A Wrongful Death: One Child's Fatal Encounter with Public Health and Private Greed

by Leon Bing

Book Overview

Recounts the quest of a San Diego mother for justice after her troubled teenage daughter commits suicide while on medication in a psychiatric hospital run by unethical administrators out to turn a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679448411
• ISBN13: 9780679448419
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Villard Books
• Length: 285 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.6" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Must read.

I was one of those kids in Southwood. Wow does this book bring it back and now it all makes sense to me.

A must read for anyone who cares about kids.

Kafka lives and her name is Leon Bing. But the truly scary thing is that Bing's report on society - "A Wrongful Death: One Child's Fatal Encounter with Public Health and Private Greed" - is NON-FICTION. This could happen to any troubled teen - and it did. But what's even more interesting than how and why this 13 year old girl committed suicide while under professional medical care is how and why this book isn't getting reviewed! Attention authors and investigative journalists everywhere: you may have a story worthy of a Pulitzer or Nobel Prize - but how's it going to effect change if no one reads it?

How Those We Trust Exploit Us.

One of the altruistic characteristics of Americans is our willingness to do whatever we can to help our troubled children. This book is a chilling yet passionate document of how a greedy callous medical corporation exploits our inclination toward good. If you've ever wanted to do something to help a disturbed kid, the first thing to do is read this book.

The HMO did it, in the teen psych ward, with meds.

In "Do Or Die," Leon Bing took us to America's grittiest streets to reveal the world of gangsters. Now, she takes us to America's poshest -- and most lucrative -- hospitals, where 13-year-old Christy Scheck met an untimely end. Greed got us here. Bing recounts with a journalists eye for detail and motive how entreprenurial medicine rewards recruiters for putting "heads in beds" of teen psych wards. Private insurance, which pays top dollar to treat troubled yong people, is systematically exploited by medical speculators. Huge medical firms have refined the art of raising hysteria in parents, encouraging them to committ their adolescents for "symptoms" which are often only signs of growing up. What they neglect to do is properly train the "psych tech" staffers who monitor these kids in situations which can make them actually compete to appear the most pathological, whether they actually are or not. This is what happened to Christy Scheck. Bing traces her admittance for depression and hostility towards her parents. Since her father had military insurance, Christy got top-dollar billing, but not equvilant care. Placed on a dangerously high dosage of mid-altering drugs, this child may well have been driven to suicide by those paid to make her better. Christy's parents fought back, and the medical company fought dirty -- a tale of corporate crime Bing tells with riveting detail. Raising a troubled teenager is difficult. Losing one to an incompetent HMO is unbearable. Bing's cautionary tale is required reading for all parents, and for anyone worried about the direction of the modern American health care system.

A riveting true-life story

This is a jaw-dropping account of a 13 year old girl's struggle inside a for-profit psychiatric hospital. Everyone needs to read this book - the story of Christy Scheck depicts in microcsm the direction our healthcare in America has taken: Greedy corporations taking advantage of a system that is ripe for corruption. You will be amazed at how far the profiteers from a 4 billion dollar medical corporation, National Medical Enterprises (NME), went in order to place profits over patients at the expense of ordinary troubled lives. This book is not about a third world country, not about another time in history, nor is it about gangsters. This is about America today and a 13 year old girl whose parents wanted only the best for her. Instead they got their worst nightmere. Christy Scheck was overmedicated, often restrained, and her treatment was carried out by an underqualified and undertrained staff in charge of more patients then they could handle. This book is about a company focused only on the bottom line. NME's obsession with that bottom line resulted in Christy Scheck's death at one of their facilties, Southwood Psychiatric Center. A Wrongful Death, a true story, is more frightening then any Stephen King novel. A must read for everyone.