Best-selling author Winterhoff: Serious allegations against child psychiatrists

The well-known child psychiatrist Winterhoff has come under massive criticism. Ex-patients and experts accuse him of making dubious diagnoses and of using sedative medication too often.

It is never the soft tones with which Michael Winterhoff attracts attention. With his book “Why Our Children Become Tyrants” from 2008, he sparked a heated debate on education. Other bestsellers, lectures and numerous television appearances followed, including in the ARD. This media attention has apparently made him unassailable, say experts and those affected.

The conversations with former patients often paint a painful picture of the everyday practice of the child psychiatrist from Bonn. “I am a victim of Dr. Winterhoff’s games, of Dr. Winterhoff’s power that he wields over the children,” says the former patient Jana S. in one ARD-Documentation. In professional circles, his diagnoses have long been criticized as unscientific.

Standard diagnosis of narcissism

So he put his conceptions of “early childhood narcissism” and “lack of maturity” disparagingly over children and young people who actually need special care. The Hamburg child psychiatrist Michael Schulte-Markwort says: “The description that you are a narcissist is nothing diagnostic at all, but rather derogatory, deficit-oriented and harmful to children.”

The dimension goes far beyond Winterhoff’s practice in Bonn and reveals a system failure in youth welfare. Because the child psychiatrist cooperates with many youth welfare institutions and looks after hundreds of children in the home. He himself states that he treats children in 20 to 30 foster families and homes.

“That will never leave me alone”

Former residents say that they saw the child psychiatrist for a few minutes every few months and that they were prescribed a psychotropic drug with a sedative effect called pipamperon for many years. “It was conveyed: a doctor has prescribed that it is good for us,” remembers Jana, who is now 20 years old.

“That will never leave me alone. That is health-related too. Who knows what will come in the next few years,” says the young woman, who is now fighting at the Medical Association to ensure that what she had to go through has consequences . Michael Winterhoff had given her pipamperon for more than three years, from the age of seven.

Parents not informed?

Her guardian only found out that Jana had been given medication when she inspected the files at the youth welfare office. Legal guardians actually have to be informed extensively if children are to take medication. However, Michael Winterhoff states that he did not knowingly undertake the drug treatment without the consent of the guardian.

In a ARD-Documentation criticizes an educator who has worked with Winterhoff in institutions for many years for the fact that the Bonn child psychiatrist would not see the individual. “It’s all narcissists with him.” Many children have already broken from it. The descriptions from everyday life in the home contain ideas that can also be heard in Winterhoff’s lectures. In critical situations, you should delay your reaction to the child, send them to the room or ignore them.

Everyone would get psychotropic drugs, according to the educator. “If you go to Winterhoff, you have a narcissist and you get pipamperon,” she says. That is known. She regrets that the children in the institutions have been deprived of this medication of their childhood over the years: “They run around like robots.” Winterhoff states that the children can only be reached for curative educational work through Pipamperon. “Basically, the use of Pipamperon is harmless as long as the treatment is controlled by child psychiatrists,” he claims.

Serious side effects possible

International studies have linked antipsychotics such as pipamperon with a number of serious and long-term side effects. They are suspected of causing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. There is evidence that they help reduce brain mass.

According to the Hamburg child psychiatrist Schulte-Markwort, Pipamperon is an emergency medication that is administered for a short time “when a child gets into a state of psychomotor excitement”, ie is internally restless and tense. In his opinion, it has no indication for long-term treatment. But the youth welfare office files of some of the children in the home show that the well-known child psychiatrist has been medicated on a long-term basis.

In one case, Winterhoff prescribed pipamperon to a boy for ten years. A mother and also a guardian appointed by the court, who wanted to reduce or discontinue the drug in children, report that Winterhoff campaigned to deprive them of custody. In one case, Winterhoff was even able to convince authorities and courts.

Michael Winterhoff emphasizes that he uses Pipamperon “in a low-threshold dosage”. If side effects occur, reduce the dosage or stop the drug.

The ARD reports on this topic in the story in the first “Why children are not tyrants – The Dr. Winterhoff system” – on August 9, 2021 at 11:15 pm.