RERUN/REWRITE: This man was my first attending psyche doc at The Arizona State Hospital. LAXMAN PATEL, who has since been promoted, and is now the Chief Medical Officer at the Arizona State Hospital. 

"Doctor." Wherein, formal notes specific to a patient's state of mind and related treatment needs, entered by a senior member of psychiatric staff at The Arizona State Hospital, reveal just one more example the clinical ineptitude that has allowed the substandard care and practices at ASH to exist, to date. 

Enter "Doctor" Laxman Patel", a man which more accrued experience at ASH than any other doctor there, besides the witch, Ruby Ramos-Roxas.      

     Now for something as deeply personal as I am willing to openly discuss. One of the most traumatic aspects of my childhood relates to incestuous sexual abuse that I was subjected to by my older sister when I was 6-7 years old. Due to the internal confusion and relative trauma that the incident caused me at that age, I have rarely discussed this fact with anyone in my life; and in fact, until being hospitalized in 2010 (following my last suicide attempt), the only persons I had ever even mentioned it to were my wife and my mother. As it turns out, my therapeutic sessions in several hospital settings (including before my admission to ASH, which signifies that this incident etc. was part of my formal medical record at that time that Patel become my primary doctor at ASH) determined that this abuse has played a significantly debilitating role in my overall life, and directly in the medical context of my being affected by major depressive disorder and associated traits. In short, my sisters absolutely sickening abuse of me in this context fucked me up in ways that directly damaged my sense of self esteem and relatedly complicated my interpersonal relationships very difficult since I was an adolescent, including in terms of the relationship between me and my former wife.   

      As a matter of practicality, here is just one formal summary description of the damage caused by incestuous sexual abuse to the abused child's mental and emotional well being: 

Incest is a form of chronic traumatic stress that can lead to a host of initial and long-term effects. Like child sexual abuse in general, it poses a serious mental health risk for many victims. The chronic nature of the abuse, the nature of the family, including its dynamics and defenses, the child's dependence on and entrapment in the family, and his or her loyalty to that family,necessitate using strong defenses to cope. Denial and dissociation (splitting off of normal thought processes from consciousness) allow the victim to discount, minimize, or otherwise suppress memories of abuse. These defenses often persist into adulthood. As a result, survivors may appear asymptomatic and not suffering from long-term effects of the abuse, when in reality they are emotionally constricted due to the trauma. Since incest usually occurs in childhood, it inevitably influences maturation and development. For many survivors, the incest experience, along with its aftermath and coping mechanisms, has greatly influenced and become integrated

into the personality. (Faqs.org//Health 2010)

     Well, as luck would have it, my first primary attending psychiatrist at The Arizona State Hospital happened to be Dr. Laxman Patel, an Indian-American who attended medical school at a non-accredited university in  India and has been working as a doctor at ASH since the early 1990s. In a report compiled by Patel following our first meeting in January, 2011, he stated the following: 

      "Mr. Pickens reports that his older sister let him fondle her    

      when he was 6 years old." 

     I shit you not, oh reader, "…. let him fondle her"!!!! is precisely what this goddamned so called medical professional reported in his records about me! I have that document. It is part of the record. Formal medical interpretation of my statements, by a man raised and educated in India, which today coming to be one of the most filthily societies in the world with the subject of rape, incest, and other like sickening dynamics. Is this why Laxman Patel, the current Chief Medical Officer at ASH, so inaccurately interpreted my history in this context? Does it have to do with the fact that Indian men, and the underlying culture of that particular third world nation, believe that only men have the ability and right to subject others to sexual attack? Here in the United States, virtually all established medical data recognizes the severe damage(s) that incestuous conduct causes, and this particularly significant in terms of anyone claiming to be a qualified mental health physician. 

And yet this man, who now (2013) has more authority over the lives of ASH's seriously mentally ill and disabled patients than anyone else at ASH has, utterly failed to acknowledge this critical aspect of my personal history, as it did and does today affect my sense of self esteem, personal worth, and related major depressive disorder.   

     This, again, a clear example of the substandard mental health care that I experienced while at ASH. And while it may seem reasonable to look at this yahoo's statement as nothing more than a tad bit of miscommunication, I cannot emphasize enough how critically impacting the primary care physician's role is in relation to any patients' treatment needs in a place like ASH.  As I have already stated, these doctors hold the patients very lives in the palm of their hands in terms of everything from the patients' freedoms and privileges there at ASH to the patients grasp of reality in terms of being institutionalized, which extends their given authority far beyond the terms of traditionally accepted patient-doctor relationships; and the directly related power dynamic and reliance of the patient on these doctors dictates all aspects of the patient experience at ASH.

