Loren Pankratz

Career

Pankratz was a psychologist at the Portland VA Medical Center for 24 years. He was also responsible for psychiatry admissions, which gave him experience with emergency room physicians and procedures where he became aware of what he described in Summering in Oregon as false information that patients presented to clinicians.

In 1975, Pankratz became consultation psychologist for medical and surgical services where he remained until his early retirement in 1995. "The purpose of checking a veteran's story, of course, is not directed at catching lies but at identifying and treating the proper problem."

Pankratz was appointed professor in the psychiatry department at Oregon Health Sciences University (now Oregon Health & Science University) in 1989. After retirement, he became a clinical professor in the department of psychiatry.

As a reviewer for the American Journal of Psychiatry, Pankratz vetted potential publications on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in which he says some authors "merely gathered evidence for what they believed was true about symptoms and the underlying trauma". He said that many aspiring authors did not check outside facts, and patients told therapists what they wanted to hear.

In 1993, Pankratz was appointed to the scientific and professional advisory board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. He has written about the lack of documented evidence for repressed memory and the resistance in acknowledging this professional blunder.

As a representative of the FMSF, Pankratz participated in an interview with Mary Knight during her 2017 documentary Am I Crazy? My journey to determine if my memories are true. Pankratz claimed, in detail, that children who are victims of sexual abuse before the age of two have no memories of these occurrences. "A child under two really doesn't have memories of anything that happened. Anything that doesn't, that isn't painful, the child, it wouldn't...it wouldn't hurt the child. I mean it may be morally wrong to touch a child who's under two. It may be obnoxious. It may be...that's a terrible thing to do, and society says no, but if you think about it, it doesn't...it doesn't damage the child." [00:56:54] He argued that, as a result, there is no long-term effect or damage to childhood victims of non-violent abuse.

In 1984, Pankratz and two colleagues founded the Drug-Seeking Behavior Committee which turned the focus of drug abuse from addiction to the earlier problem of risk.

Münchausen syndrome by proxy

Pankratz's articles on Münchausen syndrome by proxy discussed what he says is a problem of false accusations associated with the diagnosis. Pankratz concluded that "mothers who present the problems of their children in ways perceived as unusual or problematic have become entangled in legal battles that should have been resolved clinically". In the majority of cases he reviewed, the mothers "were well meaning but inappropriately concerned about the health of their children, or their behavior was problematic in other ways". In an interview with Psychology Today Pankratz stated "I have seen mothers accused of MBP simply because physicians disagreed about the medical management of their child..." it is "vastly overdiagnosed."

After a contentious case in Pennsylvania, Pankratz told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the accused mother was not creating medical symptoms in her children. Often called in as expert testimony, Pankratz stated, "for 30 years... (I have) been hired by prosecutors, defense attorneys, insurance companies and the Roman Catholic Church as an expert in medical deception." In his opinion, the mother had not created medical symptoms in her children. Instead, the symptoms were caused by a mitochondrial disorder, an uncommon condition that is difficult to diagnose. The children were returned to the care of the mother.