July 2006, Vol. XXIII, No. 8
Even though psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are more likely to be stalked than the average person, they receive little training in the concept of stalking or its management, according to a recent editorial in the British Journal of Psychiatry.1
"Stalking of health care professionals is a common occupational hazard, yet it remains underresearched and underreported and can lead to significant distress and psychiatric morbidity," said Ronan McIvor, MB, BCh, MRCPsych, consultant psychiatrist at Maudsley Hospital in London, and forensic psychiatrist Edward Petch, MB, MRCPsych, DFP, of the West London Mental Health National Health Service Trust.
Several studies point to the risk of both stalking and harassment.
Galeazzi and colleagues2 surveyed mental health professionals operating in the public and private sectors of Modena Province in Italy, and found that 40 of 361 respondents (11%) said they had been stalked, and in 90% of those cases the stalker was a client under the direct care of the clinician.
In Australia, health care professionals were overrepresented in a sample of 100 self-referred stalking victims (9 general practitioners, 3 psychiatrists, 2 gynecologists, 1 rheumatologist, 1 medical resident, 1 psychologist, 1 nurse, and 1 occupational therapist).3
In the United States, Romans and colleagues4 surveyed a random sample of counseling centers that were accredited by the International Association of Counseling Services. Responses from 178 counseling center staff members showed that 5.6% of the sample had been stalked by a current or former client, 8% had had a family member stalked, and 10% had had a professional under their supervision stalked.
Earlier, Lion and Herschler5 had surveyed clinicians attending the annual meeting of the Oregon Psychiatric Society about stalking. Twenty-six (29%) of the 90 respondents had been subjected to behaviors that met the authors' definition of stalking, and 37 (41%) reported having experienced other forms of distressing intrusions.
Forensic psychiatrists may be at greater risk. One survey of forensic psychiatrists looking at harassment outside of court found that 171 (42%) of the 408 respondents had been harassed in some way: 68 (17%) reported threats of physical harm, 13% reported nonviolent threats (such as a lawsuit), and 3% had been physically assaulted.6
When Sandberg and colleagues7 surveyed all clinical staff employed in an urban, university-based psychiatric inpatient unit, 33 of the 62 respondents (53%) reported having been the target of stalking, threatening, or harassing behavior outside of the hospital or other locked settings during their careers. More specifically, 2 respondents (3%) said they had been stalked (defined as willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly followed and harassed in a way that threatened the clinician's safety) by a psychiatric patient and 5 (8%) reported obsessional following (defined as more than 1 overt act of unwanted pursuit that was perceived by the professional as being harassing).
One of the study coauthors, psychiatrist Renee Binder, associate dean for academic affairs at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, told Psychiatric Times that harassment behaviors are more common than stalking.
There have been several cases, Binder said, in which patients write inappropriate letters about being in love with their psychiatrists and wanting to get together with them. The patients fantasize about how their psychiatrists reciprocate their love. Often, they know personal information about their psychiatrists, such as names of family members and where the psychiatrist lives.
"I have also been consulted on cases where a patient shows up at an office or parking lot, or is watching the psychiatrist at home; that can be pretty scary stuff," said Binder, a trustee of the American Psychiatric Association.
Stalker characteristics
J. Reid Meloy, PhD, a board-certified forensic psychologist in independent practice and associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, told Psychiatric Times there are some general characteristics of patients who harass or stalk psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. They tend to be primarily male with a major mental disorder (Axis I) as well as an Axis II personality disorder, he said, which is very consistent with the general literature on stalking. While males predominate as stalkers, Meloy added that in his experience of consulting in about 30 cases since the early 1990s, there were instances in which female patients stalked their male doctors—and, in one case, a female psychiatrist.
Another characteristic noted by Binder is a history of stalking.
"It may not be stalking of another psychiatrist, but may be of a friend or colleague or a professor that they have had," she said. "If there is any kind of stalking behavior, that information is invaluable, particularly if there is information on what has been effective in the past in stopping this behavior. . . . Some people respond well to limits, some people don't. Some people respond well to restraining orders, some people don't."
The average length of a stalking case is about 1.5 to 2 years, based on a compilation of all the data, Meloy said.
"I don't think there [are] any specific data on duration of stalking of mental health professionals, but I would say that it is likely to be a long-term project on the part of the stalker," particularly if the stalking exceeds 2 weeks, he said.
In one case, Doreen Orion, MD, a psychiatrist, was stalked for 10 years by a former patient she had treated for 2 weeks.8
Meloy, who wrote Psychology of Stalking: Clinical and Forensic Perspectives (Academic Press, 1998), warned that often mental health professionals will engage in both minimization and denial of their patient committing criminal acts against them, including stalking. Yet stalking is a crime under the laws of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government.9
"One of the toughest things I have had to overcome in my consults is to convince the doctors that there is a real threat and that they need to look at their own defensive posture in relationship to the patient and to not deny that it is occurring and to also not minimize the risk," he said. "We know in stalking cases that the risk of physical violence is quite high. It ranges from 25% to 35%."
