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Eric Caplan — When Healing Harms: The Doctor Who Put a Hospital on Trial—and the Case That Shook Psychiatry - with Sally Satel — at Conn Ave
Past event
Featured Book
When healing harms: the doctor who put a hospital on trial-and the case that shook psychiatry
"The legal case that changed psychiatry and forced a reckoning within the profession. In 1979, Dr. Raphael Osheroff admitted himself to Chestnut Lodge, a prestigious psychiatric hospital, expecting world-class care for his severe depression. Instead, he was confined to a locked ward, denied medication, and subjected to seven months of talk therapy. The experience rendered him physically frail and emotionally devastated before his parents secured his transfer to a hospital willing to prescribe the antidepressants he desperately needed. But the damage was done: his marriage, his practice, and his reputation all lay in tatters. Then he did something unprecedented. He sued Chestnut Lodge. When Healing Harms excavates the long-buried story behind one of the most consequential-and most misunderstood-malpractice cases in modern psychiatry and surfaces its impact that persists to this day. Drawing on thousands of pages of court transcripts, medical files, legal archives, hundreds of letters, video testimony, and interviews, Eric Caplan provides the definitive account of how a world-renowned psychiatric hospital failed a patient in crisis, and how the story of that failure has been obscured and misrepresented for more than four decades. The result is a revelatory examination of how psychiatry confronted its limitations-and unwittingly gave rise to a system that has failed seriously ill patients even more than the one Osheroff fought to change"-- Provided by publisher.
This book will be available for purchase at the event.
About This Event
The legal case that changed psychiatry and forced a reckoning within the profession.In 1979, Dr. Raphael Osheroff admitted himself to Chestnut Lodge, a prestigious psychiatric hospital, expecting world-class care for his severe depression. Instead, he was confined to a locked ward, denied medication, and subjected to seven months of talk therapy. The experience rendered him physically frail and emotionally devastated before his parents secured his transfer to a hospital willing to prescribe the antidepressants he desperately needed. But the damage was done: his marriage, his practice, and his reputation all lay in tatters.Then he did something unprecedented. He sued Chestnut Lodge.When Healing Harms excavates the long-buried story behind one of the most consequential—and most misunderstood—malpractice cases in modern psychiatry and surfaces its impact that persists to this day. Drawing on thousands of pages of court transcripts, medical files, legal archives, hundreds of letters, video testimony, and interviews, Eric Caplan provides the definitive account of how a world-renowned psychiatric hospital failed a patient in crisis, and how the story of that failure has been obscured and misrepresented for more than four decades. The result is a revelatory examination of how psychiatry confronted its limitations—and unwittingly gave rise to a system that has failed seriously ill patients even more than the one Osheroff fought to change.Eric Caplan is author of Mind Games: American Culture and the Birth of Psychotherapy and recipient of the University of Chicago's Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.Capan will be in conversation with Sally Satel, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, practicing psychiatrist, and lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine. Her most recent book is Mind the Children: How to Think About the Youth Mental Health Collapse (2025)This event is free with first come, first serve seating.To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.
Featured Author
Caplan, Eric
About the Venue
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Claudia Castro Luna — The Flowers Along the Way: A Memoir — at Conn Ave
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Roberto Tejada & Christina Wiginton — Art & Water: Volume 2 - with Kaira M. Cabañas — at Conn Ave
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Brian Jay Jones — The Capitol: The Surprising Biography of an American Building - with David O. Stewart — at Conn Ave
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