Swedish Psychiatrist Marco Nobis, Chairman of Electroshock Association, Banned from Prescribing Narcotics

July 6, 2021

Psychiatrist Marco Nobis, chairman of the Nordic Association for Convulsive Therapy (NACT), has after several appeals finally been deprived of the right to prescribe drug-classified drugs.

According to HSAN (the Medical Responsibility Board), he has abused his right to prescribe drugs, acted incompetently and negligently, in a way that posed a danger to patient safety. One patient received prescriptions equaling to 700 mg of amphetamine per day.

This spring, we reported that another psychiatrist, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry, Sten Levander, lost his medical license when he prescribed hundreds of thousands of amphetamine tablets to drug addicts, criminals, and gang leaders. Violence and drug traffic exploded in the area where he operated. Levander was one of Sweden’s most prolific and controversial psychiatrists.

Psychiatrist Nobis has long been chairman of the NACT. He is also chief physician for "Pain and Psychiatric Center Malmö AB", and is proud of the website for offering both electric shock and ADHD (i.e. amphetamine) treatments. Yet his "Pain Clinic" appears to have been nothing more than a pill mill, distributing unreasonable amounts of narcotic drugs.

Following reports from several different pharmacies to IVO (Swedish Health and Social Care Inspectorate) that Nobis had prescribed large quantities of narcotic drugs, the authority investigated the matter and gave the recommendation that Nobis should be deprived of the right to prescribe drugs. HSAN made the decision to do so. Nobis appealed the decision. The administrative court rejected the appeal. Nobis then appealed to the Court of Appeal, which rejected the appeal. He then appealed to the Supreme Administrative Court, which did not even take up the case.

IVO's report to HSAN provides the further details of the case:

A pharmacy reported Nobis for having prescribed unreasonable amounts of narcotics as early as 2016. Five more pharmacies subsequently reported Nobis. He ignored inquiries from the pharmacies about his prescriptions.

IVO requested records from Nobis on eight patients he had treated.

Patient number one has self-medicated with sleeping pills for pain. Nobis did not perform a somatic examination at its Pain Clinic, but according to IVO only wrote prescriptions "for large amounts of narcotic drugs and IVO considers that such prescribing entails a significant danger to patient safety in the form of overconsumption, habituation and addiction development… his medical records have been insufficient."

The patient received 300 diazepam tablets (Valium) for 19 days—a potential consumption 15.8 tablets per day.

In addition, Nobis prescribed 500 diazepam tablets of for 49 days—a possible consumption 10.2 tablets per day. The prescriptions continued and in total the patient picked up one thousand tablets in just a couple of months. The patient had been in contact with Nobis since 2015 and "prescriptions were renewed in unchanged dose and amount." Not all prescriptions had been recorded, so it is not known how many thousands of tablets the patient received.

Patient 6

Another patient had ADHD and went to Nobis, who without a mandatory somatic examination of the heart and blood vessels and blood pressure prescribed five different narcotic drugs. The patient previously had "a solid substance abuse."

For 51 days he received 200 tablets of diazepam 5 mg—more than four tablets per day.

For 69 days he received 2280 tablets methylphenidate (stimulant prescribed for “ADHD”), for a potential consumption of 26 tablets per day." That is approximately 250 mg of amphetamine-like preparations per day (normal doses for the treatment of ADHD are about 10-20 mg).

For 74 days, the patient received 1960 tablets zolpidem (Ambien/Stilnox) – a potential consumption of 26 tablets per day.

Nobis additionally prescribed the patient 2400 more tablets of zolpidem, 800 tablets of diazepam, and 1000 tablets of alprazolam (Xanax)

According to IVO, these gigantic doses "entailed a significant risk of the spread of narcotic drugs to the black market."

Another patient received 420 tablets of alprazolam—a potential consumption or more than seven tablets a day.

A third patient received 600 tablets of the ADHD stimulant Vyvanse 70 mg, for a possible consumption of 10 tablets per day.

This is how it continues patient after patient.

In general, according to IVO, Nobis additionally failed to record all prescriptions he has made in the records of the six patients whose files the IVO reviewed. Overall, IVO assessed that Nobis repeatedly breached caution and accuracy in treatment with controlled substances and thereby abused his power to prescribe such medicinal products.