Blogging UVA 5 East Psych. Unit So You Can’t Sleep and I Can (#1 of a Series)

So I found out that my long term Ph.D., Licensed, former adjunct professor at UVA retired, was in the room when Dr. Lady Martinez, an unlicensed psychiatric resident with no training in urology, came into my bedroom on UVA 5 East, contrary to what I was told at the informal human rights resolution meeting with Licensing present, and said she was going to do a second catheterization.  She ignored me when I said I had emptied my bladder so there was no reason for the traumatic procedure by an untrained resident (although all I said was I had gone to the bathroom).  My older licensed clinical psychologist, old enough to be Dr. Lady Martinez’s grandmother, told her she had been in the room and heard me go.  Dr. unlicensed, inexperienced and arrogant and lacking in humility and proper respect Martinez ignored her and would have catheterized me in front of my long term psychologist, compromising a fruitful therapeutic relationship and leaving me with nothing to survive UVA 5 East with if I had not asked that she wait until my psychologist left.  Dr. untrained, unhumble, inexperienced, young, first or second or third year resident did not meet the standard of care for a psychiatry resident and had no supervision from her attending, Dr. Bashir to teach her respect for her patients and her elders.  It is only luck that I have not lost the most important and life saving therapeutic relationship in my life due to Dr. Lady Martinez’s hubris and lack  of training and supervision.  I hope she sleeps as well as me for a very long time.  I still could end up on Flomax due to these rough catheterizations, my pleas for a referral to a urologist were ignored as were my pleas for a transfer to another team with more respect and less brutality.

A male patient admitted late in my stay played with himself in front of a young female patient.  Her report to the staff was ignored as was his attempt to find out who reported him.  I can only pray she wasn’t traumatized more.  I saw him play with himself myself but I’m older and less impressed or hurt by sociopathic men.  Staff failed in their primary responsibility, same as they did ten years ago when 3 patients were raped in that unit by a male staff after the first to report him was ignored.  The “progressive community’s” response and SAARA’s response? The progressives held a rally about the firing of felons with a token speaker from the VDVSA but SAARA refused to participate or even speak up until a letter months letter actually defending UVA from a former director.  Think things are better at SAARA today? Think again and read an earlier post.

The second TV room was turned into an office and 6 rooms were turned over to pay drug addicts and alcoholics to do research on addiction so 5 East is very small now and only has one TV in the dining room/day room.  There is no staff overview of what  is on it and one person is allowed to dominate the television all day long with violent m0vies triggering patients if he so chooses.  Complaints are unheard especially from women.

UVA is counting AC as “fresh air”.  No comment.  They have a cage to let people out into that they only sometimes use. It is a cage, go look at it.

UVA 5 East mixes men and women together in all common rooms with no staff supervision.  Women and men can be harassed and bothered by the opposite sex with no interference from staff. 

UVA takes away everything a person has with them and doesn’t tell people they can ask to look at some of their stuff, in fact they never told me my address book had been dropped off and took  my cell phone and left it on so the battery died.  If I hadn’t memorized some numbers I would have had no way to reach anyone on one of their two non private phones where everyone else including staff and patients can hear you speak and the noise is often overwhelming.  My human rights booklet was taken from  me and not returned. I have never heard of a psychiatric unit that just kidnapped all of patients’ belongings rather than sorting them and returning safe items. UVA 5 East is “special” in its complete disregard for the personal belongings and rights of its patients.

UVA 5 East has no one for patients to talk to when they are upset and no place for them to go away from other patients. Many if not most patients are in double rooms.  There are no comfort rooms, there are no times assigned for nurses or even trained psychiatric technicians, (UVA doesn’t hire licensed psychiatric technicians, only PCA’s, guess psychiatric technicians are too good for their patients), to talk to their patients or ask them if they want to talk. Staff stay behind a glass wall with no opening unless they are out ordering patients around.  Or unless they are the part time male occupational therapist or the few nurses who acted like they cared about doing a good job.

When food arrives late for meals there is no apology.  Late in my stay staff started taking all the favorite breakfast cereals for themselves.

UVA 5 East psychiatrists teach dis-empowerment and non-citizenship and every anti-recovery principle out there. More on that in another post but suffice it to say I am still having problems believing I am a citizen after my stay there and in many ways I am not since I can’t even report a crime and get respect. 

Do not take anyone you love to UVA 5 East unless they will  not go anywhere else or the alternative is worse like possible rape or assault on the street or you can’t possibly drive them to another state.   They will not thank you later, they may thank you when you leave out of relief, but the rest of their lives will be scarred by their stay there and if you are the one who put them there, your relationship may never heal.  If you did not put them there but defend them, again you may ruin your relationship. 

More tomorrow night, I really hope psychiatric residents and attendings and NAMI members and board members and TAC folks past and present who have met me and members of the closed and secretive Commission on Mental Health Law Reform with its closed and secret committees are reading and enjoying these updates and sleep really well in their expensive hotel in Williamsburg………..

Here Are Some of My Flashbacks: For Doctors and Delegates and Professors to Dream About Like I Do

I just thought about the resident who not only pulled out my PIC line so hard it left a fistula that caused severe pain that was ignored by UVA dialysis for months years later because he didn’t want to be the doctor to a “mental case” who also told my mother I must be sneaking lithium on the side because of course everyone wants to throw up all day every day and be tied to a PIC line for hydration on their 40th birthday….. Same resident, taught by UVA medical faculty, theorized I had late developed bulimia despite 7+ weeks in the hospital and acute kidney failure I now know.  Or it was lithium toxicity, who knows, UVA doesn’t keep medical records very well.  And they certainly don’t dialysize wastes of space like me who have diagnoses no matter how sick we are….

I remember the attending who complained over my bedside about the cost of the Zofranthat was helping my intense nausea a little to the fellow. As if I wasn’t worth anything. Mysteriously my Zofran was stopped one night and I was wretchedly ill all night until another doctor intervened and gave me back the Zofran.

I remember the nurse who wouldn’t talk to me but would gossip about me to my room mate and other nurses and who contradicted the doctors and also told me I must want to vomit. 

I remember being treated like a piece of meat and dragged from one room to another to be catheterized (now that I have heard the real story from UVAnurses I remember it correctly) because my room bed wasn’t set up for such procedures and I know I ended up with symptoms from this rough treatment for a month.  I remember nobody comforting me or warning me it might hurt as is usual medical procedure but instead scaring me by saying my bladder was 80% full and could burst and it must have been the resident since UVAswears both nurses present say they didn’t say it but mysteriously no one can identify or will identify the resident present.  Her name was on the wall, not so hard to find..

I remember being told my kidneys would be fine or they didn’t know what would happen and not being referred to a nephrologist as I should have been.  I remember leaving UVA in early ‘97 thinking I was the lowest of the low having never been a medical patient before and being in so long treated as the lowest patient of the low, all due to prejudice.  The few polite doctors and nurses stand out they were so rare.

I remember being afraid of doctors for years after this, finally overcoming it and now regaining my fear after 2 unnecessary weeks in UVA 5 East for a steroid reaction an arrogant attending was determined to diagnose as bipolar disorder and even more determined to be absolutely adored and obeyed. 

