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

Understanding The Source of Weak Psych Reports

If you’re an attorney or an adjuster in workers’ compensation or personal injury, general liability, or any jurisdiction where a psych doctor produces a report of their evaluation or treatment in response to the claim of a mental injury, you are always confronted with psych reports that are weak. But do you understand them and do you know how to defeat them? Let me help you do both! This month I’ll tell you how to understand them. In the next two months, I’ll tell you how to beat them.   Many of you who have referred workers’ compensation and personal injury cases to me over the last three plus decades know that I have evaluated between 5,000 and 10,000 applicants and plaintiffs. As part of my practice I’ve read tens of thousands of psych reports, the vast majority of which are demonstrably substantially flawed.    First, a little of my professional history will help to understand what I think is going on. For the first 30 years after getting my Ph.D. I was a full-time co...
Post a Comment
Read more

COVID-19 Psychopathology: Normal or Mental Injury?

     It’s no secret that vast numbers of people are getting anxious, depressed and experiencing a variety of psychologically produced physical symptoms as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. One cause of these symptoms is the fear of illness to themselves, relatives and friends. Another cause is the disruption of their lives caused by occupational events such as fellow employees coming down with the illness and the potential of becoming infected as a result. Yet, another cause is the potential of their employer either temporarily or permanently closing their doors resulting in unemployment and an inability to provide for loved ones.       In the area of workers’ compensation, one has to be concerned with whether or not the above-described circumstances constitute a mental health injury as defined by the Labor Code and/or legal regulations. The key here is the definition of a Mental Disorder. In this regard, the DSM-IV-TR is very clear in stating that...
Post a Comment
Read more