Fwd: Prescription for Disaster

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SSRI-Research , JustSayNo wrote:

Sunday, October 26, 2003

 

PRESCRIPTION FOR DISASTER

http://starbulletin.com/2003/10/26/news/story1.html

 

Robert Kratzke says he believed in his family psychiatrist. Over the

course

of five years, Dr. Martin H. Stein of Arlington, Va., would prescribe

dozens

of powerful and addictive drugs to Kratzke, his wife, Anita, and one

of

their sons.

 

Two years ago, after Anita's death, the broken Kratzke family moved

to Oahu

to recover from what they see as the aftermath of their relationship

with

Dr. Stein.

 

The family shared their story of addiction, loss and healing with

Star-Bulletin reporter Sally Apgar.

 

 

By Sally Apgar

sapgar@s...

 

After they first moved to Hawaii, Robert Kratzke made a point to take

his

two sons to Kailua Beach every afternoon.

 

Wrestling in the waves, the boys, barely into their teens, were

learning

again how to be brothers, and kids.

 

" I just wanted to give them their lost childhoods back, " Kratzke said.

" Kailua was therapy, in a way, for all of us. "

 

Kratzke, 52, and his sons Chris, now 15, and Mike, 17, came to Hawaii

to

start new lives in August 2001, after five years under the treatment

of Dr.

Martin H. Stein, an Arlington, Va., psychiatrist.

 

During those years, Stein prescribed the Kratzke family dozens of

powerful

drugs, a concoction of anti-depressants and painkillers strong enough

to

smother family memories in an unshakable fog. And, according to the

family,

strong enough to kill the boys' mother.

 

Kratzke and his wife, Anita, believed in Stein and his philosophy

that many

health problems stem from chemical imbalances in the brain that can be

corrected with drugs. Kratzke eventually required treatment to

overcome his

dependence on Stein. Chris remembers little from those years.

 

" I completely believed in him, " said Kratzke, who worked for 24 years

for

the U.S. Department of Energy . " I had never dealt with psychiatrists

or

knew anything about them. I just believed he was trying to do the

best for

us. "

 

The Kratzkes didn't know the Virginia Board of Medicine was

investigating

Stein's treatment of at least seven other patients. Kratzke never

found out

about the investigations, which are normally secret, until he filed

suit

over Anita's death.

 

In March 2002, the Kratzke family filed a $1.5 million malpractice

suit

against Stein, 63, alleging Anita died " as a result of the massive

doses of

inappropriate drugs " prescribed by Stein. The suit said she became

addicted

to narcotics, benzodiazepines and antidepressants and that Stein

continued

to prescribe more medication as her condition deteriorated.

 

In August 2002, the Kratzkes' cases were added to the state probe.

The Board

of Medicine's final report criticized Stein's ethics, diagnoses,

prescriptions of large dosages of interacting and conflicting drugs,

and

scant monitoring.

 

The board found the array of drugs prescribed to Kratzke clashed,

causing

permanent brain injury and short-circuiting memory and cognitive

function.

" As a direct result of Dr. Stein's treatment (Robert) ... has suffered

irreparable brain damage and is unable to work, " the board found.

 

Once a top engineer with a role in deep-space missions, Kratzke used

to

bring home a six-figure salary from a job he loved. In his study

recently,

he shuffled through a pile of certificates and awards from NASA and

its Jet

Propulsion Laboratory.

 

" I can't look at these, because I can no longer be that person, " said

Kratzke, who now works as an assistant football coach at Kalani High

School

where both boys attend and play sports.

 

In an agreement reached with the medical board a year ago, Stein

surrendered

his medical license for a year. He refused to agree with the board's

findings but said he would not contest them. Later, in a deposition

under

oath, Stein invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent when

asked

about the truth of the board findings. Stein is eligible this month

to apply

for reinstatement of his license.

 

Stein's attorney, Geoffrey Gevatt, declined to comment or let Stein be

interviewed for this story.

 

Last year, the Kratzkes also filed two $1.5 million medical

malpractice

suits for personal injuries to Kratzke and Chris. Those suits are

pending.