Most of all I will never forget losing my half-sister because I was drugged up on drugs I should never have been on, withdrawing, forgetting, not myself and having her one visit spend with her refusing to even speak to me.  I will never forget the pain of that nor what UVA doctors did lying to my mother and terrifying her and lying to my brother and scaring him and sending false information about me to all of my doctors without my permission and the threat of being sent to Western if I let my lawyer ask for my medical records or if I exercised my legal right to do so.  Now that I have read them, I know why.  So tomorrow I am not waiting for the “internal and probably endless possible investigation” into falsifying medical records, I’m calling the Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Office and reporting a crime.  Because who knows how many others have had their records completely falsified to suit some psychiatrist’s power agenda or just need to lie and who knows what damage could be done to another fine UVA program if this complete fabrication got out in court or elsewhere and I care about that unlike UVA 5 East psychiatry. 

Oh, and thanks for the fear of sleeping in my own bed and the need to sleep on my couch with a light on.  PTSD from UVA, the gift that keeps on giving and giving.  A special thanks to my delegate who knew that lowering the standard for commitment was not necessary and pushed it anyway for political reasons.  This is the woman who sat in your office and told you what the commitment rate was and you said it was like hitting a flea with a hammer.  Well I’m one of the fleas who got hit, living in your district, afraid to sleep in my own bed. Thank you Delegate David Toscano, former friend to people with disabilities. You might think about starting an investigation or study into the number of folks involuntarily hospitalized unnecessarily under the laws you passed and the rates of PTSD, unemployment, eviction, divorce, family alienation, even suicide since the rate goes up on release. Don’t worry about me, I’m too busy taking my transplant drugs on time, something 5 East couldn’t manage and too busy fighting back for all the other folks affected to give up, much to some’s chagrin..

Stop the Shame, Stop the Blame, Stop the Threats and Use of Force and Then You Can Talk About “Recovery”

I am exceedingly tired of hearing about recovery by mental health administrators and public providers and even some with lived experience.  It has 1) become another way to make people with emotional issues feel inadequate if they don’t meet societal norms that most without emotional issues don’t meet these days (most American households are single adults, the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed are high, those who don’t comply with health recommendations are legion etc.)  and 2) is not possible in an atmosphere of continued shaming and blaming and high expressed emotion with low willingness to listen by mental health providers, especially in psychiatric units and hospitals and in an atmosphere of coercion with the ultimate threat of violence in a take down and restraint and isolation still available in every psychiatric hospital except perhaps those for the rich and even there those who can not fit in risk transfer to the coercive regular psychiatric hospital.  There can be no recovery in an atmosphere of coercion, blaming and shaming.  Mental health providers, especially psychiatrists, have to stop having it both ways by both insisting people with emotional differences have a real illness and emphasizing to the public and to their patients that they are bad and not good enough for society and need to be fixed to have a reasonable life.   Medical doctors of people with life threatening diseases whose patients may well die on them often do not imply nor tell their patients that they are to blame for their illness and need to take responsibility in order to fit into society.  They offer their advice and voluntary treatment and the best and even the mediocre try to provide hope and encouragement and support for the hard work of medical treatment.  Medical doctors and nurses warn their patients when a procedure will hurt.  Mental health workers and psychiatrists pretend that huting and humiliating their patients by taking them down leaving bruises, injecting them, tying them up and isolating them and mocking them is good treatment and never tell their patients it will hurt them and leave scars that will give them shame and nightmares and fear and low self esteem for the rest of their lives. 

Let us stop pretending we are ready to talk about recovery in a system that still uses power as its main “treatment” modality.  It is not possible, it is harmful and it has already stolen too many lives and souls.  I am taking my soul back but I have lost too many years of my life to the scars of psychiatric mistreatment, not just my kidneys, that is almost the least of it, but the self-blame and the fear and the shame have made me afraid of interaction with others, made me feel less than, enabled a bully in my circle to bully me for 26 years until this weekend when she continued to bully but I broke the cycle by standing up to her, perpetuated my problems and now, after years away from psychiatric power misuse and coercion changed my life yet again, made me question my life, made me fragmented for a time, made me unable to do what I used to be able to do effortlessly.  I will survive and thrive this time because I faced down every implanted fear and shame and lie this time, but how many years were lost, how much potential and how many will not survive and will and are having their lives wasted by the abuse of power and shaming and blaming?  It is time to stop, way past time.  If psychiatry and public mental health systems will not control their own acting out it is time for society to act and take away their power over the lives of others once and for all until they can prove they have anything to offer that is more  helpful than harmful.

The “Abuse Excuse”, Not What You Think It Is

I’m sure you have heard the term the “abuse excuse” used to say that people who commit crimes or even people who don’t fit in are using the “abuse excuse” if they mention a history of trauma.  Well my observations in this town and others is that the REAL “abuse excuse” is the excuse for abusive behavior towards people labelled with psychiatric problems used by not just professionals but many family members as well.  I heard a young man blame himself for his mother shaking the car and putting him out on the side of the road because, get this, he kept talking when she asked him to stop.  This was her excuse for her abusive behavior towards her adult and conveniently psychiatrically labelled adult son.  He blames himself and does not even see this as abuse.  Do you think he is getting any help obtaining insight into the ways his mother continues to damage him emotionally into adulthood at Region Ten? Think again.  There is no family therapy available at Region Ten.  There is virtually no therapy available at Region Ten.  There are drugs and a clubhouse to perform simple tasks for free and for some services in the home and “case management” to refer to services that are increasingly not available but no chance to process what happened to someone that put them into the position of identified patient in their family.  Why? I could say I blame the patriarchy and I do.  Psychiatry has been misogynistic since its founding and men are hurt by this too because a man who breaks under abuse is still seen as feminine in our town and our culture and thus is a victim of misogyny just as much as a woman.  And because there has NEVER been a woman Commissioner of Mental Health etc. in Virginia, remarkable even for a Southern state and because there has NEVER been a woman director of Region Ten, remarkable even for Virginia.  But that is only one layer, the utter dominance of men in the administrative positions of power at the state and local level in mental health.  Not to mention the completely white board of Region Ten and the completely white top administrative structure of our Department of Mental Health soon to change its name to something more descriptive of what it’s about, the Department of “Behavioral Health” since emotions have no place in our system of care for those who ask for or are forced into our mental health system in Virginia in the main.  Some areas still have therapy available, some may even have family therapy, but neither are “evidence based practices” and neither are reimbursed at a rate to pay their way nor encouraged by the state. 

Our mental health system in this country began to maintain the social order by locking up women and men who couldn’t or wouldn’t fit in, were poor, were “bad” wives, were going through menopause, were unable to get over a romantic loss in the proper amount of time, were a financial burden on their families or communities and back in the beginning the heads of the state institutions were called keepers not doctors nor directors and the caretakers were called “alienists” not M.D.’s and certainly not psychiatrists because psychiatry had not been invented yet. 

How much have things changed since then? Well common mythology is that things have improved oh so much since the bad old days.  I’m here to say that’s not true, things just look different than they used to and the worst oppressions have gone underground where most can’t see them.  No longer can the public go gawk at people in state hospitals but then again, neither can the public see what actually goes on in state hospitals and the people who get out aren’t listened to and only talk amongst themselves.  We have a psychiatric unit at UVA and at Martha Jefferson run by UVA.  We have an ECT machine at Martha Jefferson, the only one in miles around, people come from West Virginia to be “treated” with it.  How many readers from the Charlottesville area even knew that? How many know that involuntary ECT is still legal in Virginia? How many knew that more commonly an “authorized representative” chosen by an institution head or doctor is allowed to “volunteer” an unwilling patient for ECT with no hearing and no oversight by anyone?

