The day after 16-year-old Christopher Donabedian was admitted to a Wheat Ridge adolescent treatment center, an unlicensed psychotherapist took him off psychiatric medications, a new lawsuit claims.

Soon, a therapist at Adolescent and Family Institute of Colorado told Donabedian’s mother, Aimee, that her son wasn’t mentally ill; he was a sociopath “like Ted Bundy,” the lawsuit claims. Counselors coaxed him to make up homicidal plans to kill his mother and twin sister, the lawsuit filed in Jefferson County District Court says.

To ensure that Donabedian would be confined long-term at the facility, which charged $595 a day, not including professional charges, staff members misused and misdirected his medical and psychiatric records releases, the lawsuit filed Tuesday by attorney Jerome Reinan says.

The lawsuit accuses the AFIC of violating Colorado’s consumer protection act, false imprisonment and negligence.

Kate Fritz, attorney for AFIC, said allegations in the lawsuit reflect significant bias and fail to mention the competent care Christopher Donabedian received.

“AFIC has been providing high quality care for thirty years and the allegations contained in the complaint do not reflect the overwhelming sentiments of the parents or adolescents treated at the institute,” Fritz wrote in a response.

The lawsuit says that Christopher Donabedian started experiencing symptoms of mental illness in 2008, and on March 5, 2010, he struck his mother with a knife. He was charged with a crime in El Paso County and later was released from detention to a hospital for treatment.

At Penrose-St. Francis Hospital, he was diagnosed with major depression with psychotic features and was prescribed Celexa and Geodon, Reinan’s lawsuit says.

The day after he was admitted to AFIC, the home’s president and founder, Alexander Panio, an unlicensed psychotherapist, “baselessly” changed Christopher Donabedian’s diagnosis from major depression with psychotic features to malingering and mixed personality disorder, the suit says. Panio discontinued Christopher’s medications and claimed to be a doctor when discussing the patient’s care with insurers to receive payment for his care, the lawsuit says.

According to AFIC, Panio is a “teaching training consultant” and does not diagnose adolescents being treated at AFIC. Instead, a licensed nurse practitioner with prescriptive authority determined that the patient didn’t meet criteria for receiving medications, and in addition, Christopher Donabedian refused medication because he did not feel it was useful.

AFIC employee Jeff Nelson later told Aimee Donabedian that her son was “just like Ted Bundy,” would never love her and that “no amount of wishing, hoping or praying would change that,” the suit says. His only chance at recovery was to keep him in a “state of high anxiety,” to trigger a complete breakdown, the lawsuit says. If anyone showed him any support, even once, he would never get well.

“Mr. Donabedian was repeatedly told to make up, fabricate and concoct homicidal plans for his mother,” even after he told staff he never planned to kill his mother, the lawsuit says.

The AFIC statement said that comments and statements in the lawsuit were not complete and show a bias.

Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com

