GW Psychiatric Treatment -- 3/11/93

March 11, 1993
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Apt. 136
Washington, DC  20008

Suzanne M. Pitts, M.D.
Dept. Psychiatry
GW Univ. Medical Center
2150 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC  20037

Dear Dr. Pitts:

At our session on March 9, 1993 you provided me with a handwritten memo from the Spokane Community Mental Health Center advising that it refuses to release the April 1980 MMPI test results on the basis that the test results are too old.

This is to request that you pursue this matter further in an attempt to obtain the test results.  The following facts are offered to justify the release of those test results.

1.  In an article titled "Making Sense of Delusions" [Garety, P.A. Psychiatry, 55: 282-296] the author points out that a significant factor in her patient's delusional system was the fact that he was an immigrant, thrust into an unfamiliar environment that he irrationally experienced as hostile.  She states that his paranoid expectations and attributions were enhanced by experiences as an immigrant; his delusions were employed as a defense against anxiety and depression.

2.  At the time I took the MMPI test in April 1980 I was living as a kind of "immigrant" in an unfamiliar environment, Spokane, Washington.  Also, at that time I was in my first year of law school, and my mother had just died three months earlier in January 1980.  In effect, the test was taken at a time of intense and unique, nonreplicable psychosocial stressors that are, according to Garety and others, directly relevant on the issue of paranoia, one of the variables tested by the MMPI.

For these reasons the April 1980 test results, though 14 years old, are in no way dated; they are directly material to my mental state at a time of serious Axis IV stressors and directly material on the issue of delusion formation.  Therefore, there is a compelling reason for the release of the April 1980 MMPI test results.  I request that you speak with Dr. Elizabeth Eken, my treating psychiatrist at the Spokane Community Mental Health Center about this matter.

Also, with all due respect I note that your failure to see these issues raises some question about your understanding of the formation of delusional systems generally and the significance of delusional systems in my case.

Sincerely,

Gary Freedman