How many know that drugs are coerced on many, many people in our community in their own homes as a condition of having housing or services or sometimes even staying out of jail? How many knew that commitment hearings in this region are a joke with a 99.5 per cent commitment rate?  How many knew that 2 doctors with no training in competency examinations can simply declare any psychiatric patient incapacitated and appoint a family member to make all decisions for them or if they think that won’t work simply get a “Judicial Authorization of Treatment” without any history of non-compliance with treatment nor proof of its need at all?  With this they can force a person to take any and all drugs against their will with the threat of restraints and a needle to back them up.  And if those threats don’t work there is always the threat of sending someone from UVA to Western State for up to 6 months. 

How many knew that all possessions are routinely taken from patients admitted to UVA 5 East including human rights booklets with a phone number to call if ones rights are violated.  Booklets being so dangerous of course.  That cell phones are taken and left on for the battery to die and patients not allowed to make a phone call to a friend or lawyer before they lose all their contact numbers?  How many knew there is no right to a phone call for someone detained under a temporary detention order? How many knew that someone with connections will get out if they have memorized the right phone numbers and someone without or who hasn’t memorized their numbers will not? 

Back to the “Abuse Excuse”. People who are labelled mentally ill have one of the highest rates of child and adult abuse and trauma experiences in the population.  Is this even a question on the routine screening for detention? No it is not.  Are there services for trauma survivors that they want? No, not at Region Ten which hands out booklets and uses CBT otherwise known as clean up your behavior and don’t think about your past among the abused who have experienced it. 

I have met too, too many abuse survivors in our community looking for or supposedly receiving services from Region Ten and UVA. What I see is re-enactment of their abuse and denial of their real experiences and covering up of their feelings and possible insight and recovery with heavy duty and medically and brain shrinking drugs that make money for big pharma.  What I see is a lack of basic respect for people who have survived trauma with a Region Ten website that still says “Our Consumers” and “For Our Staff” and doesn’t even get how disrespectful and accurate as to their attitude this is.  What I see is an Albemarle County Board of Supervisors who listens to the director of Region Ten who doesn’t want any out and outspoken people with lived experience on his board, a director who is patronizing and rude to outspoken people with lived experience.  What I see is co-optation of anyone who shows signs of becoming a leader who isn’t too stubborn to be bought or praised into toeing the Region Ten line.

What I see makes me very sad and angry for my people and not hopeful about the future.

Thank You to 2 Catholic Hospitals for Telling Me Being a Lesbian Was Mental Illness

Misercordia, I don’t remember the psychiatrist’s name, but he was so confident that I was delusional that I was a lesbian.  Sacred Heart Hospital, who violated my rights in so many ways and wanted me to quit graduate school to go on welfare and live in a group home with no sex, I remember your telling me so many times that my lesbian therapist had corrupted and misled me and that you refused to let her visit me.  You kept me so many days longer than others until I gave in and said I wasn’t a lesbian, I was crazy.  Just like 5 East tried to convert me to bipolarism instead of the reality of a common steroid reaction  to for 6 + months, 2 Catholic hospitals tried to convert me to the idea that lesbianism was a delusion and a mental illness.  The only difference is neither of the Catholic hospitals threatened to send me to a state hospital even though that was so much more common all those years ago and 5 East decided I belonged in Western the first day I got there.  For my hereticism I guess.  If psychiatry isn’t a religion, a false one, than I guess it is more like the Spanish Inquisition, but not the funny kind.  Thanks for all you have done to mess up my life with your false prophecy and arrogance and moralism in the guise of medicine and most of all, your bigotry.  Your welcome is that I am still here and I am free to be whoever I want to be and you can not force toxic drugs on me and you can not hinder my free speech outside your snake pits.  Nor can you threaten me with physical assault without being arrested.  So sad.  For you.

Thank You UVA 5 East for the Bruises that Lasted 25 Days, I Finally Went Swimming Today

How could I forget to mention the bright red bruises on both arms that I left UVA5 East with on May 30th? I noticed they were fading to yellow this week and by today they were completely gone, so let’s round it off at 25 days of being marked and reminded of psychiatric assault and being re-traumatized every day even after I left your snake pit.  Huh, you have video cameras in the halls but don’t as is standard practice elsewhere for 20 plus years take a record of marks on your patients as they arrive and leave?  Wonder why.  Well no I don’t wonder why, you have your reasons I’m sure.  Assault is assault is assault.  Oh and how could I forget to mention that the 600+ dollars would have been much more money if I had not requested a change from the dis solvable, newest and most expensive version of Zyprexa that money conscious  UVA  prescribed to me in the hospital while changing my beta blocker to one I wasn’t supposed to have to save money.  Huh, what’s up with that? How much money was my decent insurance charged for an unnecessarily expensive drug proven to “work” no better than generic drugs in many independent studies? Guess that lack of submission of information on drug company ties I blogged on some time ago might mean something after all? Or is it all a big coincidence that the most expensive drug was prescribed to someone with insurance that would pay for any drug inpatient and not to someone whose insurance would not? 

And thanks for suggesting that the nurse who disliked me the most and tried to limit my water supply once which is dangerous to my kidney be one of the people for our informal meeting next week.  Too bad I remembered who she was–see previous nursie post.  Do you really think there is anything any nurse can say that will intimidate or embarrass me? I was given toxic drugs, drugs that made me crazy at dangerous doses, I was not taken off the drug that clearly caused my problem in the first place and now you think I feel responsible for anything I did or didn’t do while I was in your snake pit? That would be a big no or put it this way–I feel as responsible for my behavior as a woman who was given a mickey or GBH by a date.  That of course is a crime in our state, unfortunately what you did to me is still legal for now and unfortunately the chief perpetrator is conveniently out of the country and the hospital’s lawyer, usually so resourceful, just can’t seem to figure out who the 3rd member of the team was, a fellow who will be out of UVA before our meeting.  How convenient this sudden lack of research skills in a long experienced general counsel.  How stupid do you think I am? Keep thinking that way,  I like it, it helps me every time you over estimate yourselves and underestimate me, so keep it up and make me happy.  Except for the bruises and the renewed phobias and the lost time and the money I can’t afford and the worry to my friends, except for all that you arrogant poor excuses for professionals.

Hospital in my Hometown that Psychiatric Solutions Took Over for Profit Now in Trouble

I was so sad when I found out that Psychiatric Solutions had taken over one of the oldest psychiatric hospitals in Philadelphia, a non-profit before Psychiatric Solutions, the Charter of this decade, took over.  Now it seems that yet again where Psychiatric Solutions goes into a hospital patient safety issues follow, issues I never heard of in years of working as a mental health counselor in this hospitals region.  Here is the short blurb in a business blog, strange the mainstream press doesn’t seem to be covering this sad tale of patients endangered for profit,  some of whom are there against their will by the order of a lawyer called a master in a kangaroo court hearing.  Here is the sad blurb:

Psych Solutions replaces Philly hospital CEO

By Geert De Lombaerde Posted on June 23, 2009 at 3:31 pm

After more bad PR over alleged patient safety issues, Franklin-based Psychiatric Solutions has shown the door to the CEO of its Northeast Philadelphia hospital. A national search is underway.

