Family Court Violence — When Psychiatry and Law Serve as the Batterer’s Club

by Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D.

Institutionalizing battered women in psychiatric hospitals is as old as prostitution. It’s an effective way to silence and discredit them.

In My Own Practice

I remember a case over 30 years ago, in my own mind body medicine psychotherapy practice, of a patient referred by a social worker for a stress-related neuromuscular disorder. The referring social worker informed me that the young man’s birth mother was a schizophrenic who had been institutionalized when he was around five years old.

In my diagnostic interview with the patient, I was struck by the fact that it was very clear to me that this young man had distinct, authentic memories of his mother’s involvement in his formative years. His recollections revealed their apparent bonding.

Following the evaluation, as I was writing my interpretive report, I kept saying to myself, “Schizophrenic mothers don’t bond with their babies. There must be something wrong here.”

So I called the social worker and asked how she knew of the patient’s mother being diagnosed with schizophrenia. And she said, “It said so in the court papers.”