Would the British Psychological Society Like Bacon With the Egg on its Face?

About a year ago, I wrote a bit about the case of British psychologist Lisa Blakemore Brown. She was being prosecuted by the British Psychological Society (BPS) at the time regarding her alleged lack of fitness to practice psychology due to "paranoia." The best source of info on the topic comes from two spots: Aubrey Blumsohn's collected posts at the Scientific Misconduct Blog and a transcript (at Furious Seasons) of a hearing involving the allegations against Blakemore Brown.

It would make sense that a professional society such as the BPS would take action in cases of serious misconduct, such as sexual relations with clients, fraudulent billing practices, or other forms of exploiting one's clientele. It makes much less sense to prosecute an individual on trumped-up charges of mental illness, particularly when a "star witness" is testifying against Blakemore Brown's mental state even though he never interviewed her. In one choice snippet of testimony that I noted several months ago, this witness claimed that if Blakemore Brown has actually experienced a significant degree harassment and persecution, and then responded by becoming fearful and distrusting, she would be deemed paranoid in his judgment. In other words, regardless of circumstances, any type of fearful response to any type of situation, no matter how threatening, is indicative of paranoia. At the time, I wrote:

Hold the train. Seriously, STOP. So even if people really are out to get you, you are paranoid if you believe that people are out to harm you. Apparently the natural response of fear when one is objectively, realistically threatened, is now paranoia.

The BPS has now concluded its so-called investigation with:

The Complaints Committee therefore found no evidence of professional misconduct on your part. The matter is now closed as regards to the Society.

The sham investigation concluded after many years with a finding of not guilty. But what about the cost to Lisa Blakemore Brown, personally, professionally, and financially? I don't know if a protracted apology was included in the findings, though I strongly doubt it. Regardless, no apology can make up for having one's name dragged through the mud, being compelled to attend several sham hearings, and for the tragicomic attempts of the BPS to keep all of this under wraps. As pointed out by Aubrey Blumsohn, it sure is strange that the BPS has the time and resources to pursue cases against practicing psychologists based on sham evidence while it takes a stance of silence on the many issues of scientific and financial malfeasance involving the drug industry discussed on this site and others.

As a disclaimer to my last point, let me again mention that I'm not against the drug industry. I am against the drug industry misrepresenting scientific findings in order to meet its marketing needs. Is that such a crazy position? Am I paranoid?

BPS: How to NOT Conduct a Hearing

I’m going to dissect some of the British Psychological Society's fitness to practice hearing for Lisa Blakemore-Brown in which a psychiatrist, Dr. Trevor Friedman, attested to Ms. Brown’s psychological well-being (or lack thereof; background here, here, and here). The testimony occurred on July 12, 2006. Note that Patricia Hitchcock was the counsel for the BPS and Lucy MacKinnon represented Ms. Brown. Kirsty Morrison is the clerk. My comments are interspersed with the hearing’s text.

Ms. Morrison (page 2):… Concerns are that the content and tone of correspondence received by the society from Ms Blakemore-Brown in relation to complaints from Mr and Mrs xxxxxxxxxxx, (inaudible) between May 2003 and May 2005, made repeated references to the attempts from various people, including the complainants, to destroy her career, set her up or discredit her as a professional. This raised concerns that Ms Blakemore-Brown had been suffering from (inaudible) illness, which is affecting her ability to practise.”

Nice start, eh? Brown is allegedly suffering from some form of mental illness because she made references to people trying to destroy her career or discredit her. One can only wonder if David Healy is likewise paranoid; after all, he lost a job (which would generally count as an attempt to destroy one’s career) when he spoke out about the relations between the drug industry and psychiatry, and when he discussed some of the untoward side effects of SSRIs. Let’s move on…

Ms Mackinnon (page 101): “…My application, now that he [Dr. Friedman] is here, is that per se perhaps his evidence is inadmissible on various points given that he has not examined my client.”

Yep, that’s right. Blakemore-Brown has never met with Dr. Friedman, yet Friedman still rendered some significant judgments regarding the mental health of Blakemore-Brown, as we’ll see shortly.

Dr. Friedman (page 107): Yes. Well, I mean, I think I was being careful not to make conclusions or a diagnosis from what is available to me. I think I was just commenting on what seemed reasonable in my opinion having reviewed the documents. In fact, it is a very short report because I did not want to make too many suppositions that one could possibly go to. I just wanted to state what I thought was reasonable.

Ms. Hitchcock (108): Can you explain briefly to assist the committee the nature of paranoia and what its impact could be in the circumstances.

Dr. Friedman (108): Well, I suppose -- I mean the term “paranoia” in itself refers to the idea that people are more sensitive to their surroundings and events that occur to them, so they tend to see extra significance and take inference from otherwise innocuous events. Paranoia generally refers to, I suppose, normally thought of in a kind of persecutory sense in believing that events are occurring around one that in some way are there to harm or malign the person. So that is a sense in which I read these documents, I believe with some maligned conspiracy or motives of other people to, in some way, harm or to damage to Ms Blakemore-Brown.

Ms Hitchcock (108): To what extent does it impact on your views that the facts as seen by Ms Blakemore-Brown may be capable of objective proof? Is it important to your concern that they should not be true?

Dr Friedman (108-109): It does not necessarily have to be not true for people to be suffering from a paranoid illness. It is their interpretation and understanding of events that is important. I mean they sometimes are untrue as well which is obviously of significance as well. But it is generally people’s reasonable interpretation of what has occurred. It is the way they interpret events rather than the events themselves.