Thank You for Setting Me Back at Least 6 Months in my Recovery 5 East at UVA

Thank you for listening to my mother who was diagnosed bipolar when I was a teenager and never accepted the diagnosis and most likely has PTSD also and is now losing her short term memory as if she were anyone you should listen to about her daughter.  Thank you for calling someone in my family who didn’t even know my diagnosis had changed because we only started talking again recently after I got out of your charming facility with its crazy-making ways. 

Thank you for listening to everyone but me and your preconceived, one size fits all notions, not science nor medicine nor even art about what  my diagnosis must be even as I got worse and worse under your so called care.

Thank you for pretending or actually not knowing what dissociation and sleep walking are even though they are listed in the DSM, the same place your flavor of the day, bipolar, which is not properly treated with atypicals someone has had previous bad reactions to nor with Lamictal which raises creatinine and is bad for kidneys and may cause Parkinsons’ or Tardive Dyskensia in susceptible, such as me, individuals according to an M.D. who is researching this now unlike you whose responsibility it was and most of all, thank you for violating my human rights and the standard of care over and over and over and forcing your resident to sign her name to your so called treatment plans to evade responsibility or because you were too lazy.

Thank you for telling me my bladder would burst if you didn’t do an “in and out” catheterization which you wanted to do in my bedroom until I objected and for not calling in experienced medical nurses to do it leaving me with pain and trouble urinating for several weeks not to mention the nightmares and fear of sleeping in my own bed.

Thank you for assuming me I could not drive at 52 as I was on my way out the door.  Insults are always a great way to say good-byel.

Thank you for confiscating my human rights booklet in my purse which could harm no one but could have helped me a lot.

Thank you leaving me blowing in the wind for services when I left by listing non-available to me services in my discharge plan, the one I never got a copy of but my providers did.

Thank you for discharging me on what your eldest psychiatrist called a dangerous dose of Zyprexa on the pretext that you could not lower it and scaring  me yet again.

Thank you for putting me on 3 drugs that were either listed as ones I could not take or were dangerous to my kidney and over all health, those being Inderal, Zyprexa and Lamictal.

Thank you for the shakes I have from Lamicatal which my nephrologist is resesarching as I write-well hopefully he is sleeping, but he is reseraching it because he said there are bad side effects.

Thank you for ignoring my licensed clinical psychologist and my psychiatrist.

Thank you for my fear of sleeping in my own bed due to putting a male sitter in my bedroom at your fine establishment despite my trauma history, oh right, you don’t believe in trauma, G-d help our veterans when put under your care.

Thank you for threatening me with Western State Hospital for a one time psychiatric side effect from a medication I had been begging to go off for 6 months and still not taking me off of it but choosing to blame and shame me instead and not consult nephrology who could have told you what the problem was.  Oh and a special thanks for being disrespectful to my very well respected and elder nephrologist when he went above and beyond to help me out.

Thank you for not listening.

Thank you for being rude to my lawyer, incredibly rude.

Thank you for scaring me each and every day.

Thank you for not informing me of my rights under Medicare in a way I could understand at the time so I could have avoided the fear of being transferred to Western.

Thank you for making me sleeping for 3 nights through noise and fear the criterion for my release.

Thank you for never offering me comfort nor a therapist to talk to about my fears and trauma in your  unit.

Thank you for allowing a man to touch himself in front of me and a very young woman and not listening to the young woman and letting this man go around looking for who complained about him.  I hope this young woman is okay.

Thank you for being disrespectful, hostile, arrogant and bullying every single treatement “team” meeting.

Thank you for the non-existent referral to available and helpful resources in our town.

Thank you for telling me I did not deserve anything better than traumatic treatment plans.

Thank you for telling me I was not dissociating when I opened the wrong doors when I was and calling me a bad person yet again.

Thank you for your blindness to my actual problem, which was you and steroids and dissociation to escape the trauma of being told my bladder might burst with no gentleness and certainly no debriefing let along ordinary human kindness.

Thank you for letting me know once again what I had suppressed: that I am not a person with rights once in a psychiatric ward.

Thank you for being you, may your treatment team which has bullied and railroaded so many be disbanded by the adults very soon.

Thank you for the flashbacks and the nightmares.

And thank you for every previously overcome phobia which have returned in full force and most of all, thank you for locking me inside for 2 weeks of my favorite time of year: 2 weeks I will never get back and months of recovery from your re-traumatization.

Am I Not a Member of This “Community”?

I was psychiatrically assaulted more than once.   The last time was a month or so ago.  I call the SAARA hot line and am told there is no place for people like me, as I knew there would not be, people, women and men, like me, people who were assaulted in a system everyone in group think thinks is benign, do not need or do not belong in groups for survivors, we should talk to our specialists who of course we already talk to as often as we can after another unearned and violent assault as sexual and pornographic as any rape, tying a woman or man down and injecting them in front of or by men, what is that if not an assault? A sexual assault?  It is not medical treatment, that is a perversion of the term medical treatment.  Yet once again I am told the only resource for people like me is psychiatric and psychological professionals.  This is not unique to Charlottesville, the UVA company town, it happens in every town and every city.  Men and women like me are patronized or avoided or treated like lepers or told to keep quiet if we want to keep our jobs and reputations or chance at friendship and the community support we never get except from each other and a few others who get it sort of.  

I went to church on Sunday.  It had been a long time for me. I exchanged the peace with many in that church including someone who doesn’t agree with me on most things but 2 people who have known me the longest and knew I had been in a psychiatric uni against reason and justice would not exchange the peace with me, pretended not to see me.  This is what we live with as psychiatric survivors.  I will not return to that church.  I will keep looking for a Christian church that takes me as I am or perhaps where no one knows me but why should I have to be ostracized by the fact my assaults came in the medical establishment (and not all did)?  Why is there no group?  Why am I told the only option for people like me is the professionals I already rely on heavily?  Why can I not be a full member of this community with full support or even a little support? Am I not your sister, your daughter, your mother, your aunt? Am I not a person?

What Part of 12 Hours Apart Exactly Doesn’t 5 East Understand Inre Transplant Drugs?

