Mental Healthcare Malpractice
Most people would cite lack of access to mental healthcare as their biggest complaint regarding mental health practitioners. Even in big cities, most practicing psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, and mental health counselors have full schedules and are not taking on new patients. When you finally get to see someone, the odds are not in your favor that you will get to continue treatment long enough to see an improvement in your symptoms. It is difficult to find enough financial and institutional support to manage your mental health. The situation is difficult enough for people whose health insurance covers mental health treatment and for those rare patients who can afford to pay out of pocket. How much worse is it, then, for patients who cannot afford these things? If only you could be sure that everything would be fine once you were able to see a psychiatrist, but medical errors can happen in any subfield of medicine, including psychiatry. If you suffered a serious injury as a consequence of an error by a psychiatrist or other mental health practitioner, contact a Columbia medical malpractice lawyer.
South Carolina Has More Mental Healthcare Malpractice Complaints Per Capita Than Any Other State
According to a recent report on the ABC News 4 website, South Carolina has more medical malpractice complaints relative to the number of treatments than any other state. In the period studied, 2020 to 2023, South Carolina received 307 complaints, which amounts to 1.81 complaints per 1,000 practitioners per year. For context, there are 424 mental health practitioners in South Carolina. The other states in the top five were Wisconsin, Michigan, Alaska, and Florida.
The report did not indicate the nature of the complaints. It also did not give details about disproportionate numbers of complaints arising from certain “repeat offender” practitioners, as is often the case with medical malpractice.
Psychiatric malpractice claims can occur when patients suffer adverse effects after taking psychiatric medications. The physician may be liable if he or she prescribed a medication that was contraindicated for a patient because of the patient’s medical history. Adverse reactions to medications, psychiatric or otherwise, can also be a case of product liability. Some drugs have been withdrawn from the market after product liability claims that showed that the drugs were too risky for clinical use. Another possible reason for a psychiatric malpractice claim is if doctors underestimated the seriousness of the patient’s condition, and the patient’s mental health worsened, resulting in disastrous consequences. An example would be if a patient comes to an emergency room because of psychiatric symptoms, such as a psychotic episode, and the doctor discharges the patient, believing that his condition is more stable than it is, when the standard of care would be to admit the patient to the hospital and then reevaluate his condition several days later.
Let Us Help You Today
The personal injury lawyers at the Stanley Law Group can help you pursue a complaint related to psychiatric malpractice. Contact The Stanley Law Group in Columbia, South Carolina or call (803)799-4700 for a free initial consultation.
Source:
abcnews4.com/news/local/south-carolina-tops-the-list-for-negligent-mental-health-practitioners-study-finds-wciv-abc-news-4-medical-malpractice-mental-health-care
