Court Opinion

ID: 9620300
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:40:45.549087+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:49.252885
License: Public Domain

Sears, Justice,
concurring.
Within the meaning and spirit of OCGA § 24-9-21 (5), I believe the majority has correctly interpreted the term “psychiatrist.” To limit the “psychiatrist-patient” privilege to communications with only those physicians who devote all of their time to the practice of psychiatry, as the dissent urges, would be a disservice to those afflicted with mental and emotional problems, would be contrary to the spirit of the psychiatrist-patient privilege, and would produce unreasonable and inane results.
The stresses of modern life often create debilitating mental and emotional maladies, such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, and addiction, not to mention the host of other painful knots of the mind and soul afflicting many Americans today. Most of these problems are inextricably linked with other physiological problems. When people experience psychological traumas in their lives, the first medical provider to whom many will turn is their personal physician, with whom they have a relationship of trust and confidence. For instance, OB*599GYNs frequently will encounter and treat new mothers with postpartum depression, and internists have similar experiences with alcoholics and drug addicts. In addition, in some rural communities where physicians cannot aiford to practice psychiatry exclusively, many physicians by necessity treat the mental disorders of their patients.
Moreover, the practice of psychiatry is open to all physicians upon leaving medical school, and most physicians who do not devote themselves exclusively to the practice of psychiatry nevertheless have the knowledge and skills, gleaned both from medical school and from practice, to treat many of the mental disorders of their patients.
Further, the psychiatrist-patient privilege serves at least two purposes. It recognizes the obvious truth that confidentiality and privileged communication are prerequisites to successful psychiatric treatment and encourages patients to freely and openly communicate their problems. Also, recognizing that there are few things more intimate and private than the health of a person’s psyche, the privilege serves to protect that privacy interest. The privilege thus elevates society’s interest in successful treatment, as well as the patient’s interest in privacy, over society’s interest in having such communications, on the few occasions they would be relevant, to aid in the truth-seeking process. See generally McCormick on Evidence, §§ 98; 105 (4th ed. 1992).
Bearing in mind that patients will frequently consult their personal physicians for mental health problems, that those physicians will frequently spend a substantial part of their practice not only treating their patients’ injured bodies but treating their injured minds, and that the privilege in question encourages patients to speak freely and openly of their mental health problems and recognizes their privacy interest once they have done so, it makes no sense to deny the privilege to a patient who seeks treatment from a personal physician who has a substantial psychiatric practice but to grant the privilege to a patient who initially decides to seek out a doctor who exclusively practices psychiatry. See Mansfield v. Pannell, 261 Ga. 243 (404 SE2d 104) (1991) (statutes should be construed to avoid an absurdity or contradiction and to follow legislative intent). Such a result could only be based on a talismanic reliance on mere words and labels that would be contrary to the spirit of the privilege. As Judge Learned Hand once wrote, “it is one of the surest indexes of a mature and developed jurisprudence not to make a fortress out of the dictionary; but to remember that statutes always have some purpose or object to accomplish.” Cabell v. Markham, 148 F2d 737, 739 (2nd Cir. 1945).
Further, to limit the privilege to physicians who practice psychiatry exclusively would lead to the anomalous result that psychologists’ *600patients5 would be entitled to greater protection than patients of those medical doctors who are schooled in psychiatry and who engage in the substantial practice thereof. Such a result would also make little sense and is not one I believe the General Assembly could have intended.
For all of the foregoing reasons, I think that the majority has properly construed the psychiatrist-patient privilege, and that that construction is a step forward for those Georgians with mental and emotional problems who are working closely with their doctors in an effort to restore a- sense of balance and stability to their lives.

 OCGA § 43-39-16 provides that
[t]he confidential relations and communications between a licensed psychologist and client are placed upon the same basis as those provided by law between attorney and client; and nothing in this chapter shall be construed to require any such privileged communication to be disclosed.