Ever since my transplant in October of 2008 I have taken my anti-rejection drugs 12 hours apart.  It’s not that hard, well not after I learned to use my cell phone alarms, but apparently it is too hard for medical doctors on 5 East to understand and execute.  During my stay they consistently were either late or early with my anti-rejection drugs and when I mentioned 12 hours for all drugs was easier a nurse agreed but doctors did nothing to ensure I got my oh so importantly timed anti-rejection drugs 12 hours apart.   In fact they got me out of the habit of writing down my intake because I was too busy despite all the trauma and chaos trying to remember and memorize when they gave me my medications including the calcitrol which is every other day so I had it written down by week in the nice book transplant gives out at UVA.  These were the people who were protecting me from what?  I never heard and never knew and it’s taking forever even to find out.   Obstruction all they way.  I asked for my papers repeatedly but was always given the wrong ones.  Oh and just to be clear, you can’t discharge someone to home care if they are homebound Ms. Social Worker nor can you discharge someone to a case manager they don’t have, you haven’t made an appointment with and they are not qualified to use under CSB guidelines.  Why? Because I don’t have a serious mental illness, I have PTSD and that’s not serious.  Anyway, a drug reaction with psychiatric side effects is never a serious mental illness.  But hey docs, let’s spend all my precious time converting me to the one true religion of “you have bipolar” despite what everyone who is a professional and known me for years tells you.  Let’s keep trying until you can find someone out of the loop with no reason to know to agree with you.  Nice work 5 East.  Home and well despite you.  Not to spite you, despite you.  Your drugs made me sicker than I have been in years, luckily I have a smart psychiatrist who is rapidly titrating me off of them and a transplant doctor who has seen many cases of steroid induced psychiatric problems.  And a psychologist from heaven who you tried to argue with who would not argue but who has stood by me as has my psychiatrist.   But hey, you must be right, you are UVA (not even in the top 50 or maybe not in the top 100 in psychiatry) Health Systems’ doctors so you must be omniscient, right.  Hubris, not a pretty thing in action.  Oh and your reputation? Not so great among the other patients.  But keep on keeping loving yourself, you do it so well that I don’t have to.

Hey 5 East, You Might Want to Check This Out, It’s in Your Bible. Or Are You Non-Believers or Atheists?

http://allpsych.com/disorders/sleep/sleepwalking.html

Psychiatric Disorders

---

 

Sleepwalking Disorder (COMING SOON)   Category Sleep Disorders

Someone Alert the True Believers in Psychiatry–Die Gedanken Sind Frei

First Swine Flu Death in Virginia in a State Training Center, What is the Plan to Prevent More Deaths?

People in congregate settings are particularly vulnerable to catching viruses.  It is not surprising at all to me that Virginia’s first death from H1N1 influenza virus was a woman living in  a state training center.   What I want to know and hope others want to know is what is being done to prevent more deaths of people who have been institutionalized by the state of Virginia through no fault of their own.   What exactly is the plan to keep residents of state hospitals and state training centers safe from this and future viruses?  The public but most especially the residents of these state run facilities and their families and friends deserve a real and detailed answer and they/we deserve it now. 

 

Statement OF Governor Kaine

~ On first Virginia death associated with H1N1 influenza virus ~

 

RICHMOND – Governor Timothy M. Kaine released the following statement today regarding the Commonwealth’s first confirmed death associated with the H1N1 influenza virus commonly known as “swine flu”:

 

“The news today that the Commonwealth has witnessed its first death associated with the H1N1 influenza virus is a sad and sharp reminder that Virginians must remain vigilant against the spread of this potentially fatal illness. My heart goes out to the family and friends of the young woman who passed away this afternoon in Chesapeake.

 

“Although this particular individual—a resident at the Southeastern Virginia Training Center—had serious underlying health conditions that likely exacerbated the impact of the H1N1 virus, it is important that all Virginians take the necessary steps to protect ourselves and our loved ones against spreading germs during the normal course of the flu season. Individuals with symptoms should be particularly cautious and take proactive measures to prevent infection and spread of the disease.

 

“I know all Virginians join me in offering our sympathies to the family for their deep personal loss.”

Florida Allows Their Baker Act to add to Company’s Profit Margin, Is This What We Really Want?

http://www.ocala.com/article/20090425/ARTICLES/904251017/1402/NEWS?Title=Vines-Hospital-now-a-Baker-Act-facility

A Psychiatric Solutions owned facility in Florida has won approval to accept “Baker acted” people over 14 (people who have been committed by the state for inability to care for themselves or danger to themselves and rarely danger to others) as of this past Monday.  The hospital was bought by Psychiatric Solutions, the country’s largest owner or leaser of free standing psychiatric facilities just one year ago.  Pro Publica’s sweeping investigation of Psychiatric Solutions, here: http://www.propublica.org/feature/psychatric-cares-peril-and-profits-psychiatric-solutions-inc , showed that when Psychiatric Solutions buys a facility, trouble for patients often follows but more to the point in this story is the fact that the state of Florida has decided (and this may not be unusual at all), to allow a for profit company to make money out of the state’s detention of individuals who it has deemed vulnerable due to their disability or perceived disability or even just individuals who have disagreed with a psychiatrist’s treatment plan for them as so often happens in commitments in this country. 

Many activists are decrying the privatization of prisons and detention facilities for undocumented immigrants, but we continue to allow the privatization of forced detention of people with psychiatric diagnoses.  So what’s that about? Why no outcry from progressives about this?  Are they just not aware or do they just not care?  No way to know but it is a reasonable question I believe.

Psychiatric Solutions Asking To Add More Long Term But Not Acute Patient Beds in Virginia

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/04/2-facilities-propose-add-more-beds-psych-patients

In fact they report that they have had to send patients out of state in the last year due to a lack of acute beds but they are asking to add more long term beds.  I would find this strange if I did not think that any for profit psychiatric provider probably makes more profit on long term stays than they do on short term (acute) stays in their facilities.  Think about it.  For a short term, acute stay, which returns a child or adolescent to their family and community as soon as possible, thus preventing the risk of institutionalization effects on the child or teen, a facility has to do the same full evaluation and treatment planning that they do for a long term stay but for less reimbursement.  Acute beds are also for children and adolescents who are in the most distress and thus require more trained staff and more attention from staff. 

There will be a hearing on this proposal.  I hope that people will speak up and talk about what they really need for their children and teens and that the long history of problems in Psychiatric Solutions facilities for children in this state and other states as reported by Pro Publica will be taken into account in considering this request.

I also hope that more successful and more proven programs such as wrap-around services for children in their own homes will be considered for more funding as cheaper and better alternatives to long term psychiatric institutionalization for children and adolescents and for children and teens without families that more therapeutic foster homes will be created and funded.  Do we really want more children and teenagers to be put at risk of abuse, trauma and dependency on institutions in our state?  The effect of institutionalization on children and teenagers is profound, it leaves scars, it is something to be avoided by the provision of alternatives that work.

More On Psychiatric Solutions from Pro Publica Including Link to Report by University of Illinois Department of Psychiatry

http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/assets/docs/DCFS-UICRiveredgeReport040309.pdf   Long report on Illinois Psychiatric Solutions Hospital but includes analysis of company wide issues with accountability.  Prepared by an actual University Department of Psychiatry for the State of Illinois.  Hmm, which University Psychiatry Department in Virginia would be 1)asked to do this by the state of Virginia and 2) do it. 

http://www.propublica.org/article/illinois-report-blasts-care-as-psychiatric-hospitals-0304

State of Illinois puts admissions on hold for troubled Psychiatric Solutions Facility, when will Virginia do the same?

Illinois is actually outraged that children have been hurt, state officials are outraged.  Where is the outrage in Virginia’s state Department of BHDS/DMHMRSAS/DMAS/Governor’s Office/Children’s Advocacy Groups in Virginia? 

Will Virginia be the last state to close this company’s  facilities down as they go under if they do like Charter Hospitals  did?  If so, why?

