Curious Censorship

Curious Censorship

Patients are grateful for the altruistic sexual favors Dr. Gorman provided
to
his colleague/patient as chief psychiatrist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
Did this play a role in why Harvard chose him to head the Mass/Harvard
psychiatric combine. (Scott Allen, "A doctor's downfall, McLean's fallout,"
Boston Globe, October 14, 2007)
Gorman's case exemplifies institutionalized abuses of academic
professionals. First is the total lack of accountability. Politicians wonder why
young people refuse to assist police in criminal investigations. Do
psychiatrists snitch on their colleagues? Ahem!
Among academics, credentials provide instant credibility and iron-clad
immunity from scrutiny. The MA Medical Board knew "within days." So why was this
kept secret? To protect Gorman from eager patients?
Enjoying immunity from scrutiny with power and privileges, omniscient
psychiatrists with knowledge of the future are more likely to abuse their power.
Showing how distorted the public discourse on psychiatry is, his own
employees offered sympathy for the man who embarrassed them and abused his
power.
This is symptomatic of the psychiatric boondoggle. It is more rule than
exception. Many psychiatrists refuse to provide sexual favors for their love
starved patients. But they abuse their power relationships in other ways. What
do these charlatans know that the rest of the human race does not? Where did
they get their superior knowledge of morality? From doctors like Gorman? His
abuses of power are rewarded by the New York psychiatric establishment. He is
still qualified to teach other psychiatrists so that they can adopt his
standards of care.
Dr. Gorman poster boy for "The Cheating Culture."

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

A doctor's downfall, McLean's fallout

Sex secret kept quiet for a year
Dr. Jack Gorman admitted having sex with a patient.

By Scott Allen,
Boston Globe Staff
October 14, 2007

One Monday morning in April 2006, Dr. Jack M. Gorman, new president of McLean
Hospital in Belmont, simply stopped showing up for work.

For days, increasingly worried hospital officials didn't know what had become of
their leader until, finally, a family member answering a call at his New York
City home revealed that Gorman was in a hospital intensive care unit being
treated for an ailment that the person wouldn't reveal.

So began the spectacular downfall of a highly respected psychiatrist who had
arrived at the Harvard-affiliated hospital just a few months earlier to take on
one of the most influential jobs in mental health care.

Over the next few days, officials at McLean learned that Gorman had, like so
many patients at the renowned psychiatric hospital, attempted suicide. But their
initial sympathy for a sick man turned to horror when they learned, from a legal
document delivered in mid-May, why he had taken such a desperate measure. The
married father of two had brought a shameful secret with him to Massachusetts:
He had engaged in a long-term sexual relationship with a New York patient.

Any romantic involvement with a patient is strictly forbidden in psychiatry, and
Gorman's entanglement would drive him to self- destruction, resignation, and
disgrace - finally spattering McLean's reputation as well when it became public
last week.
PDF OF GORMAN DOCUMENTS: The investigation report, letter to MacLean staff, and
New York suspension order

For more than 16 months, both sides kept the whole episode quiet, saying only
that Gorman had left McLean in May 2006 for undisclosed "personal and medical
reasons." In reality, Gorman stopped coming to work because he had overdosed on
antidepressant pills after his patient, distraught over Gorman's move to
Massachusetts, hired a lawyer and threatened to expose their relationship,
according to people directly involved in the case. Though the pills hadn't
killed him, Gorman needed weeks in the hospital to recuperate.

Now, McLean Hospital is publicly facing the fall-out from one of the more tawdry
chapters in its nearly 200-year history. Last week, Partners HealthCare, the
parent company of McLean, conducted a review of Gorman's brief tenure to
reassure state regulators that he had not sexually abused patients there.

Gorman didn't treat any individual patients at McLean, concluded Partners chief
operating officer Thomas P. Glynn, both because he was too busy as president and
because he only obtained a license to treat Massachusetts patients a few days
before he departed. Glynn said last week's review and an internal investigation
last year did not turn up new allegations against him. In addition, he said that
McLean notified Massachusetts medical regulators about the sexual misconduct
within days of Gorman's departure.

On Friday, hospital officials stressed in a letter to staff and patients that
the hospital did nothing wrong in its handling of Gorman's problems and that the
only apparent victim was the patient, a woman who was also a colleague of Gorman
when he was in New York.

"We appreciate that this may be surprising and disturbing information for many
of you," wrote McLean's chairwoman of the board, Kathleen F. Feldstein, and new
president, Scott L. Rauch. "Our hope is that we can continue to focus on the
important work of caring for our patients, training mental health professionals
and advancing scientific knowledge, as we have always done."

But the leaders of McLean and Partners face lingering questions from the many
people connected to McLean who feel betrayed by their former chief executive:
How could they have hired the doctor in the first place? And why didn't they
speak up earlier about Gorman's misconduct?