     As such, communication in terms of the doctor-patient relationship is critical, and there is no excuse whatsoever for this man's ineptitude. I don't know if it was, in fact, a communicative slip on his part (because it certainly was not on my part), or if his given cultural background contributed to this disturbingly gross misinterpretation of my most personal communications with him (perhaps in his native culture, 6-7 year old boys commonly "fondle" their older siblings, e.g.), but whatever the reason for Dr. Laxman Patel's blatant disregard for the significance of this critical point in my personal history, his act remains the same: Psychiatric professionals responsible for this sort of blunder can and do lead to death, injury, and overall harm to the general well being of their patients. It is that clear, and anyone with a basic understanding of psychotherapy in this day in age understands this. I attest to this via my own experiences and the extensive body of literature applicable to the topic, and I look forward to testifying about this matter when the time comes. 

     Do you hear that, Dr. Patel? In this case, you- my singularly most important caregiver, my so called trusted primary care physician- radically mischaracterized the facts of my childhood experiences in such a way that you effectively condoned my sister's  behavior- (over 40 years after the fact, you son of a bitch, you furthered the harm and shame that I experienced in this specific matter, rather than responsibly contributing to my care needs in this very critical context)- and directed the insidiously sickening wrongdoing of the incident onto me. At the age of six, I had no interest in or idea about what sexual conduct is, and I somewhat presume that most 6 year old children are of the same mindset (in my culture, that is). I did recognize that my sister was up to something deeply shameful, however, and I did not willingly participate. I was persuaded through manipulation and clearly veiled threats, and the harm done to me at that time festered and ultimately led me to suicidal ideation. You- Patel- have no excuse for not recognizing this. These are facts that I have always stated in very clear terms to each and every individual I have ever talked about the matter with, including you, Dr. Laxman Patel. 

     Only at The Arizona State Hospital.

     Dr. Laxman Patel exhibited his incompetence in at least five (5) specific cases in direct relation to my being one of his assigned patients at The Arizona State Hospital. He was my first primary attending physicians at ASH, but we had a fall out following a very important inpatient treatment and discharge planning (ITDP) meeting in April, 2011, wherein he exhibited graphic dishonesty that was witnessed by no less than 6 other ASH staff persons, all of whom were also members of my ITDP team at that time. On several occasions during my subjection to this quacks "care", I expressed concern over what I felt were very inconsistent statements that he had made as our relationship evolved during my first three (3)  months at ASH, and in each of these occasions, Patel attempted to deter my feelings about the matter(s) by stating: 

                          "You only hear what you want to hear."     

     He would say this to me as though I were a child, with no respect whatsoever for the fact that I am an honest, well educated, and reasonably ethical man. Experiencing this nature of mistreatment by this man, and in absolute consistency with the majority of the abusive behavior that I had to deal with from ASH staff, caused me to question my self worth, and thus reignited my consideration of taking my life, because I had chosen to trust such personnel to such a degree that I  almost believed everything they would tell me. This particular aspect of my thinking had come about in good faith via my earlier treatment when I was still in Tucson area hospitals, prior to going to ASH in early January, 2o11, directly due to the fact my doctors in those facilities had earned my full confidence in there skills and professionalism. 

The ironic thing about this specific episode is that I did not discover Patel's gross misrepresentation of the childhood sexual abuse I had suffered (as noted by him in his record of out first conversation shortly after I was admitted to ASH) until well after I had been reassigned to another primary care physician at ASH. These notes are definitely of the sort that ASH clinicial staff would never willingly release, be it to the patients themselves, or any other interested party, which is precisely why I am willing to state the the provisions of Hospital Information Portability and Protection Act are willfully violated by the Hospital's senior clinicians and administrators.  Proof in the pudding, all as a matter of standard practice. 

IN CLOSING: This doctor is an insult to commonly established  mental health care today. And yet at this time, at the expense of Arizona's taxpayers, he is being paid an exorbitantly high salary in his position as Chief Medical Officer, at Arizona's sole long term public mental health care facility. As such, the one ASH staff member with more authority over the affairs of each an every ASH patients' flow of treatment is willfully violating his professional requirements, in defiance of the Hippocratic oath, and in brazen disrespect for the needs of his patients.  At ASH, it took me about two months (out of 13 total months at ASH) to realize that the quality of care there was anything but up to current medical standards, and Dr. Laxman Patel's misconduct centrally represents why and/or how I came to realize this at that time. He was my first assigned primary psychiatric caregiver at ASH, and I had nothing but good faith expectations at that time that I initially become his patient. He is arguably one of the most experienced psychiatric representatives at ASH, and yet somehow, he was unable to grasp the significance of my reports to him about staff misconduct at ASH; and subsequently, his ongoing displays of clear disrespect for me as a person, in tandem with his obvious shortcomings as a doctor, caused me to suspect that there are very serious problems with the way patients at ASH are treated. 

paoloreed@gmail.com