A Victory for Therapy Ethics

Dr. K has been reprimanded by the Massachusetts medical board

For those of you who don’t know:

In 2022, when I first started streaming, I was horrified to learn about the exploitation of the vulnerable streamer Reckful by the psychiatrist Dr. K (Alok Kanojia of “HealthyGamerGG”).

Dr. K had launched his own streaming career in 2020 by doing regular, therapy-like streams with Reckful where they delved into Reckful's childhood trauma. In these conversations, Dr. K created confusion about whether he was Reckful's doctor or merely his friend. In one disturbing exchange, he told Reckful he'd love him for two years in an attempt to cure Reckful's possible BPD, but then quickly withdrew his offer and acknowledged it had been inappropriate.

A few months later, in July 2020, Reckful took his own life.

Disturbed that streaming audiences and platforms such as Twitch viewed (and still view) Dr. K as a saintly mental health guru, I made a documentary about Dr. K's irresponsible relationship with Reckful, titled "Dr. K: Reckless." I explained the ethical problems with their relationship and included interviews with the vice chair of the Oregon Board of Psychology, a doctor (Avi Bitterman, who is active on social media), and a therapist, who all helped explain the proper boundaries of an ethical therapist-client relationship.

The documentary was fairly well-received, even by Dr. K's own community. He replied to it with a defensive and evasive video titled "Ethics," arguing that because he did not formally diagnose Reckful with a mental illness, he was therefore not acting as his doctor--despite literally telling Reckful he didn't know if he was his doctor or not.

His audience seemed to buy the argument that the lack of clarity in his relationship with Reckful somehow worked as a defense of Dr. K, and that the two were simply engaging in non-clinical conversations as friends.

After posting my documentary to YouTube (from which I am banned) I reported Dr. K to the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine, sending them a thumb drive containing his streams with Reckful and my documentary in the mail.

As of June 2024, the board has finally taken action: Dr. K of has been reprimanded for "conduct that undermines the public confidence in the integrity of the medical profession," specifically for his relationship with Reckful.

Here is their shitty PR response, which confirms that the reprimand was the result of my complaint filed in 2022: https://www.reddit.com/r/Healthygamergg/comments/1eagagd/important_update_on_board_complaint/

All throughout 2022, I maintained that Dr. K should (and hopefully would) lose his medical license for brazenly flouting ethics rules and laws in a case that ended in suicide. I still think he should lose his license, but a reprimand is better than nothing.