LOS ANGELES — When former model and philanthropist Phyllis Harvey died last year at 59, little note was taken. Brief paid obituaries appeared in Los Angeles and in her hometown paper in North Carolina.
There was no mention of how she died. Nothing was said about her struggle with alcoholism and mental illness. And there was no reference to one of the final projects she helped fund with nearly a half-million dollars.
Those details now figure prominently in a medical-board complaint and wrongful-death lawsuit claiming her psychiatrist coaxed $490,000 in research funding from her while she was under powerful doses of psychotropic drugs that eventually killed her.
The suit filed by attorney Daniel Hodes accuses University of California at Los Angeles psychiatrist Dr. Alexander Bystritsky of causing Harvey’s death with a dangerous combination of drugs that altered her heart rhythm.
Hodes says Harvey was hospitalized several times for heart abnormalities associated with drugs, and that emergency-room doctors discontinued her medications only to have Bystritsky resume giving them to her when she was discharged.
The Associated Press