Nostalgic Look Back at When the U.S. Investigated Charter Psychiatric Hospitals

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/30/business/us-is-investigating-charter-hospitals.html

U.S. Is Investigating Charter Hospitals
Published: Thursday, December 30, 1999
 
Magellan Health Services Inc. said today that the Justice Department is conducting a nationwide Medicare fraud investigation of Charter psychiatric hospitals, in which Magellan holds a 10 percent stake.
Magellan, which is based in Columbia, Md., manages psychiatric health plans, and Charter Behavioral Health Systems L.L.C. also face a Justice Department investigation into whether the psychiatric hospitals failed to provide medically necessary treatment, Magellan said in its annual report filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Magellan disclosed the Justice Department investigation a year ago, and the new filing says for the first time that the investigation is nationwide.

Read the rest at the link on top.

This was right before Bush came into office.  Since then Psychiatric Solutions has grown and shown the same kind of problems as the Charter Hospitals did nationwide, see Pro Publica Investigation in the Links of Interest, but we finally are rid of Bush and I am trying to hope that a new Justice Department and a new CMS will pay heed to the painstaking investigation done by Pro Publica of continuing deaths, assaults, suicides and failure to provide adequate medical treatment in so many psychiatric hospitals and residential treatment centers owned by Psychiatric Solutions and that maybe there are even TV investigative journalist left willing to take this on.  Maybe. 

For those who don’t know, Charter Hospitals closed down nationwide.

We Must Demand Medical Screening of All Involuntarily Treated People in Our MH System

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/magazine/15wwln-diagnosis-t.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

This woman could have died, now she is medication free.  But if she lived in Virginia or one of the many other states where forced outpatient and inpatient drugging occurs without adequate medical screening, what do you think her chances of survival would have been?  What are the chances anyone would have explored the possibility that she had a tumor and not a mental illness before sentencing/oops I mean “compassionate forced treatment for her own good” her to take drugs that almost killed her against her will? How many others HAVE died in Virginia because their medical condition was never discovered? 

Yes, medical screenings take time and money.  Cost.  Saving lives? Priceless.

Anna Nicole Smith: Finally Charges Brought Against Her Psychiatrist

It seemed as if Anna Nicole Smith’s psychiatrist was never going to face any consequences for prescribing drugs to aliases, prescribing drugs in outrageous quantities, prescribing addictive drugs to someone who struggled with addiction, but after all this time she is finally being charged with several counts and has been arrested. This may seem like a small thing or a trivial topic, but it isn’t, because Anna Nicole Smith was a person in trouble, a person who wanted or needed help after the death of her son and instead of grief counseling or support, all she got was drugs and far too many of them.  Unfortunately this is also the case for far too many folks who do not have Anna Nicole Smith’s money or celebrity status.  When folks suffered a death in the family when I was younger, we offered counseling and support in our mental health centers to deal with a normal reaction to a great loss.  Now counseling is very hard to come by in our public and it seems even sometimes in in our private mental health system and a person who is grieving who does not know about or have access to grief counseling is likely to be prescribed a pill rather than given the chance to talk their pain through with a supportive, trained person or group.  So I am glad to see charges brought against a psychiatrist who failed to look at the needs of her patient (allegedly) and just gave her more and more drugs until the drugs finally killed her patient.

Treatment Advocacy Center, So Many False Assumptions, So Little Time to Correct Them :)

I know the Treatment Advocacy Center folks are trying very hard to improve their image, I see their efforts to be more compassionate and less fear-mongering about people with psychiatric disabilities/diagnoses/histories, but it seems they just can’t stop themselves from making huge assumptions about the relationship between mental illness and homelessness. 

I wonder if the good folks at the Treatment Advocacy Center are aware of how many people diagnosed with mental illness are put out on the street by their families of origin?  Or how many are not allowed to come home if they leave home and then realize they need support and help only a family could give?  Or how many parents have bought into or been fooled into believing “tough love” is appropriate for their children in emotional distress?  I am aware of it.  I know too many people who as young adults, in some cases very young adults, were disowned by their families because they were given a serious mental illness diagnosis.  It is not the majority of folks of course, but it is a real and not uncommon phenomenon. How exactly will more forced outpatient treatment laws, which is what the good folks at the Treatment Advocacy Center want, help any of these people who have been disowned by their families and forced onto the streets or left on the streets?  If a person, any person, is homeless, what they need first is a home.

And how does the Treatment Advocacy Center make the leap from homelessness to jail? Sure some people end up in jail for status crimes who also happen to be homeless but to write that the choice is homelessness or jails is a big reach.  The choice is giving people who are homeless a place to live and lay their head or not making that commitment as a society and as individuals.  Unfortunately in most places in this country we have not made the commitment to provide a safe place to lay their head for every citizen who through hard times or hard situations or disownment due to emotional crisis has become homeless.  I would opine we have made a bad choice in that regard and that no amount of expensive outpatient commitment programs will help if we do not make the decision as a society to support people through hard times with at least a  bed and food. 

Yes, homelessness will get worse with these bad economic times and yes living on the streets will cause some folks to go into an emotional crisis and all to be unhappy and distressed, how could it not?  But no drug will fix their distress when it is caused by no place to call their own or even a pillow inside to lay their head on.  If a person, any person, is homeless, what they need first is a home.

Okay, that’s all I have time for tonight, tune in for more updates on the good but assumption-prone folks at the Treatment Advocacy Center as I have time.

From the Treatment Advocacy Center’s new and improved blog that still allows no comments and has no RSS feed (silly rabbits, no RSS feed is for kids ).

“Too many people with mental illness end up homeless. People with untreated psychiatric illnesses constitute one-third, or between 150,000 and 200,000 people, of the estimated 744,000 homeless population. The quality of life for these individuals is abysmal. Many are regularly victimized.

For some of those homeless, it is often part of a cycle between life on the streets and jail.  A choice no one, especially someone with a serious illness, should face.
When someone with a mental illness lives on the streets, they face a number of threats from the environment and weather, the lack of sanitation, theft, and violence.  At any given time, there are approximately twice as many people with untreated severe psychiatric illnesses living on America’s streets than are receiving care in hospital.

Given the current state of the economy, many fear the problem will grow worse. 
“With the nation and state in recession, the problem is likely to grow before it improves, but how a society treats those citizens who most need the help of other people or institutions says a great deal about it,” wrote a recent editorial in the Tennessee Knox News Sentinel.  Like in other states, the jail there has become the state’s largest mental hospital. 

Living on the streets-and all that it entails-is a difficult circumstance for someone without a severe mental illness to adapt.  For someone with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder it can be a living hell. 
There need to be better alternatives.  The choice between life on the streets and jail is not choice at all.  As the Tennessee paper wrote, “Jail is not the proper place for any society to house homeless people with mental health issues.”"

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In Western State Hospital in Virginia, There is a Men’s Only Forensic Ward but No Women’s Only Civil Ward–???

Um, let me try and understand this fact.  Forensic, i.e. Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity or people deemed incapable of assisting in their own defense in a criminal trial and committed to Western for restoration of capacity to stand trial, male, patients have a single gender unit/ward at the hospital.  I do not know if female forensic patients also have a single gender unit.  I do know that patients  civilly (i.e. committed  for lack of ability to care for self, danger to self, very occasionally (the lowest percentage of all commitments) for danger to others do not have any option for a single gender unit or ward, female or male.  How in the world does this make sense?  The state of Virginia uses its power to lock up women and men for being ill or diagnosed as ill by a marriage and family therapist come July 1 or a nurse specialist as of July 1 of last year or other licensed mental health professional for their own protection and than fails to protect them from the risk, a known risk, of sexual assault, of re-traumatization, of being harassed, of being intimidated, of having their religious beliefs violated if they belong to certain religions, of having their very sense of themselves as safe and of the mental health system as safe destroyed or damaged? 

