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STATEMENT

of TAC executive Director Mary T. Zdanowicz, Esq.

IN MEMORIUM: DR. WAYNE FENTON
Cared for those too often abandoned by the system

The board and staff of the Treatment Advocacy Center mourn the crushing loss of Dr. Wayne Fenton. He was a rare breed of psychiatrist who devoted his career to the most severely mentally ill. He was motivated not by political correctness, but by a mission to understand and treat the most devastating symptoms of schizophrenia.

His research was pure – probably in part because he served some of the most difficult patients in his private practice and witnessed firsthand the terrible toll of psychosis on patients and their families. He was more concerned about helping the most severely ill than worrying about where his next research dollar was coming from. That is sadly unusual.

Dr. Fenton’s death is a poignant reminder of the woeful inadequacy of options for emergency care when severely mentally ill patient are in crisis and refusing medication. Our nation’s mental health system is geared almost exclusively to patients who are able to seek treatment voluntarily. And families struggle with law and policies that prohibit medication intervention until a patient is dangerous.

Dr. Fenton was a shining exception. Family members have shared stories of Dr. Fenton coming to their home late in the evening or meeting with them on weekends to help a loved one who was in desperate circumstances.

Most of his colleagues would have referred these families to the police. But Dr. Fenton had true compassion and understood too well the few alternatives available to people in severe psychiatric crisis. 

The mental health community should wake up and realize they are in danger – of losing their humanity to political correctness, their compassion to fear, their craft to law enforcement.

Dr. Fenton never backed down from a difficult patient. We owe him an honest look at a system that gave him no reasonable option for helping someone in crisis and no law to turn to for support. 

Washington Post article | Obituary | NIMH statement

The Treatment Advocacy Center (www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating barriers to the timely and effective treatment of severe mental illnesses. TAC promotes laws, policies, and practices for the delivery of psychiatric care and supports the development of innovative treatments for and research into the causes of severe and persistent psychiatric illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

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