A psychologist who was de-registered after continuing to diagnose patients despite failing a competence review says those patients were “fake” and he doesn’t believe a hearing even took place.
Gunther van der Heijden’s competence came under the microscope after a complaint by a fellow psychologist to the
Van der Heijden is from Belgium and moved to New Zealand in September 2000 and was working in Taupo at the time of the incidents.
Between February and August 2021 there was a series of communications between van der Heijden, the board, board staff, and other psychologists, in which he dubbed the board a “kangaroo court”.
He sent an unnamed board member multiple emails over several months accusing the board and its delegates’ of “corruption, nepotism, and abuse of power, which could potentially pose a serious risk to their country’s public health and safety”.
As well as being de-registered, the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal censured Van der Heijden and ordered him to pay costs of $81,879.05 to the PCC and $30,584.67 to the tribunal.
He didn’t attend the June hearing.
After NZME ran a story about the tribunal findings last month Van der Heijden reached out saying he wanted to tell his side of the story.
He says he left New Zealand two years ago and reiterated his original claims the board and the country’s health system were “corrupt”.
“Indeed as a human being who has always cared a lot about the welfare of his fellow men, it is my utmost belief that it is my moral and ethical obligation to protect the NZ public against the serious harm that has already been done, and is still being done to the NZ public as a consequence of the corruption within the NZPB in the narrow sense and within the NZ healthcare system in the broader sense.”
He said he didn’t bother attending as he felt he wouldn’t have had a fair hearing.
He also said he had spoken to several healthcare lawyers and psychologists who were unhappy with the NZ Psychologists Board and claimed they ”dared not stand up against them”.
“When you look at what has already happened to me during my battle it is easy to understand why.”
It was from those sources that he claims he first heard the board described as a “kangaroo court”.
He said his “nightmare” began when he was first allocated a supervisor who would later notify the board of her concerns.
“Hereby, [supervisor], seriously violated the supervision contract as ... it’s supposed to be confidential where you can freely and safely discuss any weaknesses you would have in your practice,” he said.
“Your supervisor is supposed to be somebody who you can trust, certainly not somebody who would put in a notification against you.”
As for the four clients - who paid him more than $2000 in fees - he saw at his Taupo home office or through Skype to assess their ADHD diagnoses, van der Heijden believed most of them were fake.
“At least three of the four were fake. The fourth I am not sure about, but probably he/she was. Earlier they also sent another fake client to me to put in a complaint against me,” he claims.
He believed one of them paid him around $2000 for an assessment.
Van der Heijden said several “health lawyers and psychologists” told him he didn’t need to be a registered psychologist to do the work he was doing at the time, “as long as I did not call myself a clinical psychologist I would be fine”.
“Hence I decided to call myself a neurodevelopmental assessor and informed the board of this ... and asked [the board] to deregister me.”
He was also dubious whether the hearing even happened as he had been trying to get a transcript but was denied.
He had since found it his “moral obligation” to notify psychologists boards in many countries including Australia, US, Canada, South Africa, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium, of the NZPB’s “incompetence and corruption”.
Board chief executive Vanessa Williams said while it was not appropriate for the board to comment, she was able to confirm the hearing did take place.
Van der Heijden had a statutory right of appeal but, as far as the board knew, he did not exercise that right, she said.
HDPT did not respond to a request for comment.
Belinda Feek is an Open Justice reporter based in Waikato. She has worked at NZME for nine years and been a journalist for 20.