If someone can explain why NO ONE in DMHMRSAS, soon to be DBHDS or anyone else in this state will address this issue at the time a New Western State Hospital is being built, I would appreciate it.  But I don’t think there is an explanation beyond “we just do not get it and we just do not care enough to spend any money to keep women and men safe from trauma at Western State Hospital.”  Why do I think this? Well for one because Virginia’s so called plan to implement trauma informed care on SAMSHA’s website lists someone who is retired as the head of their program to implement trauma-informed care and because outside of one center of excellence there is no plan to implement trauma informed care and no working groups on the issue in Virginia’s public mental health system. 

But don’t let this keep you up at night or worry you or anything, these patients are “other”, they wouldn’t be there if they were not “head cases” or losers or poor or traumatized………oops.

There Is No Hierarchy of Cause of Death and No Hierarchy of Disability nor Illness.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is  what I have lived with for many years.  I am fortunate, very fortunate, to have found someone to work with who really gets it and to be in recovery, to have learned how to manage my post-traumatic stress disorder by many every day and common sense (once you learn them, not before) self-care activities and methods.   I can manage triggers much better, can figure out when I need to take a break or distract myself or talk it out or think or write it out for myself or just take a rest or a walk or reach out to help someone else, often the most useful way of taking care of myself but not always. 

Keeping things in perspective is important and very helpful to me personally.  Reality testing–is this as scary as I feel it is? Can I do it even if I am scared? Can I get support or do I need support? Asking myself what I need and what will help me get through keeps me steady.  It doesn’t mean I don’t have times when things get rough internally.  But I am so used to that and have learned so much that I can handle much more than I ever thought I could on my own.

I have also learned how ordinary and expected many of my reactions are to situations.  What I used to see as a symptom is often a common response to a difficult and scary situation, in fact my reactions to many situations are the same as many people’s reactions, I have learned to try not to “patholigize” every feeling and every fear and every sadness.  For instance, very few people are not afraid of surgery or would not be scared if they had reason to believe they were having a heart attack. (I wasn’t, I’m fine, it was a rare complication of anti-rejection drugs).  Most people are going to be very upset if they lose a dog to death or  face the need to choose between two dogs they love becaue those two dogs can not get along no matter what you try and one has to be re-homed. 

I have noticed that many people assume because my kidney failure was due to the use of lithium for 14 years (strangely enough I said 12 years for years and only recently corrected my arithmetic and realized it was 14 years)  that I must have bipolar disorder.  I do not.  I had PTSD when I was mis-diagnosed with bipolar disorder but because I was not very questioning and because I believed the experts, it took a very long time for me to realize and accept that this did not apply to me, even though many experts questioned my diagnosis along the way.  I was determined not to be “one of those bipolars who go off their meds” as I heard and my family heard all too often, that horrible and damaging stereotype, as soon as I was mis-diagnosed.  I was going to be the exception. I would never listen to a doctor who questioned whether I was correctly diagnosed as I had heard warnings from other people of the dire consequences to them of doing just that.  I was stubborn and determined and scared all at once.  Scared of being seen as “one of them”.  Stubborn about not fitting that horrible and prejudiced stereotype.  Determined to be a model patient and success story.  I was wrong.  I failed to listen to my own instincts.  I accepted the labels and boxes of others and not my own experience and my own feelings. 

I am very grateful not to still be in that box.  I am grateful to experts who were gentle with me as they led me to understand and accept that what I had been told was not true about me. I am grateful to a doctor who stuck with me as I resisted ceasing my last mood stabilizer years ago even though it had warnings out about it that I should take seriously. 

I am not grateful for having kidney failure due to a wrong diagnosis.  I am not grateful for in the past and occasionally in the present being treated differently and with less respect in medical settings which I have no choice but to be in anymore.  I am not grateful for attitudes from anyone that say “get over it” or on the other hand “you are other, you are less, you are not one of us”.  I am not grateful when people feel okay about asking me very personal questions they have no reason to know the answer to when I (rarely) disclose that I have PTSD.  I understand the instinct to ask what happened, I do not attribute bad intentions to those who ask what caused this in you or who ask what were you doing that caused you to be misdiagnosed.  People want to know and understand and that is not coming from a bad place in anyone.  But my personal history  is mine and shared only with those I trust very much and those to whom I am very close and not even to all who fit in those categories.  I think I share a lot actually, but some things I will not share and that is my choice to make.  I am resigned by now to the fact that there will always be those who will ask or those who will assume I am at fault for my wrong diagnosis, that I must have been “doing” something or it wouldn’t have happened. 

Strangely enough I am equally bothered when people assume I am “good” or “better than others” or virtuous or something along those lines when I share my great luck at being able to get off of dialysis about 9 months after I got on it and stay off of it for over a year and a half. I know where this comes from in me though, it is not strange to me.  I was much younger when AIDS hit my home town of Philadelphia and hit the United States in general and people were dying before the cocktail and I listened to all the folks making distinctions between people who had AIDS based on how they got it, even asking people how they got it as if it were their business.  Even before any of us had heard of AIDS, I was disturbed by a story from a former therapist of mine about her father’s death–and yes I now know she should never have shared it with me–how determined she was to get the doctor at the time of her elderly father’s death to tell her and her mother that it was smoking cigarettes that killed him and how angry she was that the doctor would not do that.  From memory, he was old, he had many medical problems, his cause of death was complicated and not clear cut as is so often the case both in death and in life.  But she wanted to blame him.  She was grieving, I get that, when people are grieving they are not themselves.  I do not blame her now.  But it made an impact on me.  It made me think early on about how we talk about people and their illnesses and disabilities and their deaths.  I came to the maybe simplistic conclusion/statement that no one deserves the death penalty for “fill in the blank” with smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, using recreational/illegal drugs, not eating a healthy diet and on and on.  We all will die.  We may hasten our deaths by our actions or we may not.  We may be lucky or we may be unlucky.  I knew and admired a man who lived to 96 who smoked into his 50’s and drank decades beyond that.  My great-aunt smoke until she died from complications from an earlier car accident at 83.  And little children die of dysentery in places without clean water, people are dying of AIDS all over the world due to lack of medicine and lack of protection, people who  never smoked get lung cancer, people who never drank lose their livers, death is not fair, death is never deserved, death is death and comes to us all even if we do everything “right” all the time every day of our lives, short or long. 

There is no hierarchy of cause of death.  There is no hierarchy of disability.  We all will die and if we live long enough we all will face disability and illness.

What I Would Write if Virginia Wasn’t an Authoritarian Commonwealth

SB 1142 Senate Substitute Elimates Civil Rights in Health Care for Every Virginia Citizen

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?091+ful+SB1142S1

B. If there is no individual eligible to make health care decisions in subsection A, the patient’s attending physician shall be authorized to provide, continue, withhold, or withdraw health care without obtaining a court order if such health care decision has been affirmed and documented as being ethically acceptable by the health care facility’s ethics committee, if one exists, or by two physicians who are not currently involved in the treatment of the patient and who did not make the determination that the patient was incapable of making an informed decision.

