Doctors Can Be Liable if Patients Commit Suicide, Court Rules

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Politico reports on a decision from the Florida Supreme Court last Thursday that may influence how physicians treat depression and how they are held responsible for that treatment. In the case in question, the husband of Jacqueline Granicz, who committed suicide in 2008, sued a physician for prescribing the antidepressant Lexapro without requesting a meeting or an evaluation.

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physicians and patient suicide - politico

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Justin Karter
Justin Karter
Justin M. Karter, PhD, leads research news coverage and editorial strategy at Mad in America. He is the Acting Program Director of the PsyD in Clinical Psychology & Psychological Humanities at Boston College and part-time faculty with the Center for Psychological Humanities & Ethics. His scholarship examines historical and cultural formations of mind, subjectivity, and personhood; the roles of activist movements and lived-experience communities, including the consumer/survivor/ex-patient (C/S/X) tradition; and how mental health discourses shape institutions, practices, and identities. He works across mad studies, critical psychology, philosophy of psychology, and rights-based global mental health. Methodologically, he specializes in critical qualitative inquiry and psychotherapy process research grounded in intersubjective and phenomenological approaches. He is the President of APA Division 24 (2025-26) and serves on the Executive Board of Division 32. Previously, he was a Research Officer to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. He earned his PhD in Counseling Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where his dissertation examined psychosocial disability advocacy in the global mental health movement. He also holds graduate degrees in Journalism and Community Psychology from Point Park University.
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2 COMMENTS

  1. A terrible and unnecessary loss.

    Journo has never heard of antidepressant withdrawal, and cites “depression.” How long was the late Mrs. Granicz off venlatoxine? The unpleasant lower GI symptom is a post-Effexor effect. I wonder if anyone close to the deceased woman knows withdrawal was part of the problem, if not all of it.

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  2. We are not far from the day when biological psychiatrists will have to accept some responsibility not only for the suicides of their patients, but for the murders and violence committed by them under the influence of prescribed drugs or unsupported withdrawal from them.
    Once a patient is prescribed, and often required or pressured, to take a drug with possible suicidal or violent side-effects and goes on to act out in a self-destructive or violent manner, the courts will have to consider the possibility that the violence was as likely as not related to the prescribed drug. This change will begin with the “treatment” of active duty troops and veterans.

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