My experience forces me to confront the difficult question: Who protects us from healers who become agents of harm?
This is regarding Dr. Ruth Farrell McCann -- a psychiatrist whose actions fundamentally damaged my trust in the medical profession and created obstacles that continue to affect my recovery journey. Today, she serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Note: Every once in a few years, I update this page, and it's still an important page because of the harm injected into my life after being seen by someone I thought was there to help. I believe in listening, in treating people with kindness, in helping others heal, in providing for others, and in helping myself heal. It took me a long time to get to this point in life, and McCann's treatment is something that I'm still healing from, and writing to this anonymous page helps with that.
In the month before admitting myself into the hospital, I went on the bender of all benders. I drank myself into a stupor daily. I woke up, drank until I passed out, woke up and repeated the same process for days on end. My life had fallen apart from my alcoholism, so I figured I would just drink myself into... oblivion? death? sedation? I'm sure it was a mixture of things, but the one thing that was always there to numb my moments was alcohol, because it would knock me out.
During that month, I moved out of my family home and lived in various hotels (until my corporate credit card got shut off), then my office at work during the Christmas holiday, and then the streets. I slept in East River Park at night, often wandering around for hours until blisters wrapped around my feet from my ill-fitting boots.
I had started hallucinating. While walking, I thought I heard people talking who weren't there. I thought I saw critters running in the path in front of me. I felt as though people were looking at me oddly -- which, in actuality, they probably were because I was a complete mess, having left all my clothing and belongings at a hotel and been sleeping in the same clothes for at least a week. I left them because I didn't have an intention of ever needing them again.
While living in hotels and sleeping at my office, I'd get drunk and play sad songs while I danced around with bottle after bottle of beer. I even attempted to break into the office cooler which held several cases of beer. I was thwarted by the lock, which was stronger than a crowbar I had found in the office during my attempted heist.
Despite my ability to joke about it now, after being sober since the day I entered the hospital, I was a complete wreck. I walked along the 12th-floor balcony of my work, walking on the stone railing, trying to decide if jumping was the best way to go. I could aim myself headfirst at the ground, like a missile, and it probably would end quickly. Or, at least, that's what I thought while standing up there.
While I was staying in East River Park, during the times of the hallucinations and my brain playing tricks on me, I decided I would end it on a bench with an exercise band -- one of the 15lb bands used for standup exercises that I had stolen from one of the hotels.
I wrapped it around my neck three times, which was the tightest I could get it, and started choking. Not just choking, but a sound that will haunt me for the rest of my life... a guttural attempt by my body to keep breathing. Like a hoarking sound, but worse.
Somewhere in that time, in those few seconds, I realized I didn't want to do it. I grabbed for the band to take it off, but it was wrapped so tight that it was hard to get off. I remember thinking I might not be able to get out of my decision. But I did.
I couldn't do it. I couldn't do what I had almost done because I had a young daughter who was about to turn one year old around the same day I attempted suicide. I couldn't do that to her after not having my own father around while I was growing up. Somewhere in that last moment, I realized this was about more than just me.
So, in late 2018, I entered New York Presbyterian/Columbia University. My hands shaking from alcohol withdrawal. I tried to hide it, but I remember the person checking me in noticing my hands trembling. I had burst blood vessels in my eyes. I remember seeing myself in the mirror and being frightened by what I saw -- the eyes, the bruising on the neck, the feet with massive blisters on my heel and along the sides of my feet.
I had been checked on in another room and I was being escorted by a police officer. Not the most welcoming environment from what I remember. I remember people talking to me and asking questions. I was given a sedative to help me relax because I was extremely nervous, my brain didn't feel like it was working right, and the damn cop was following me around.
I remember Dr. McCann giving me some tests about common objects or something to tell how well I knew what was going on. I didn't, but I remember she helped me answer the questions. I remember telling her about my childhood abuse, which I hadn't spoken about to anyone before that time. I remember telling her about my family falling apart and the importance of my daughter.
I remember looking at her and asking if she was going to help me. That was the last thing I think I asked her. She said she wouldn't, but I was being held and would go to another hospital to help with my alcoholism and to be monitored.
Patients in crisis surrender their fragility to physicians sworn to "do no harm." The Hippocratic Oath. Yet Dr. McCann weaponized that vulnerability. Her mischaracterizations of our conversation and outright lies were not mere oversights -- they were betrayals. Some of the harshest and most impactful betrayals that have ever happened in my life. Facts later disproved her assertions, but the damage was irreversible. Her "care" derailed my recovery, amplified my despair, and left me questioning whether trust could ever be placed in a caregiver again.
Unintentional infliction of harm can often be forgiven. It's much harder to forgive intentional harm, especially when the caregiver runs away from facing the harm they've done, dismissing it all and clearing their conscience with an article written in a medical journal.
In a paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Dr. Ruth McCann wrote: "Being afraid of a patient can feel like the worst kind of betrayal. My psychiatry training partly involves working with patients who are feeling and acting out of control. I have struggled to know what to do with the emotions I have in those situations. How dare I feel frightened of, angry toward, or overwhelmed by a person whom I've promised to help?"
These are not the reflections of a practitioner striving for growth -- they are a confession of unresolved turmoil. A scrubbing of sins by handwaving them away in an awkward admission. Patients in crisis need stability, not a caregiver paralyzed by fear or resentment.
The medical system, designed to protect doctors from patients with valid concerns, too often shields those who cause harm. Complaints vanish into bureaucratic voids; institutions prioritize reputations over restitution. My fight for accountability met silence and deflection at every turn. Even with her notes not matching what she wrote in her report, there was nothing to be done.
But silence is complicity. By sharing my story, I refuse to let this system erase what happened -- and I urge others to do the same.
For me, her "treatment" became a catalyst for devastation. Without relentless self-advocacy and external support, the consequences of her actions could have been far more harmful.
So, back to my original question: who protects us from healers who become agents of harm? The answer is nobody, because the system is bent to support doctors at all costs and to minimize losses in reputation and monetary damages. But throughout my journey I've learned that many, many doctors and therapists do listen with empathy and dedicate their lives to helping others. Many doctors and therapists put aside their own issues to concentrate on healing the patient in front of them. It's unfortunate that "Dr." McCann could not.
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Source for Dr. McCann’s quote: Annals of Internal Medicine (https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M19-2455)