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The families of three Florida students who died after being hypnotized by their then-principal will each receive $200,000 in a settlement with the school district.

hahaha for WHAT!???

This is some slack jawed, ignorant, hick bible belt southern state bullshit right here if i've ever seen it. What in the holy fuck. Everyone involved in this should be ashamed and embarrassed.


“The thing that is the most disappointing to them is that he never apologized, never admitted wrongdoing and is now living comfortably in retirement in North Carolina with his pension,”

Good to know, since he did absolutely nothing wrong.


because you had someone who decided to perform medical services on kids without a license

Um huh? Did i miss something? I thought this was a story about a principle hypnotizing some kids.

This might be the dumbest story i've ever read on a message board ever, if not my entire life. I'm in shock right now.


Permission slip or not if you don't have the training to do a medical act then you're breaking the law.

It's hypnotism. Didn't realize sideshow "magicians" need to go to medical school.

Unless they can prove he told the kids to kill themselves under hypnosis....

I still don't get how he could be blamed or charged. You can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that hypnotism works. It's quack, jackass "science". It's not fucking mind control, these kids had control voer their actions and behavior.

And putting someone under hypnosis is usually done by a trained practitioner.

I've seen people do it at comedic dinner theater shows, i've seen it at amusement parks, i've seen it done in impromptu city park demonstrations. There's no official training or medical certifications for this shit, it's a joke. Can't believe the nonsense i'm reading.



instead of a hack psychotherapist.


Pyschotherapists should stick to being pyschotherapists instead of hack psychotherapists too.


I'm kinda glad the school had to shell out all that money though, even if the parents don't deserve a penny since no wrong was done whatsoever. I hope the entire city suffers financially as a result of this decision. This is all a result of this citys justice system going overboard and being dipshits, it deserves some hardship.
 
Am I the only person who read this part of the op?

It follows a report by school chiefs who found that he had lied to officials about hypnotism sessions and defied three separate orders to stop the practice.
 
How did he have enough time for all these hypnotism sessions and fulfill his administrative duties? Sounds like a looney with a hero complex.
 
This is a very weird situation, on the one hand it's rather creepy, but there isn't remotely proof of wrongdoing.
 
How did they even conclude that? He probably just took too much. That's such a common occurrence, I'm not sure why they made the leap straight to suicide.
It's really, really hard to accidentally overdose to the point of dying on the vast majority of medications; only 5% of those who are actually trying to commit suicide by OD succeed. People don't just take the amount of medicine needed to kill them by mistake. So the assumption of suicide is a valid one, especially if he left a note or ODed on a medication he took regularly.
 
I think this was prob all a sad/strange coincidence. There have been 3 suicides in the last 3 years in my oldest daughters class (the last just occurred a few weeks ago- Salem NH class of 2017) It's tragic, heartbreaking & you want to blame someone. The truth is more likely (in our cases anyways) a mix of peer pressure/bullying, mental health issues, & parents who aren't aware of what's going on in their kids lives. In this last suicide it seemed like everyone around this kid knew there was something wrong, unfortunately his parents didn't notice until he (and one of their guns) went missing. I'm sure we would all love to have a hypnotizing villain to blame.
 
I think him not actually being licensed is where the problem lies. Permission slip or not if you don't have the training to do a medical act then you're breaking the law. And putting someone under hypnosis is usually done by a trained practitioner. Not some high school principal in charge of students.

Except that he IS actually trained and certified. Also, hypnosis isn't classified as a medical act. Just like administrators and guidance counselors usually aren't even trained in psychology, yet listen to kids problems and try to help them work through it. If it was against the law, he would have been prosecuted.

Am I the only person who read this part of the op?

I did as well, so I got curious enough to look around about it. It appears these "requests" were just people from the district telling him that he shouldn't do it because some parents thought it was against the Bible and were making a fuss. I couldn't find any actual documentation that these were write ups and official action.

It's really, really hard to accidentally overdose to the point of dying on the vast majority of medications; only 5% of those who are actually trying to commit suicide by OD succeed. People don't just take the amount of medicine needed to kill them by mistake. So the assumption of suicide is a valid one, especially if he left a note or ODed on a medication he took regularly.


I couldn't find anything about a note. He was in an abandoned house, which is a common spot to take drugs when you don't have your own place, and while, yes, it's not the easiest to commit suicide with many types of medication, this appears to have come under the heading of "suicide" because of the "pattern" they thought they had. They even tried linking it to a teacher who died, with no proof the principal had done any hypnosis on her. I would just like a bit more evidence about the suicide angle. It's of course a possibility, especially since his friends/teammates had died during the year. I just don't get the impression it was fully investigated once this "hypnosis theory" came to light.
 
Has anyone here ever been hypnotized? Just curious

Beyond being prescribed (and having currently ingested) sedative-hyponotics with side effect profiles ranging from mildly amusing to dangerous as all fuck out? No.

ETA: Late to the party, guys. My immune system decided I was overdue for battling Influenza. Next time, I make the decisions, you damn T-lymphocytes. Go back to your stupid thymus. Oh, wait, you can't!
 
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He was charged with something along the lines of practicing healthcare with out a license but clearly the charge was dropped in light of him agreeing to never work with kids again.
 
Wouldn't it be logical that some of the kids coming to him for sessions were troubled? And the kid driving home from oral surgery who got a "funny look" before crashing most likely experienced a post-surgical clot in the heart or brain, and has nothing whatever to do with hypnosis.

I've been hypnotized, it isn't a zombie state.
 
I have not read all the comments and I will go back. I've read this a few times.

This is a witch hunt and the money paid out is the equivalent of stfu money. This is not a Shallow Hal horror flick, it's bogus bullshit.
 
Excerpt courtesy of Psych Web: http://www.psywww.com/

5. Hypnosis, volition, and mind control

5.1. Is the hypnotist in control of me?

The question of volition becomes important when we consider the long-studied question of whether a hypnotist can influence an individual to perform behaviors which they would not 'ordinarily' want to perform, such as to commit crimes or to injure themselves or others.

... [snip] ...

Various authors have reported attempts by the U.S. CIA to research or use hypnotic techniques for mind control. All seem to report failure rates consistent with the experimental findings. Some people in some situations are apparently vulnerable to sudden confusion techniques of suggestion, but the use of classical hypnosis as 'mind control' is entirely unreliable in general. If you consider the speeches of a powerful orator or evangelical preacher to be a form of hypnosis, this seems to be the type most powerful in influencing the minds of people. And this type of situation is perhaps as well described in terms of social/group psychology as individual response to hypnotic suggestion.

Longish, but well worth the read: http://www.psywww.com/asc/hyp/faq5.html
 
It's probably a hell of a lot cheaper to shell out 600 grand than to drag the thing through a trial and risk having to pay more in damages, as well as significantly increased legal costs. This happens all the time in civil cases, particularly with medical malpractice allegations, the fact that he was certified, licensed and had signed consents from parents is completely irrelevant. Agree or disagree, like it or not, it's just how things are.

Remember, in civil cases there is no "reasonable doubt" standard, it's simply a preponderance of evidence. All you have to do is get a jury of nitwits to logically or illogically deduce that there was a cause and effect relationship between the hypnotism and the suicides and you've lost the case. It is human nature to link two events that happen close together as possibly being related, particularly since there is a cluster of similar poor outcomes.

The school board should have prohibited him from hypnotizing any student from that district, and if a parent and student came to him for hypnosis anyway, as a professional he simply could have referred them to another qualified individual.
 
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