issues:
http://www.stopbadtherapy.com/
If you need more information, please feel free to request a
clarification and I'll see what else I can find.
Good luck,
Lisa. |
