Skip to main content

It Takes A Renegade Psychologist To Expose Flawed Psych Reports

    I’ve been writing this newsletter and publishing one issue each month since 2009. This is the 140th issue of my newsletter providing what I feel is valuable information for attorneys and insurance adjusters who read medical-legal reports from psychologists, psychiatrists and neuropsychologists. All of my newsletters can be downloaded for free from my website: DrLeckartWETC.com. The motivation for writing these newsletters has been my 30+ years of evaluating approximately 10,000 personal injury and workers’ compensation litigants and my time as a university professor at San Diego State University, during which it has been no secret that psychologists, psychiatrists and neuropsychologists who write medical-legal reports count on not being called on their errors because it is difficult to find a doctor who is willing to stand up and call them on their mistakes. Perhaps they count on their “fraternity” and “sorority” brothers and sisters in the profession not to make waves. Certainly, they do not expect a renegade doctor like myself to get in their face and testify in court or in written format about the full extent of their incompetent written reporting and/or verbal testimony.

    I have found great pleasure in publishing the issues of my newsletter over the past 11 years during which I have taken on the medical-legal community and focused my attention on helping attorneys win cases by effectively and efficiently cross-examining psychologists and psychiatrists who have authored flawed psych reports. The most substantial error made by doctors of flawed reports is that they fail to provide sufficient data to support their diagnosis. To provide a credible diagnosis the doctor must use at least three sources of information and show that the patient meets the DSM diagnostic criteria for the disorder they diagnosed. First, they must take the patient’s life history, including a complete accounting of their current symptoms or complaints, with a history of their frequency, intensity, duration, onset and course over time. Second, they have to give a Mental Status Examination that measures the patient’s memory, concentration, judgment and insight with a battery of well-known face-to-face administered procedures. Third, they must administer a battery of objective psychological tests that have been demonstrated by published research in peer reviewed professional journals to be both valid and reliable and capable of assessing the examinee’s credibility. Additionally, when available they must review the patient’s records for data confirming their diagnosis and, when available, interview the patient’s friends, relatives and/or co-workers for further substantiation of their diagnosis.

    The conventional psych doctor would shy away from exposing the substantial flaws found in the reports authored by their colleagues, or “fraternity” and “sorority” brothers and sisters. I suppose that makes me unconventional, or what I was recently called (and embraced) by an attorney, a “renegade” in the field! Whatever the appropriate word or phrase, I absolutely love my work in reviewing flawed psych reports and providing adjusters or attorneys a written analysis that discusses every flaw in non-technical jargon and provides the attorney with a script of simple questions to use in cross-examining the report’s author to get their errors on the record.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Psychiatrists and Psychological Testing: A Frequent Nightmare

     As a psychologist who helps attorneys effectively cross-examine psychiatrists and psychologists I frequently have the opportunity to read depositions and trial records.       In those cross-examinations, psychiatrists are often asked about the results of psychological testing that is sometimes completely left out of their examinations and reports.       The most bizarre testimonies are in response to questions about their failure to administer a keystone psychological test, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). More often than you might imagine, a psychiatrist will openly testify something like, “I didn’t give an MMPI because I’m not an expert in psychological testing.”       This kind of answer is bizarre because a forensic psychiatrist’s job is to evaluate the patient and arrive at a conclusion about whether or not they have a psychological disorder, and if so, what is it’s likely cause, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Economics of Dismantling Flawed Psych Reports

     I’ve been doing personal injury and workers’ compensation psych cases for over thirty years. In that time I have evaluated about 10,000 claimants. I’ve also reviewed about 50,000 psych reports. For the last 12 years I have written reports and given testimony that conclusively demonstrates that the vast majority of the opposing doctor’s reports are substantially flawed and can be revealed on cross-examination of the doctor to be worthless with regard to a judge and/or jury drawing a reasonable conclusion that a claimant has had a psychiatric injury. As part of what I write in my reports, which are commissioned to critique the opposing doctor’s conclusions, I provide attorneys with a specifically designed line of direct questions that demonstrate to even the most unsophisticated juror the worthlessness of the opposing doctor’s opinions.       My reports are not inexpensive. A typical report costs between $6,000 and $10,000, depending on the number ...
Post a Comment
Read more