 

Donna Miller Rostant, an attorney for the family who has talked with

other

patients of Stein's, said " the overwhelming thread is they all

trusted Stein

and he betrayed them. The typical pattern they have all described is

they

would spend an hour with him in his office and they would come out

with a

bag of pills and a diagnosis. "

 

Flood of prescription drugs

 

On Nov. 20, 1995, Anita took Chris, then 7, to see Stein. Chris had

been

diagnosed with learning and language disabilities by Dr. Martha

Denckla, an

expert in learning disabilities and a professor at Johns Hopkins

University

School of Medicine.

 

Anita wanted a psychiatrist to treat Chris for his explosions of

frustration

and rage. Stein had come with good recommendations and degrees from

Harvard

and Yale.

 

" Chris was fighting an internal war, " Kratzke said. " He was bright

but he

couldn't communicate. We could tell he was very smart and he could

obviously

remember and do things. But his language wasn't there. He couldn't do

what

his classmates did and it made him very angry. "

 

Stein diagnosed Chris with obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention

deficit

disorder and Tourette's syndrome, according to the board. About a

year after

Stein began treating Chris, Denckla found a changed child, according

the

board report.

 

Denckla declined to be interviewed. However, the report quoted

Stein's notes

from a consultation with Denckla, who wanted to lower Chris'

medications or

eliminate some. Stein instead increased the dose of Neurontin, which

is used

to treat epileptic seizures in adults.

 

The board found that over the next five years, Stein prescribed 23

drugs for

Chris. He prescribed 160 mg of the antidepressant Prozac, at least

twice the

maxim dosage for an adult, the report said.

 

In March 1996, four months after Anita met Stein, she let him treat

her

debilitating back pain, the result of two car accidents. Stein had no

training in pain management, according to the report.

 

Over the next four years, Stein prescribed 16 drugs for Anita,

ranging from

habit-forming pain killers such as OxyContin to antidepressants and

drugs

for epileptic seizures and Alzheimer's symptoms.

 

Asked why neither of the parents ever questioned the prescriptions,

Charles

Sickels, another lawyer for the family, said, " I think the reason they

continued to see Dr. Stein was because the problems for which they

saw him

continued or got worse, and he offered hope that they would get

better. I

think the amount of medication they were on affected their judgment. "

 

Family in drug-induced fog

 

Paula Durant, a friend who delivered Anita's eulogy, said, " Anita was

a

devoted mother who really suffered. When Chris was 10, on his 10th

birthday,

he threw something at the teacher and exploded in school. And Anita

was

called and she had to (admit) him to the hospital. It just tore her

apart. "

" Every time she went to visit her son she would dread the moment she

had to

leave and he would ask her to take him with her. "

 

Remorse for hospitalizing Chris is worse now, Kratzke said, because

now he

knows it was all unnecessary.

 

" Here was a bright kid who felt he had been thrown in jail and he

hadn't

done anything wrong, " Kratzke said. " He would come home to visit and

taking

him back was horrible. He would scream because he didn't want to go.

We'd

bring him back because we thought that was the only way to help him. "

Kratzke began seeing Stein in February 1998, a few days after Chris

was

first hospitalized.

 

Stein diagnosed Kratzke with major depression, obsessive-compulsive

disorder, bipolar affective disorder, acute stress and anxiety. The

board

found Stein prescribed " inappropriate and conflicting medications. "

Kratzke said he was so medicated he had blackouts and totaled three

cars. He

fell down a flight of stairs and could not stay awake for more than

four

hours at a time. In May 1999 he left the Department of Energy.

 

" That part of my life is just a black hole I don't remember, " Kratzke

said.

" I was a vegetable on the couch with a chemical lobotomy. "

 

Mike, only 18 months older than his brother, watched his family

deteriorate

as the only member of the family not on medication.

 

" It was crazy. Everybody was a zombie, " Mike said. " Mom was always

sad and

stressed. And Dad would lie on the couch 18 hours a day with his eyes

rolling back. He couldn't function and I would just tell him to go to

sleep. "

 

Mike said Stein prescribed medication for him, too.

 

" I don't know what he said I had, " Mike said. " I just remember my Mom

said

she could grind the pills up in my cereal. One morning there were

these

orange specks in my cereal milk. I ate some of the cereal and flushed

the

rest down the toilet when she wasn't looking. "

 

Mike never took the medicine.

 

" I just thought everybody was worried about Chris, " Mike said. " And

after

Dad stopped going to work, Mom was also worried about money. I didn't

understand they were acting this way because of the drugs. I knew

Chris was

overmedicated and super drowsy and a zombie. But I didn't understand

about

the drugs and my parents. "

 

With Chris home from the hospital in June 1999 and Kratzke unable to

function, Anita and Mike, then about 13, ran the house. To bring in

some

money, Anita got jobs at a preschool and at J.C. Penney.

