You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
We recently received correspondence from David V. Forrest, M.D., a member of our Editorial Board, in which a solution is suggested to the problem of soliciting charitable contributions from our patients. This suggestion emerged from a meeting of minds at Columbia's Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Forrest was interested in our soliciting comments from Board members and others who became aware of the matter.
TO: Douglas H. Ingram, M.D., Editor, Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry
FROM: David V. Forrest, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
Stigmatization has not been the only obstacle to fundraising for research into psychiatric disorders. In the case of one obvious source of donors, our patients, we hold to the necessary ethical requirement that we do not compromise our unique treatment relationships by burdening them with requests. Some patients spontaneously inquire as to how they could be of help, and can be referred to development officers. Could there be a way of approaching the others?
The Columbia Department of Psychiatry met to seek guidelines, and the consensus was that it was possible to ask the patients for donations to Departmental research if (1) the patients are from the psychiatrist's private practice, (2) the psychiatrist is not the recipient of the donation (for example, by being a voluntary professor), and (3) the psychiatrist would have no knowledge of the patient's donating or declining to donate.
Although warned by colleagues that I would lose patients over this, in the interest of a greater good I sent the following letter to my private patients: