The Associated Press State & Local Wire

September 3, 2010 Friday 11:46 AM GMT

Psychiatrist gets probation for drug convictions

SECTION: STATE AND REGIONAL

LENGTH: 139 words

DATELINE: TOPEKA Kan.

A former psychiatrist at the Veterans Administration hospital in Topeka has been sentenced to three years probation for unlawfully prescribing controlled substances.
Fifty-eight-year-old Ethan Bickelhaupt, who now lives in Chicago, was sentenced Thursday.
He worked at the VA Medical Center from May 2006 until February 2008. Prosecutors said he wrote prescriptions for people who weren’t patients at the hospital. Prosecutors say he often prescribed drugs such as Adderall and Tylenol 3 for people to use at parties at his house.
Bickelhaupt said before his sentencing that he was addicted to drugs and alcohol when he was arrested in 2007.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that the Kansas Board of Healing Arts has suspended Bickelhaupt’s license to practice medicine.