California IN BRIEF : SONOMA : Therapist Penalized for Exorcist Referral

A psychologist has been suspended for 60 days by state officials for referring one of her patients to an exorcist. The Board of Psychology disciplined Doris Crane for her 1988 decision to send the patient to a Hawaiian Huna priest. She was suspended pending results of a psychological competency evaluation and placed on five years probation. Crane said Wednesday that she referred the patient to the priest because he showed signs of being possessed by a demon--a diagnosis the board called grossly negligent. “He was not delusional and he was not hallucinatory. He was simply having episodes in which this entity expressed (itself),” Crane said. The night he saw the exorcist, the patient was committed to a crisis center suffering from a psychotic episode, the board said.