Gorman, 55, inspired great hope when McLean and Partners announced that they had
lured him away from New York City's Mount Sinai School of Medicine in October
2005. After a two-year search for someone to take on the newly created job of
top psychiatrist for all of Partners HealthCare, they had landed a highly
respected authority on anxiety disorders, depression, and schizophrenia who had
won numerous awards for his research. He was also a seasoned administrator and
the author of books on psychiatry for a general audience, making him a seemingly
ideal candidate to be the face of both McLean and of Harvard University
psychiatry.

Almost immediately, Gorman struggled to adjust to his new life. His wife and
daughters didn't relocate with him, resulting in lots of travel back and forth
to New York at a time when he was trying to understand the vast research and
treatment program he was now running. At the same time, bureaucratic delays kept
Gorman from obtaining his medical license in Massachusetts until April 5, 2006,
meaning he could not legally prescribe medications for patients at McLean during
the first few months of his tenure.

Still, people said they were impressed by Gorman's intellect and sense of
purpose in his new position. As one staff member put it, "He just radiated
hope."

As a result, when Gorman did not report for work on Monday, April 24, 2006, his
staff did not automatically assume something was amiss. However, Glynn said
worries began to mount when staff members called Gorman's home and did not get a
clear explanation of his whereabouts. "Finally, I think it was maybe at the
beginning of May when we were finally told by someone that he was in the
hospital for personal and health issues," said Glynn.

Over the next few days, McLean and Partners officials learned that Gorman had
attempted suicide and that he was in the hospital for serious gastrointestinal
problems. A person close to Gorman said he had taken numerous tricyclic
antidepressants, 1950s vintage drugs still widely used in the Prozac era that
are known to be poisonous at high doses.

The fact that their new chief executive had attempted to kill himself raised
serious doubts about whether he could continue, Glynn said, but as late as May
16, 2006, the hospital was still treating Gorman as a sick man deserving of
sympathy. At a fund-raiser on that day, McLean chairwoman Feldstein urged the
audience to send Gorman their best wishes for a speedy recovery so that he could
return to McLean.

But immediately after that event, Partners officials said, they received a legal
document outlining Gorman's relationship with the woman dating to 2003. The
document said that the woman had been both a patient and a colleague, traveling
to conferences with Gorman while also getting psychiatric care from him. The
relationship had soured after he accepted the McLean job, and she had hired a
Boston lawyer to file a possible lawsuit.

Suddenly, the suicide attempt made sense and, Glynn said, it was clear that
Gorman had to leave immediately.

"We needed to take action to put McLean and Partners psychiatry on a safe
footing again. That entailed accepting Dr. Gorman's letter of resignation," said
Glynn,, noting that Gorman's job also put him in charge of psychiatry at the
other Harvard-affiliated hospitals in the Partners system, including
Massachusetts General Hospital.

But Gorman contends that, by May 18, he had already sent a letter of resignation
to McLean in which he deliberately avoided disclosing his inappropriate
relationship or suicide attempt in order to protect the hospital's reputation.

"One of Dr. Gorman's primary motivations in doing so was to protect and spare
McLean any embarrassment because he was extremely grateful, and remains so, for
the extraordinary opportunity which they had entrusted to him," said Lou
Colasuonno, a communications consultant representing Gorman. However, when the
hospital was reluctant to let Gorman step down, he reluctantly told them about
the "underlying issue" for his departure, Colasuonno said.

Colasuonno also said that, since Gorman's resignation, he has tried to atone for
his mistakes, even reporting himself to medical regulators in New York for
punishment. In a statement last week, Gorman said that he "voluntarily
acknowledged any mistakes" and "paid a huge personal price" as a result.

It was Gorman's decision to contact the New York Board of Professional Medical
Conduct that finally brought the episode to public attention. Earlier this
month, the board finally acted on what Gorman told them, posting on its website
that his medical license had been indefinitely suspended for "inappropriate
sexual contact" with a patient.

Looking back, Glynn said the presidential search committee talked extensively
with Gorman's colleagues, friends, and associates at Mount Sinai, but no one
suggested that he was engaged in unethical conduct. If there had been a problem,
Glynn said, the hospital had two other finalists they could have selected
instead. He said Partners brought in an outside law firm after Gorman's
departure to review the candidate selection methods for any potential flaws; the
firm found none.

"In this day and age, you have to make the extra effort to look at every nook
and cranny of a major appointment before you proceed," said Glynn. "But, even
with that level of diligence, it doesn't mean you won't get a surprise."

Janet Wohlberg of Williamstown, who runs an Internet-based help line called the
Therapy Exploitation Link Line, said she's not surprised that any rumors about
Gorman's inappropriate relationship did not surface during the presidential
search.

"People don't really want to believe these things about their colleagues,"
Wohlberg said, and, even if people suspect misconduct, they're unlikely to say
anything to a potential employer without proof. "I think the fault lies squarely
with the perpetrator," said Wohlberg.

For his part, Gorman has apologized for past misconduct, but he is already
rebuilding his career. He lists himself as an adjunct professor at Mount Sinai
on publicity materials related to a newly revised version of his book, "The
Essential Guide to Psychiatric Drugs," which hit bookstores in the last few
weeks.

Scott Allen can be reached at allen@globe.com.