Sometimes, There Is a Moral Duty to Deceive

POINT OF VIEW

Sometimes, There Is a Moral Duty to Deceive

By Don Barlett

May 20, 2008

Editors and reporters who insist that deception is never justified overlook the fact that just by invoking such an ironclad rule they, too, are engaging in the very practice they deplore.A decision to withhold critical information from readers by refusing to document it is every bit as deceitful as gaining access to information under false pretenses –- but without serving any greater good. Even worse, they are deceiving their readers.

In the case of Lima State Hospital, voters, taxpayers, lawyers and state judges never would have known that accused persons sent to Lima for a psychiatric evaluation often never were seen by an accredited psychiatrist; that critical patient notes tracking psychiatric progress were blank because patients seldom saw mental health professionals;that patients met with a psychiatrist only one or two times a year for a few minutes; that some patients were required to sleep naked on a mattress on a concrete floor; that therapy consisted of spending an entire day tying pieces of string together; that there were no educational or vocational rehabilitation programs; that teenagers who could neither read nor write spent their days copying words from magazines without ever knowing how to pronounce them or what they meant; that some patients were kept on tranquilizers for years without any adjustment in their medications or even seeing a psychiatrist; that patients were punished if they had epileptic seizures because unschooled personnel believed, incorrectly, that patients were simply acting out; that some people confined to the state hospital for the criminally insane were neither insane or criminals – one patient, locked in a bitter divorce – had fallen behind in support payments; that“psychiatrists” were not certified to practice psychiatry and could barely speak English, yet determined for the state’s courts whether patients were capable of standing trial; that two of the hospital’s physicians did not even have medical licenses; that all incoming and outgoing mail was screened and sometimes never mailed or given to patients. As an attendant explained: “Sometimes they write that they don’t get to see a psychiatrist or that they are being abused. These letters we don’t mail because this isn’t true.”

In fact, it was.