Clinical psychologist 'deluded' for having patient relationship

August 30, 2010
by staff reporter

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A clinical psychologist said he was “deluded” for begining a relationship with one of his patients diagnosed with personality disorder.

Dr Keith Broadbent, 59, told a national newspaper: "I just became deluded. I thought that I could save this patient from the circumstances she was in."

"I'd been giving her money before the relationship started, so I was already breaking the rules; it was sort of like an incremental drip.”

Dr Broadbent, 59, began a relationship with patient A, aged 30, six months after he became her therapist at Oscar Hill Service, run by Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust. The service treats mostly women diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

He is said to have bought her expensive gifts, including a laptop, and given her money, before she moved into his north London home.

Dr Broadbent was dismissed by Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust for gross professional misconduct in February – a month after the woman revealed the relationship to a nurse.

Dr Broadbent was suspended from the regulating body, the Health Professions Council, as an interim measure while it investigates the allegations.

Mr Broadbent helped set up the Oscar Hill Service which uses dialectical behaviour therapy to treat patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

The sexual relationship started after patient A told Dr Broadbent she had developed feelings for him in an email last April, the Health Profession Council's interim orders review hearing was told last week.

He replied in an email that he "felt the same way" and he wanted to "kiss and hold her".

He has also admitted giving patients financial help throughout his career, the hearing was told.

Dr Broadbent did not attend the hearing but wrote a letter admitting the relationship.

The interim suspension order must be reviewed again in three months.

Dr Broadbent told the Independent on Sunday: “She [the patient] has a background of extreme vulnerability... we had genuine feelings for each other but she found the whole thing very difficult... She has a history of picking up men... I am not trying to mitigate at all, but there was a whole range of her behaviours that I should have dealt with differently."

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