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The mother of a Florida woman who killed herself while being treated by a Scientologist doctor is accusing him of misdiagnosing her daughter with terminal cancer and other ailments instead of providing her with psychiatric care, which the Church of Scientology opposes.
Leila Mills, whose 40-year-old daughter Whitney Mills died by suicide in 2022, last month amended an earlier wrongful death lawsuit against various Scientology organizations to include Dr. David Minkoff and his alternative health clinic. According to the suit, Whitney Mills had been “brainwashed” by other members of Scientology who recognized her acute mental anguish, including debilitating depression, anxiety and hallucinations; one allegedly suggested she “drop the body,” which the lawsuit calls a euphemism for death. When Whitney Mills specifically asked for mental health treatment in a text message to Minkoff — who was previously sued in connection to the death of a Scientologist patient — he allegedly told her to do Scientology training drills, which the lawsuit describes as a “level of quackery … [that] is nothing short of astounding.”
“He was in a position as a doctor, a licensed doctor in the state of Florida, to help her and give her the right treatment, or get her to the right treatment,” attorney Ramon Rasco, who is representing Leila Mills, told HuffPost. “And he failed to do that.”
Minkoff and the Church of Scientology have not yet responded to the lawsuit in court. Minkoff did not respond to questions from HuffPost about the allegations.
In a statement shared with HuffPost, the Church of Scientology said Mills was not under its “care or supervision” before she died and that she was solely responsible for decisions regarding her medical treatment.
Whitney Mills, a real estate agent in Clearwater — home to Scientology’s Florida headquarters and numerous member-run businesses — joined the organization in 2007 at age 26. According to the lawsuit, Mills paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Church of Scientology for coursework and training to achieve its highest level, “OT 8,” in 2019. An “OT,” or Operating Thetan, is defined by Scientology as a spiritual being with a “knowing and willing cause over life, thought, matter, energy, space and time.”
The Church of Scientology calls psychiatry a “pseudo-science” with “no scientific basis for any of its treatments or methods.” In 1969, it established a “mental health watchdog” called the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which runs the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Museum on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard.
Minkoff, a prominent Scientologist and co-founder of the alternative medicine clinic LifeWorks (also named in the suit), was linked to the infamous 1995 death of Scientologist Lisa McPherson while she was in the care of members of the organization at a Scientology-owned hotel in Clearwater. According to a lawsuit filed by her family, she was held there against her will after suffering a psychotic breakdown following a minor car crash. She was taken to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, but checked out against medical advice after several Scientologists arrived and told doctors that psychiatry violated their religious principles. Seventeen days later, she was pronounced dead — by Minkoff. As her health deteriorated, her caregivers had ignored Minkoff’s advice to take her to a nearby emergency room and instead drove her 24 miles away to the hospital where he worked so that McPherson could be treated by a Scientologist doctor. By the time they arrived, she had already died.
Her death prompted criminal charges against the Church, which were dropped after the medical examiner changed McPherson’s cause of death from undetermined to accidental. The church had disputed the initial cause of death finding and hired its own experts.
Because Minkoff had earlier prescribed Valium and chloral hydrate to McPherson without examining her, his Florida medical license was suspended for a year in 2001 and he was fined $10,000. Without admitting guilt, he reached a $100,000 wrongful death settlement with McPherson’s family.
Now, decades later, the Mills family is accusing Minkoff of contributing to their loved one’s death.
Instead of referring Mills to a mental health professional or prescribing psychiatric medication to treat her mental health symptoms, their lawsuit claims, Minkoff misinformed her and misdiagnosed her with a host of maladies, including Lyme disease and a cancerous ovarian cyst, and “largely ignored her very real psychosis and mental health crisis.”
“Mills’ cancer diagnosis made her think she was going to die anyway, erasing all hope. But for that (mis)diagnosis, Mills would not have self-harmed,” the lawsuit claims.
Minkoff, who describes himself as a “world-renowned Lyme Disease expert and Lyme Literate doctor,” treated Mills for Lyme disease and a parasitic infection without proof that she had either, the lawsuit claims, at one point prescribing medications that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said could pose “significant safety risks.”
The complaint alleges that Minkoff charged her more than $20,000 for alternative treatments, but Rasco told HuffPost that since it was filed, he has discovered the amount was actually much higher.