Hold the train. Seriously, STOP. So even if people really are out to get you, you are paranoid if you believe that people are out to harm you. Apparently the natural response of fear when one is objectively, realistically threatened, is now paranoia.

The transcript goes on to describe a few specific emails and that Blakemore-Brown’s words were “rather odd,” and that there is a “sheer mass and bulk of documents” which Friedman finds unreasonable, and that the relevance of some of the documents is concerning to Friedman. One of Blakemore-Brown’s letters is then described as “very unusual.” Whether the circumstances faced by Blakemore-Brown were “rather odd” or “very unusual” is apparently not a concern for Dr. Friedman. Again, whether one is actually faced with a frightening situation or not is not a concern.

Dr. Friedman (112): If one sees this as a paranoid illness problem then obviously the person who is affected in this way has to somehow explain what is going on. So the only explanation for that person is to believe that all these things must then be part of the conspiracy because if they are not agreeing with her they must be against her. So as it goes on, the British Psychological Society become apart of this maligned conspiracy or plot to do Ms Blakemore-Brown down. Again that seems unlikely to me.

Wow, how confident! The good doctor knows “the only explanation” for her behavior. I was not aware that behavioral science had reached the level where we could offer “the only explanation” for an individual’s behavior.

Dr. Friedman (113): I mean, the other point about these letters is I find them -- you know, if you are trying to make a case and you are trying to explain what is going on and you think something bad has happened, there is a normal professional way of writing about such matters and many of these emails seem rather disjointed and broken up and, you know, incoherent almost to the point, which is unexpected of an intelligent trained person who is used to writing reports about such matters. So that is another point of concern in terms of worrying about Ms Blakemore-Brown’s state of mind.

Let’s presume for a moment that Ms. Blakemore-Brown is correct that people really were out to get her. If this were the case, then apparently she is expected to maintain a stiff upper lip while acting “appropriately” to channel her complaints. If you become upset in your correspondence, that is apparently another sign of (you guessed it) paranoia.

So did Lisa Blakemore-Brown have reason to be legitimately concerned? I have a feeling that this story will continue to unfold and my suspicion is that, indeed, Ms. Blakemore-Brown had plenty of reason to be concerned, even if not every single one of her concerns was 100% valid.

There is much more in the transcript, which you can download here. I hope to have more time to discuss this further. My understanding is that the transcript is legitimate, though the BPS apparently refuses to comment about it.

The Ongoing Abuse of the Term Paranoia

In one post, Blumsohn details the claims Blakemore Brown made that were used to label her as “paranoid” by an “expert” witness. More on the “expert” witness to come – suffice to say for now that I hope it does not become standard practice for psychologists to be labeled as “paranoid” by psychiatrists whom they have never met based on the psychiatrists’ interpretation of various documents, most of them emails, regardless of the individual's actual fitness to practice psychology. You can get ahead of the game and read the transcript of the psychiatric testimony at Furious Seasons.

It is interesting that the potential veracity of Blakemore Brown’s claims do not appear to have been examined. If people really are out to get you, then how are you paranoid when you point out that you are in some sort of danger? Mind you, I’m not claiming that paranoia does not exist. I’ve certainly seen paranoia in some people, but just throwing around the term as a political label in order to discredit someone is certainly far from what we should expect from mental health organizations such as the British Psychological Society.

In Blumsohn’s most recent post, he discusses how some researchers seem to have absolutely blown it regarding the prevalence of paranoia. Did you know, for example, that one third of people suffer from “paranoid” fears? Does this seem believable to you? Of course, once someone has been labeled as “paranoid,” then the person can be attacked as “unfit to practice” whatever trade they have learned, as has happened with Lisa Blakemore Brown.

More to come, hopefully soon.

British Psychological Society Panned

The British Psychological Society continues to get kicked around the blogosphere. I am, of course, referring to the case of Lisa Blakemore Brown, who dared to take the "wrong" side on a few controversial issues, such as autism and Munchausen's Syndrome. For some background, see here and especially here and here.

The BPS has essentially put Brown on trial to determine if she is fit to practice psychology due to her alleged "paranoia." The funny thing is, when people are really out to get you (as appears to be likely in Brown's case), shouldn't you be afraid? Shouldn't you watch your back?

The BPS refuses to release any transcripts related to Brown's case and also refused to allow an outside witness (whom Brown gave permission to attend) to sit in on the hearings. As stated on the excellent Scientific Misconduct Blog (which has done easily the best reporting on this topic), secrecy is the last refuse of a scoundrel.

The latest: Aubrey Blumsohn has aptly asked why the BPS insists on investigating the Brown case in so much secrecy, yet seems unconcerned with much larger problems. In his latest post, Blumsohn noted that the BPS appears quite uninterested in dealing with issues related to scientific fraud and is likewise uninterested with how a patient group may be influenced by the drug industry.

I can understand that a psychological organization may play hands off regarding medications, as psychologists do not prescribe medications in the vast majority of places. On the other hand, it would seem that issues pertaining to the drug industry are highly relevant to psychologists' clients, as they quite frequently take psychiatric medications. Aren't psychologists supposed to help clients achieve the best possible outcomes? How is it sensible to allocate resources (time and $$$) to the Brown case while ignoring much larger problems? How is the BPS helping the general population by pursuing a dead-end case based on what appears to be shifty evidence at best while ignoring much larger systemic issues such as scientific misconduct and the pernicious influence of the drug industry?