Posted on 12/19/2012 3:58:13 AM PST by No One Special
MARSEILLES, France (Reuters) - A French psychiatrist whose patient hacked an elderly man to death was found guilty of manslaughter on Tuesday in a groundbreaking case that could affect the way patients are treated.
A court in Marseilles said Daniele Canarelli, 58, had committed a "grave error" by failing to recognize the public danger posed by Joel Gaillard, her patient of four years.
Gaillard hacked to death 80-year-old Germain Trabuc with an axe in March 2004 in Gap, in the Alps region of southeastern France, 20 days after fleeing a consultation with Canarelli at Marseilles's Edouard Toulouse hospital.
Canarelli was handed a one-year prison sentence and ordered to pay 8,500 euros to the victim's children, in the first case of its kind in France. Defense lawyers said the ruling would have serious repercussions for treatment of the mentally ill.
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
Mixed feelings here.
While I personally have little faith in psychiatry or it’s purveyors, I suppose in some cases they help.
This will certainly change the way head shrinkers in France treat their patients. But what will society do when the shrink says, this guy need to be locked away, and what chance will a sane person have after that is said?
In America do we even have such facilities any more, and if this effects us here which is unlikely, will not these facilities grow?
The left destroyed our mental hospitals and freed all of the criminally insane demons and demanded that we allow them to live amongst us and that we support them through government welfare... they vote dim so it is all good! Arghhhhhhh... we need INSANE ASYLUMS NOW! Some people are crazy and want to kill you for pleasure... they need to be locked away and that is a fact. It worked... what the left has built... today does not.
LLS
The people, both mentally ‘ill’ and the legitimately retarded became the homeless you see on the streets of every major city.
When Geraldo exposed the horrors of Willowbrook in NYC, a greater horror began. And continues.
So the patient didn't show up for an appointment, and the psychiatrist is held responsible? That sounds like the psychiatrist was scapegoated, to me.
I wonder if the French still confine the mentally ill in hospitals. If they do what we do--throw the mentally ill out on the streets, mostly to live like rats, and sometimes to commit violent crimes--then I really don't see the basis for punishing the psychiatrist. Her hands would be tied as far as removing a violent psychopath from society.
As an aside, with the exception of the 1927 Bath School bombing, all of the school massacres in the United States have occurred since 1963.
I don’t deny it. I’m just saying that cases like Williwbrook (which were worse than any horror story Hollywood could dream up) pulled on the public emotions (gee, what a coincidence to our current situation) and galvanized action. For all the wrong reasons and in the exact wrong direction.
MANY years ago as a young lad I worked in a state institution for a couple years and we got some of the people Willowbrook didn’t toss onto the street. Even in the remaining institutions the rules are insane and very ACLU driven.
Either way, this is going to be one incredible cluster FXXX before it’s over.
Seems related:
Oct 22, 2012 ... ROME — Seven prominent Italian earthquake experts were convicted of
manslaughter on Monday and sentenced to six years in prison
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/world/europe/italy-convicts-7-for-failure-to-warn-of-quake.html
I could never imagine such things to happen anywhere in my lifetime.
And not only that, the courts decided Gaillard was not responsible for his actions and decided not to confine him, just as the psychiartrist had decided!
???
I picture Frances McDormand. "He's fleeing the interview!"
Charles Krauthammer used to be chief resident for psychiatry at Boston General if memory serves; he says we need lunatic control a lot more than gun control. He says at least some of thepeople doing this stuff would have been locked away prior to the 1970s.
I always shudder to think of the patients who came to the cold, clinical Krauthammer for help and advice. Sort of like the doctors who treated Marilyn Monroe at Paine Whitney...creepy.
De-institutionalization was a broad western phenomenon. When my sister was in school studying for psychiatry, she did a report on the man responsible for it in Italy who brought attention to the horrible state mental institutes were in.
While it was horrific that Western nations like Italy were chaining people to beds and leaving them in rooms in a drugged stupor 24 hours a day as late as the 60s, the response of abolishing them outright was an over-correction that has had a lot of negative social consequences.
This trend of putting professionals in jail for faulty judgment is disturbing to me.
A few weeks ago, some Italian scientists were jailed for incorrectly predicting earthquakes.
The result is likely to drive good people out of these businesses, leaving only charlatans who hedge their bets by hype - think defensive medicine by US doctors that jacks up medical costs due to unneeded procedures and tests.
Jail for Gross negligence: yes! But this is not what is currently occurring.
As soon as I saw this psychiatrist headline on Drudge yesterday, I associated it with the earthquake scientists. This will not end well.
What? No call for gun control yet?/sarc
That is ridiculous. There will be unintended consequences from that ruling.
You just posted what I was going to. It’s unbelievable.
In some states if a patient suicides up to five days after discharge from a facility, the discharging psychiatrist is held liable and has what would be termed as a “clinical colonoscopy” of the case and the practitioner by the state, the oversight commitees, the beurcrats and peers.
It is horrific that a good deed like volunteer suicide hot lines from the late sixties and early seventies have morphed into a burecratic morass that makes people responsible for the deeds of others, even when due diligence is served.
I am not talking about Tarasoff here (where if a patient states he is going to hurt someone, that the potential victim must be warned) I am talking about the expectation of predicting what behavior will be in two days, three days... and so on.
Psychiatric patient have issues because they do not think clearly. They can be some of the most wonderful and winsome people around, but frankly, their judgment often is poor to non-existent.
I agree.
LLS
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