A Potential Case of Therapist Fraud?

Here’s something to ponder…

Dr. Judy Keith.
Many dissociative survivors might be familiar with this name. Judy Keith is the program director on the Trauma Unit at Timberlawn Hospital, one of the best-known inpatient programs available for dissociative survivors. She also maintains a private practice in the Dallas area.

Today, I noticed that Dr. Judy revised her website for her private practice.

Where it used to say “Judy Keith, Ph.D.”, it now says only “Judy Keith, MA”.

What does this sudden change suggest?
(And it was sudden – last week, the site had “Ph.D.” in all the places where, this week, it says “MA”…)
What happened to the Ph.D.? Did the degree get lost over the weekend?
hmmm… that doesn’t sound very likely…
Ph.D.s don’t just expire or vanish – so if she is no longer claiming to have this degree, there must be a reason…

What it suggests to me is that Judy Keith probably wasn’t a Ph.D. at all – but she was claiming that she was in order to receive the status and benefits of the advanced degree, and someone caught her at this fraudulent game.

I believe this because it makes the most sense, given the evidence available to me.

For anyone unfamiliar with the process – if a licensing board is alerted that a degree is being fraudulently claimed, the person is given a certain amount of time in which to remove the fraudulent reference from all advertising and business-associated material. I can’t think of any explanation that better fits the fact that Judy Keith was a Ph.D. on Friday, and on Monday she was just a plain old MA.

Criminal charges may also be filed in connection with this kind of misrepresentation, depending on the degree of the fraud involved.

Why are the penalties so harsh? Well, consider the implications…

If “Doctor” Judy’s claim of possessing a valid and relevant doctoral degree is fraudulent, then countless survivors — both at Timberlawn and in her private practice — have been defrauded. This is definitely the case in terms of self-representation (it would be hugely unethical for this woman to represent herself as a doctor if in fact she was not one), but possibly financially as well. Higher degrees command higher fees — what if she’s been charging rates commensurate with the possession of a doctoral degree that she doesn’t have?

And this so-called “doctor” has not only been misrepresenting herself to her clients; she has also been acting as supervisor to licensee candidates or newly licensed counselors, all of whom also believe they’ve been working with a doctor. They too have been defrauded – but even worse, if this woman has based her entire career on a lie, then what has she been teaching to the younger generation of counselors who have worked with her? One can only hope that she has not been teaching them to follow in her footsteps…

And what about the fact that she has been claiming a doctoral degree in connection with her work at Timberlawn – didn’t they check her out? Maybe not well enough… but regardless of the errors made in their background check, the hospital would still be a victim of this woman’s pervasive fraud.

This suggests a really important (but often neglected) step for anyone who is seeking a new therapist: confirming the credentials of a prospective therapist is an easy and non-intrusive process. The state licensing boards for the various mental health professions maintain online and publicly available rosters of their licensees. It is perfectly acceptable to ask prospective therapists what license they hold — and it takes only minutes, once you get home, to double-check the rosters of the appropriate licensing board in the appropriate state and confirm that what you were told is true.

Most of the time, this check will come back clean – most people don’t lie about their professional credentials, precisely because it’s so easy to check them out – but obviously, some people do. So we really shouldn’t rely on anyone’s word, or trust that someone else (like a hospital) has done our checking for us, especially not when it’s so easy to do ourselves.

Our therapist is someone who might well end up learning profoundly personal and painful information about us… but how would you feel if you were one of Ms. Keith’s clients? I think we can all afford a few minutes out of our lives to spare ourselves the possibility of ending up in that kind of situation.

This is a simple way that we can keep ourselves a little safer — not from any big bad evil, but from the smaller and pettier wrongdoers and self-promoters out there in the world who might try to take advantage of our vulnerabilities. Being a therapist is no proof against being a self-interested fraud, but our therapy is the last place in the world where we want to be subjected to that.