 

By March 2000, Anita seemed worn out to Mike, who watched her

closely. She

was weak and seemed sick with the flu so she stayed in bed. Mike

remembers

she had a high fever and he kept asking her if he should call the

paramedics. " But she kept saying no so I didn't, " he said.

 

About 11 a.m. on March 19, 2000, first Chris, then Mike, found their

Mom.

Mike remembers running down the stairs to find their father, screaming

" Mom's dead! "

 

Police and paramedics filled the house, Mike remembers. He listened

to them

rushing overhead as he slumped in a chair, alone in the basement.

 

" I just sat there and thought how the whole family had been going

downhill

and we were now at rock bottom, " Mike said.

 

Police found Anita's pill bottles with Stein's name on them and

called the

doctor, according to Fairfax County Detective Robert Murphy. Stein

identified himself as her treating physician but not as a

psychiatrist,

Murphy said.

 

Without examining her, Stein signed Anita's death certificate,

attributing

her death to " cardiac arrest. " Once the certificate was signed, there

was no

autopsy.

 

" Stein was burying his tracks, " Kratzke said.

 

In late 2002, the Fairfax County District Attorney looked at the death

again, based on Stein's deposition. Under oath, Stein testified: " You

know,

I don't really know why she died. I figured she was fine one moment

and not

fine the next, basically. All I could think of is she may have had an

arrhythmia. So I put down cardiac arrest. "

 

After Anita's death, Kratzke's 71-year-old mother, Donna, flew from

Wisconsin to take care of the family. She immediately cleaned the

cupboards

of all prescriptions.

 

" She kinda took over, " Mike said. " She definitely didn't like the

pills or

the doctor. "

 

They found a new psychiatrist to treat Kratzke, Dr. Peter Breggin,

who has

written several books on the dangers of overmedication.

 

" Overmedicating is now a way of life for many psychiatrists and we

have

forgotten there are dangerous interactions, " Breggin said. " When you

mix

potent drugs in a patient, you are essentially conducting an

experiment in

that patient. "

 

When Kratzke walked into his office days after Anita's death, Breggin

sent

him to the emergency room because he was " incredibly overmedicated. "

He went

to detox.

 

Breggin told the Medical Board that Kratzke " had deteriorated from a

high-functioning engineer scientist to being unable to function. "

 

New start in St. Louis Heights

 

When Kratzke's head cleared, he decided the family needed a new

start. They

had vacationed in Hawaii and he wanted to be near the ocean and

schools that

offered special education. He sold the home in Virginia, a beach

house in

North Carolina and land in Wisconsin.

 

Leaning against the refrigerator in his St. Louis Heights home, Chris

is now

a gangly freshman at Kalani who takes special-education classes and is

fascinated with electronics. Once he got off Stein's prescriptions at

age

12, Chris was finally able to put the alphabet together in the right

sequence and his reading not only started, but progressed.

 

" Chris is in catch-up mode, " Kratzke said.

 

" I hate Dr. Stein, " said Chris, avoiding eye contact with his

father. " Dad

never talks about Dr. Stein. He won't. Dr. Stein wasn't a good

person. "

 

Chris remembers his mom only as a faceless blur " like those cartoons

where

you know who the person is but you can't see their face. " He

remembers Stein

the same way.

 

" I've learned a lot from electronics, " Chris said. " If you fiddle

around

with high-voltage electronics and you don't know what you're doing,

you can

get hurt or even die. And Dr. Stein didn't know what he was doing

with all

of those medications and when you play around with medicines like

that you

can kill people or damage them. "

 

Mike said his brother has had a lot to learn. " He went from being

drugged up

to being new to the world, " Mike said. " I realized he had no life

experiences under his belt. He had been drugged up for so many years

that he

just didn't know how to act. So we helped him. "

 

" It was right to move to Hawaii, " said Mike, sitting shirtless in

baggy

board shorts. " I got my childhood back. There was no weight on my

shoulders

and I was free to have fun.

 

" It's really weird that I'm not angry at Dr. Stein. I've learned a

lot of

life lessons and all three of us have been through some very tough

times.

And Mom will never come back. But we have a great life here together. "

--- End forwarded message ---