Texas Psychiatric Industry in Texas in 1994

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Texas Psychiatric Industry in 1994
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sharkey

Bedlam
Joe Sharkey's most acclaimed book was released in 1994, Bedlam: Greed, Profiteering, and Fraud in a Mental Health System Gone Crazy, an investigation of the burgeoning psychiatricindustry. Focusing on sensational cases in Texas and elsewhere within the United States, Sharkey exposes how powerful elements within the industry maneuvered to exploit exploding new markets when health insurance providers began covering costs for inhospital mental health treatment, in part by basing admission and discharge decisions solely on insurance. Sharkey traces soaring mental health costs to the arrogant and often criminal marketing practices of biological psychiatry, which Sharkey asserts began when the industry boomed in the late 1980s, with the number of psychiatric hospitals more than doubling between 1984 and 1989.[citation needed] The theme throughout Bedlam is that often unwarranted kidnappings of vulnerable individuals - covered by lucrative insurance policies - are driven by high powered marketing campaigns, often concocted simply to foster fishing expeditions sanctioned by health and law enforcement officials. Sharkey provides anecdotal tales of how juveniles and adults were coerced into treatment on fabricated pretenses or simply because they were seen as nuisances by others. Sharkey exposes schemes to fill beds at for-profit mental and addiction facilities, which were offering bounties of up to $1500 to clergy, teachers, police and "crisis counselors". Sharkey compares the bounties, and the overall manner in which facilities fill beds, to the marketing of hotel accommodations, depicting one case in which a marketing scheme was lifted directly from the business plan of the Holiday Inn hotel chain.[citation needed] The psychiatric industry, warned Sharkey (whose late father-in-law was a respected psychiatrist involved in setting up not-for-profit community mental health clinics during the 1980s in New York state) has been lobbying legislatures for an increasing share of government health spending. Despite such warnings by Sharkey and mental health watchdogs, similar practices have continued to evolve in Texas (where many of the events depicted in Bedlam took place), in the form of the Texas Medication Algorithm Project, and at the federal level with the President'sNew Freedom Commission on Mental Health.[citation needed] Email Mr. Sharkey and request that he find a journalist who will investigate "sham peer review" of doctors in Texas in 2009. If you can help us get our stories told, please contact me. For samples, Google ["shirley pigott" volpe] and/or [diamond blotcky volpe]. Go to this site at the New York Times and click on the link below his name: http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/s/joe_sharkey/ index.html?inline=nyt-per Shirley Pigott MD, Executive Director Texas Medical Board Watch www.TexasMedicalBoardWatch.com 361-652-9474 cell 361-894-6464 home

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