Substance Use and Psychiatric Negligence Claims in New York: When Intoxication Confounds Standard of Care and Cause

Stephan M. Carlson, MD, MBA, FAPA · Psychiatric Malpractice

A patient who is intoxicated, withdrawing, or both is harder to assess, harder to monitor, and harder to litigate. Substance use sits on both sides of a psychiatric negligence claim at once: it is part of what the clinician was obligated to manage and part of what the defense will say actually caused the harm. The cases that turn on it are won by an expert who can hold those two roles apart. What changes when substances are in the chart A psychiatric negligence claim involving substance use is still ordinary medical malpractice, and in New York it still requires the same four elements to cohere: a physician-patient duty, a departure from accepted practice, proximate cause, and damages. None

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