Psychiatrist Goes Insane

From the Kentucky Inquirer:

COVINGTON, Ky. (AP) - Patients of a northern Kentucky psychiatrist jailed on a charge he stabbed a woman with a sword have tried to keep appointments with him in jail. Kenton County jail Chief Deputy Scott Colvin said deputies have had to turn away several patients of Douglas Rank, charged last month with first-degree assault in an attack on 32-year-old woman.

Colvin told the Kentucky Enquirer that some patients have asked if they could drop off Rank's prescription pad at the jail so he could write their prescriptions.

Colvin said the requests have been denied, as prisoners are not allowed to practice their trade in jail.

At a hearing Tuesday, witnesses said the psychiatrist towered over his bloodied patient with a sword in both hands before he was distracted and had the weapon wrestled away from him.

And according to Broken Country:

According to the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure, Rank’s license is active this week, but is it set to expire on Sunday.

Rank, who is also board certified in internal medicine, had his license to practice medicine restricted by the board in 2001 it found that after he prescribed “high doses of narcotic prescriptions” to one patient while practicing in Lexington.

The Board of Medical Licensure found that Rank had given the patient 57 prescriptions over 14 months. Rank agreed to no longer treat the patient.

Rank also faced disciplinary action from the board in 2000 after he admitted he had sexual intercourse with another patient.

Central State Hospital Cemetery

A huge area of Anchorage, KY, including all of the vast E.P. Sawyer Park, was once the dreaded Central State Mental Hospital and its sprawling grounds.

In 1873 the place was the Lakeland Home for Juvenile Delinquents, which soon thereafter expanded its purpose to become an insane asylum. No asylum of that era was ever a friendly place to be, but this one takes the proverbial cake. For decades, hellish conditions, improper care, senseless deaths and unchecked madness lent a continually greasy patina of very bad karma to this land.

Think of every horror story you’ve ever heard about psychiatry, and it’s all here: overcrowding, abuse, insulin “therapy,” forced freezing cold showers as “treatment,” crude lobotomies, electroshocks, you name it. According to Jay Gravatte of the Louisville Ghost Hunters, wards with a capacity for 1600 persons were containing more like 2400, and in 1943 the Kentucky grand jury discovered that Central State was unfairly committing and imprisoning people who were not mentally ill.

Today all the original buildings are demolished, and a new complex of modern clean edifices stand down the road, at the corner of Lakeland and LaGrange. The old asylum's site can be seen here on Google Maps, and if you scroll just a bit south, you'll see the present facilities.


Voices, purportedly of the dead, have been tape-recorded late at night by ghost hunters in the hospital's long-abandoned cemetery, which is also now part of the E.P. Sawyer park grounds. Most of the stones are now missing, and the ones that are still extant are misplaced and piled haphazardly around nearby trees. You can still tell where the graves are, however, by the prominent sinkholes that dot the landscape. It’s one of the most neglected and poorly maintained cemeteries I’ve ever seen, and these people interred here were unhappy enough from the getgo without having their final resting place so shoddily treated.

I have heard the tape and, for what it’s worth, voices are clearly heard although I can’t make out any of it. I remain dubious about the whole EVP concept.