Quebec psychologist suspended for suggesting patients see a psychic

Quebec's Order of Psychologists has suspended a psychologistfor three months for telling patients he saw to see a psychicmedium.

Jean-PierreAllaire is being reprimanded for incidents which took in 2012, when he worked in Rimouski for a different public health agency.

Allaire was providing therapy for a 13-year-old girl who was suicidal. She was living in a group home in when her psychiatrist recommended she enter therapy.

A year after starting therapy, she started hearing voices and having hallucinations.

According to the Order of Psychologists discipline committee, when he learned of her symptoms, Allaire told her she might have a "gift" and not to tell her psychiatrist.

Allaire then suggested the girl visit a medium he knew and consulted himself in Gasp who would determine whether she did, in fact, have gifts.

Weeks later, the group home where she was living made a complaint about Allaire's conduct to the regional health agency, which later opened an administrative investigation.

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Unclear where he will work once reinstated

Allaire had the same suggestion for another patient, a 34-year-old mother with terminal cancer who he had been seeing since 2011.

She was skeptical about the suggestion at first but decided to pursue it, since she was "trying everything to save her life," the ruling reads.

In that case, Allaireeven drove the woman from Rimouski to Gasp so she could meet the medium.

Not long after that meeting, the agency's human resources department suspended Allaire.

He was most recently working for the Mauricie health agency, a job he got seven months after being suspended in Eastern Quebec.

ChristineGrou, president of the Quebec Order of Psychologists, saysAllairewill have to take an ethics course then be supervised for at least 10 sessions when he goes back to work.

TheMauriciehealth agency is refusing to say if Allairewill continue to work in that region once he is reinstated.

In a statement, the Mauricie agency says it cannot breach confidentiality rules and let the public know if Allaire will be back working in that regionafter his suspension.

Allaire has been a psychologist for more than 30 years. He did not return requests for comment.

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