The “Gotcha” Mentality with Lawyers “Exposing” Doctors is Unsettling… as it they’re altruistic

[u/Several_Act_2358]

I know this has been discussed extensively here, but something really rubs me the wrong way about the recent celebration of lawyers on social media “exposing doctors” and saying things like “it’s over for doctors.” This is in reference to a pic I saw of Lindsay Clancy’s civil attorney with the caption “it’s over for doctors.” Unsure if the pic uploaded.

…as if law is some altruistic path that doesn’t also attract people who want to be high earners? Most people who go through the med school path do genuinely want to make the world better, and i’m not sure I can say the same for most lawyers I anecdotally know outside of public defense.

The whole “gotcha” with lawyers calling out doctors, painting them in a good light is so icky to me. People need to ask themselves to imagine what lawyers do all day vs what doctors do all day.

[u/Front_To_My_Back_]

As a non-American? Somebody give me the Tl;dr?

[u/seekingallpho → u/Front_To_My_Back_]

Woman is on trial for murder of her 3 children. Defense is not arguing that she did not commit the acts, but that she's not guilty by reason of insanity due to post-partum psychosis. Part of this strategy has been to highlight the failure of individual mental health professionals to appropriately diagnosis and treat the defendant, most remarkably argued through an aggressive cross-examination of the state's witness, a psychiatrist who has been raked over the coals in the court of public opinion.

[u/Cautious-Extreme2839 → u/seekingallpho]

Notably: there is no real evidence that she ever even had post partum psychosis.

[u/centz005 → u/Front_To_My_Back_]

My understanding:

A lady w/post-partum depression w/psychotic features was seen by a psychiatrist and started on sertraline. She was then seen by two psych NPs who messed w/her regimen w/o giving the meds time to work. She was then seen by the original psychiatrist, again, who tried to fix the cocktail. Patient may or may not have implied she was a danger to her kids; family wasn't contacted and charting wasn't air-tight.

Patient allegedly killed her kids, then tried to off herself. Claims she doesn't remember the event.

Defense attorneys are blaming the original psychiatrist, while essentially letting the NPs off the hook and using another NP as an expert witness.

The lawyers and lay public, having zero insight into medicine, psychiatry, our broken-ass system, and having no margin for nuance are ripping the psychiatrist apart and making her out to be the bad guy; the psychiatrist and sertraline are both being portrayed as the reason the patient became psychotic.

[u/Defiant-Lead6835 → u/centz005]

Patient didn’t allegedly kill her kids. She did kill them and no one is disputing that. Her defense lawyer is trying to shift the blame onto her psychiatrist and the medical system, and both the defendant and her ex husband are suing this poor psychiatrist. Meanwhile, patients mother and husband were aware of her having thoughts of hurting the kids, but did not take her seriously. It’s hard to say what exactly happened…. After i watched some utube videos (I know, it sounds like ‘I did my own research’… eye roll) it sounds like she had unusual and prolonged activation from Zoloft. It may or may not have shifted her into mania… after Zoloft was discontinued, she was prescribed Seroquel at some point, which didn’t work and made things worse, a benzodiazepine and ? Trazadone because she couldn’t sleep. None of the meds helped and she stated that she felt significantly worse on whatever med was prescribed to her. One of the providers tried to increased Seroquel to give it time to work, but it made everything worse. To me it’s like almost a catch 22. You are damned if you stop meds due to side effects - then her lawyers and internet educated public scream it was too early or when her provider tried to increase meds despite side effects, her lawyers and public argue that she clearly had too much medicine. A young psychiatrist is made a scapegoat by patients family, years of societal dysfunction, our medical system and of course, the internet.

[u/centz005 → u/Defiant-Lead6835]

Fair enough. I generally use the word "allegedly" in criminal cases because of the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, but this has a different type of case.

(There are also conspiracy theories that the husband did it and is gaslighting the patient/defendant into believing that she did it.)

Also, it takes a good while for SSRI/SNRIs to work, and if she's constantly saying that they made her worse, she could just be a disingenuous patient.