$20B in Psychiatric Fraud Needs Government Oversight and Patient Protections In a series of articles being compiled as a report for policymakers and law enforcement agencies, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) has documented psychiatry’s promises to improve mental health—promises that have repeatedly failed to deliver positive results. The U.S. has lost $20 billion a year due to fraudulent practices in the mental health sector. Attorney Matthew Curley said, “[E]nforcement actions and recoveries regarding behavioral health providers are becoming increasingly significant components of the government’s overall enforcement efforts.” Fraud- or theft-related crimes account for the 2nd largest part of all the crimes in the mental health industry. A Journal of Medical Ethics study found, “A typical fraudster’s profile is defined as a 53-year-old male psychiatrist who victimizes one or two of the largest federal insurance programs.” The researchers also found that patients are typically billed for more time than the psychiatrist actually spent with them or for procedures not performed. Patients are kept against their will until their health insurance expires just to keep the hospital beds filled. According to Richard Kusserow, who served for 11 years as the U.S. Health and Human Services Inspector General, “Many health care fraud investigators believe mental health caregivers, such as psychiatrists and psychologists, have the worst fraud record of all medical disciplines.” Mark Schlein, former director of Florida’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, when investigating massive mental health fraud in the 1990s commented: “The extent of the fraud is limited only by the imagination.” Recent examples of ongoing deceitful imagination include two psychologists who were convicted of billing for services to patients that were dead. Two psychiatrists billed for services and visits that never occurred. Other fraudulent schemes include patients being picked up by a bus and taken out for a meal which is then billed as a psychiatric evaluation, and spending all day watching TV or playing games at a facility which is billed as group psychotherapy. In 1998, CCHR produced a report on psychiatric fraud, which was released in New York to healthcare fraud investigators and representatives of the attorneys general offices, other law enforcement agencies, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Since the early 1990s, CCHR has tracked mental healthcare fraud schemes, especially in for-profit psychiatric hospitals, and has provided evidence to law enforcement agencies to investigate. CCHR advises families who have a member that was informed that a chemical imbalance caused their mental disorder, which led them to accept treatment that harmed them, to report this to CCHR. They should also report any treatments they were told were “safe and effective,” but caused them serious physical damage, including brain damage that electroconvulsive therapy (electroshock) causes. Find Out More At https://www.cchrint.org