“I was wrong. We’ve gotten more medical records [showing] that she spent almost $40,000 at Minkoff’s clinic in three months” — none of it covered by insurance, Rasco said.
An autopsy found that a large ovarian cyst, which the lawsuit alleges Minkoff diagnosed as terminal cancer without having a biopsy performed, was benign, Rasco said. Minkoff and Mills’ other Scientology health care providers urged her to have surgery to remove the cyst, but she said she did not want to undergo general anesthesia until her “brain” issues were resolved, the lawsuit says.
On April 5, 2022, Mills allegedly texted the doctor asking for help specifically with her mental illness.
“Is there anything else for the mental part? I’m seriously experiencing some mental illness. This is my biggest symptom is the mental part,” she wrote, according to a screenshot of their text exchanges included in the lawsuit.
“Drugs could numb you but you are OT,” Minkoff replied, according to the lawsuit, referring to Mills’ exceptional status of “Operating Thetan” and noting that she had the “power” to alleviate her symptoms.
“It’s a sensation. It’s noise. It has no power over YOU,” he wrote. “That’s the truth. Eye of the tiger. You are loved. You have friends and LRH [L. Ron Hubbard]. Duplicate it. Dissolve it. That is your power.”
Mills began to experience anxiety in late 2021, which was so severe that she twice sought treatment at the Morton Plant Hospital emergency room in Clearwater, the lawsuit states, citing her medical records. In a written questionnaire in February 2022 that she completed for Minkoff, Mills reported extreme anxiety, hallucinations, insomnia, lethargy, loss of appetite and headaches, among other symptoms. Her symptoms were so debilitating that she found it difficult to bathe, according to the lawsuit.
After her second emergency room visit, Scientology officials responded by barring her from the Flag Base, their spiritual headquarters and hub for Scientologists, the lawsuit states.
“Scientologists believe that they will become immune to illness once they achieve OT 8 status, including mental illness,” the lawsuit says, so she was “quarantined” in her apartment with a “Type 3 watch” by three caretakers, “who were at all times working under the direction and supervision” of Scientology staff members.
“They were trying to prevent another event like the death of Lisa [McPherson], only they needed to do it off campus, in Mills’ apartment rather than at Flag Base,” the lawsuit alleges.
On April 20, 2022, one of her caretakers suggested a “drop the body assist” after Mills texted her saying that she could do “ANYTHING” besides living with her “serious mental problems,” the lawsuit alleges.
“I’m super strong for anything but this,” Mills wrote, according to the lawsuit. “I can do ANYTHING but live with mental illness that I can’t control. I’m at the top of the bridge and dealing with serious mental problems. This is not right!! I literally can’t take it anymore. I don’t think anyone could lol.”
That day, Mills called a Scientology staff member and requested the “drop the body assist,” she told another employee in a text message cited in the lawsuit.
“[The caregiver] told me there’s an assist for someone that is really sick and to drop the body. I asked for that assist,” she wrote, noting that it was a “really dumb” thing to say and that she believed she was “in trouble” as a result.
In a statement provided to HuffPost, the Church of Scientology denied the existence of an “assist to drop the body” as a “belief or practice” in the church.
“It is a pure FABRICATION,” according to the statement, which was shared in response to specific questions from HuffPost about the lawsuit.
Three weeks after Mills’ alleged “drop the body” text, on May 12, 2022, Mills attempted suicide.
She was alone in her apartment at the time, despite her caretakers’ “responsibility to supervise and monitor her 24/7,” the lawsuit states.
Mills died in the hospital the following day.
Instead of Minkoff alleviating Mills’ suffering and preventing her death, Rasco said he believes the doctor made her condition worse.
“This is a very sad and tragic case, and it’s just another example of the fact that Scientology has no solution for mental health problems,” Rasco told HuffPost. “It can cause serious damage and serious problems for people who are sucked into their nonsense. Whitney must have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars getting to where she is at OT 8 — for what?”
“They profess to have their own solution to psychosis, and obviously they do not.”
If you or someone you know needs help, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org for mental health support. Additionally, you can find local mental health and crisis resources at dontcallthepolice.com. Outside of the U.S., please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention.