‘Pied Piper Of Prozac’ Defends Use Of Drug State Board To Determine If Therapist Mentally Impaired

A Wenatchee psychologist known as the “Pied Piper of Prozac” testified Friday the medication made him far more effective in treating depression and denied being mentally unfit for his work.

“I thought what I was doing was pretty conservative … but apparently it’s a whole new paradigm in the profession to take an anti-depressant (medication) and cognitive therapy and make them work together,” James D. Goodwin told a five-member panel of the state Examining Board of Psychology.

Goodwin’s testimony came as the panel began hearings in the first of four scheduled two-day sessions over the next six weeks on a move by the board to bar Goodwin from practicing because of a mental disorder.

Goodwin told the examining board that many psychiatrists favor medication in treating depression, and many psychologists favor talking through the problem.

“It’s the oldest therapy in the book, to take a medication and make it work with psychotherapy,” he said. “It’s like there’s two camps. Why can’t we have one camp where both those things are (coordinated) to work just fine?”

Assistant Attorney General Jerald R. Anderson said state experts who examined Goodwin found that he had Bipolar II Disorder with chronic hypomanic symptoms “and a cognitive mental disorder not otherwise specified,” meaning there is no term for it.

Anderson said the state would show Goodwin displayed symptoms including an inflated sense of self-importance, sudden ability to function on drastically reduced sleep, excessive talkativeness, unexplained leaps from one idea to another, and fidgety or restless physical behavior.

William R. Bishin, of Seattle, Goodwin’s lawyer, said Goodwin was being attacked for maverick ideas that nonetheless have some following among other experts.

The state is doing “exactly the same thing that Soviet psychiatrists did with political dissidents in that totalitarian regime,” Bishin said. “They put them in psychiatric asylums.”

Goodwin began his account after a former client, Dixie A. Dringman, testified that she switched to another therapist because of his sexually explicit and aggressive language.

Dringman left after five sessions she attended with her boyfriend and now fiance, Richard R. Thompson, who testified that he benefited from completing a program of 13 sessions.

“He helped me understand why I had a lot of anger (but) didn’t help me to control it very much,” Thompson said.

Prozac is the best-known of a family of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Goodwin said he has taken it since shortly before he set up shop in Wenatchee in 1989, a year after he tried to slit his wrists in a bout of depression.

Virtually all of his more than 700 clients over the years have been prescribed that form of anti-depressant, he testified.

Practically everyone has problems maintaining the internal chemical balance that is needed to avoid being hamstrung from time to time by depression, but not all need Prozac to do so, he said.

He also denied restricting his practice to clients who agree to take Prozac. Practically none resists the suggestion, however, and of the 50 he now sees regularly only one does not take that type of anti-depressant, Goodwin testified.

Goodwin testified that his practice boomed after a more established Wenatchee psychologist, Virginia “Ginger” Philips, arranged for him to be accepted by an employee assistance plan and become accepted as a preferred provider by a health maintenance organization.

Within three years, however, she and a few other more conventional psychologists asked him to abandon his intense advocacy of Prozac.

“They were upset, no doubt, but she was just livid,” he said.

Goodwin said Philips’ appearance in a supermarket and other public places he encountered her showed she had mild to moderate depression, so he suggested she seek help from a psychologists’ professional support group. She, in turn, accused him of threatening to report her to the examining board.

In a February 1994 interview with Aviva Brandt, Yakima correspondent for The Associated Press, Goodwin suggested Brandt seek out a therapist familiar with Prozac and said Jews are genetically predisposed to depression. Goodwin and Brandt are Jewish.

Asked about his remarks Friday, Goodwin said he thought they were off the record. Goodwin also said he initially mistook Brandt for a walk-in client when she appeared at his office and immediately saw what he considered signs of depression in her physical bearing.

“The thing is genetic, Aviva, It’s genetic,” he said. “Our Yiddish families, they seem to have it more so than anybody else. We’re a bunch of fruitcakes. We are. Face it. Face your genetics.”

Goodwin said he made the comment at the close of a 90-minute interview that had moved from his office to a noisy restaurant in which they were speaking informally in low tones.

Dale Leach, AP bureau chief in Seattle, said Brandt taped the interview with Goodwin and that there was never a question in her mind that his remarks were on the record.