If you live long enough or even if you are young, you have every chance of being considered incapacitated at some point through accident or illness.  The Senate version of SB 1142, the bill that allows research not for their benefit on incapacitated and dying patients, now has a section added that says that if you have no advanced directive and no willing or available family member to act on your behalf, two doctors or an ethics committee (who are appointed by hospitals and one of which approved the Ashley X treatment out West) to decide to give you care you may not want or to withhold care you would want if you could communicate your wishes.  This bill essentially leaves no Virginia citizen safe from unwanted medical interventions or unwanted withdrawal of medical interventions.  

In addition, this bill is clearly aimed at people with psychiatric diagnoses, not people with dementia or Alzheimer’s as some have claimed as no where is dementia mentioned, but “severe and persistent mental illness” is specifically mentioned as a grounds for guardianship and a right for a guardian to admit a person without due process to a psychiatric facility for 10 days with no hearing, no lawyer, no protections against abuse of the law by bad actors at ALL. 

You thought last year was bad? This year the Virginia General Assembly is trying to take away all rights to make our own health care decisions if we even end up delirious from a temporary condition and G-d forbid have a disability or illness that some doctors consider our life a “life not worth living” or alternatively some doctor wants to give your family member a drug that could kill them such as an anti-psychotic to an elderly person with dementia instead of Alzheimer’s specific drugs which do not have the high risk of heart attack and stroke that commonly prescribed  psychiatric drugs do to the point where numerous articles clearly not read by the General Assembly have come out this year warning of the dangers to the elderly of psychiatric drugs in common use. 

Your only protection against this bill is to never have a serious car accident resulting in temporary incapacity, not have a label of “serious mental illness” pinned on you at any point in your life and that can be interpreted to include severe depression, to never have an illness that results in temporary unconsciousness, in short, to never get old and never get sick or injured. 

We are back to doctors as G-ds and incredible and dangerous intrusion by the state of Virginia into our most private and personal values and decisions including our right to live. 

This bill is crossing over.  If you don’t care if your civil rights are being further eroded, don’t do anything.  If you do, write your Senator and Delegate and tell them you will not stand for this incredible intrusion into your civil rights and liberty interest in your medical care and in your right to decide how and whether you die.  Or move to another state (except Texas) that still believes in individual rights to puruse life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Thomas Jefferson would hang his head in shame and so should the General Assembly of Virginia if they pass this bill as written.

Large Study Shows Mental Illness Without Drug Abuse Is Not Correlated With Violence

Mental illness alone is no trigger for violence

The Associated Press

Monday, February 2, 2009

CHICAGO: A new large U.S. study challenges the idea that mental illness alone is a leading cause of violence.

Researchers instead blame a combination of factors, specifically substance abuse and a history of violent acts, that drives up the danger when combined with mental illness in what they call an “intricate link.”

People with serious mental illness, without other big risk factors, are no more violent than most people, according to the study of more than 34,000 U.S. adults. The research was released Monday in Archives of General Psychiatry.

“Mental illness can provide the knee-jerk explanation for the Virginia Tech shootings,” but it’s not a strong predictor of violence by itself, said lead author Eric Elbogen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

Elbogen compiled a “top 10″ list of things that predict violent behavior, based on the analysis.

Younger age topped the list. History of violence came next, followed by male gender, history of juvenile detention, divorce or separation in the past year, history of physical abuse, parental criminal history and unemployment in the past year. Rounding out the list were severe mental illness with substance abuse and being a crime victim in the past year.

After the 2007 Virginia Tech killings by a student ordered to get psychiatric treatment, some states considered laws adding mental health questions to background checks for gun buyers or denying weapons to people who’ve been involuntarily committed for mental health treatment.

The new research, which bolsters other similar findings, raises questions about such laws, experts said. Such legislation may be both ineffective and discourage people who need help from getting treatment.

“We are being misled by our own fears,” said Columbia University psychiatry professor Dr. Paul Appelbaum, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “We ought to be concerned about providing good treatment and helping people lead fulfilling lives, not obsessed with protecting ourselves from phantom threats that appear to be unrelated to mental illness.”

U.S. systems to treat mental illness and substance abuse are separate, uncoordinated and could do a better job treating people with both problems, Appelbaum said.

For the new study, the researchers analyzed data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. The original survey in 2001-2002 involved more than 43,000 face-to-face interviews with a representative sample of American adults. Three years later, many of the same people, more than 34,000, were interviewed again.

Questions about violence in both interviews included:

_”Ever use a weapon like a stick, knife or gun in a fight?”

_”Ever hit someone so hard that you injured them or they had to see a doctor?”

_”Ever start a fire on purpose to destroy someone’s property or just to see it burn?”

_”Ever force someone to have sex with you against their will?”

From the responses, the researchers determined what elements raised the risk of violent behavior.

There were 3,089 people deemed to have severe mental illness — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression — but no history of either violence or substance abuse. They reported very few violent acts, about 50, between interviews.

But when mental illness was combined with a history of violence and a history of substance abuse, as in about 1,600 people, the risk of future violence increased by a factor of 10.

The relationship between mental illness and violence is there, “but it’s not as strong as people think,” Elbogen said.

Predicting who will act violently is complex, said John Monahan, a psychologist at University of Virginia’s law school, who has done similar research but was not involved in the new study.

“It is true that our crystal balls are very murky,” Monahan said. “The vast majority of violence that occurs in American society has absolutely nothing to do with mental illness.”

The large national survey, conducted by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, included people living in shelters, hotels and group homes, as well as houses and apartments, but it didn’t include people living in hospitals, jails or prisons.

Rosanna Esposito of the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Virginia, applauded the study but pointed out the researchers weren’t able to analyze whether the subjects were in psychiatric treatment or not. Medication for serious mental illness can reduce the risk of violence, she said.

___

On the Net:

Archives of General Psychiatry: http://www.archgenpsychiatry.com

Yup, “Behavioral” Is a GREAT Name for DMHMRSAS: This is what Behavioral Looks Like in Practice

January 25, 2009  http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20090125/NEWS01/901250451

 

Our Lady of Peace psychiatric hospital under state investigation

Head-banging incident sparks inquiry at Our Lady of Peace

By Patrick Howington
phowington@courier-journal.com

Locked alone in a room at Our Lady of Peace psychiatric hospital, a 17-year-old girl was allowed to beat her unprotected head on a hard floor more than 120 times last spring while as many as three employees watched.

Those employees — including a behavioral analyst — were trying to determine the cause of the teen’s self-injuring behavior. But now, the Kentucky attorney general’s office is investigating the May 13 session as a possible crime.

The investigation follows an August report from state Cabinet for Health and Family Services inspectors that concluded that the hospital “failed to … assure the safety of the patient.”

Though the girl — whose diagnoses include autism, cerebral palsy and mental retardation — “appeared dazed” afterward, a doctor wasn’t told about the incident until almost 21 hours later. The call was made after hospital staff helping the teen shower noticed a bald spot that was “pretty swollen with popped blood vessels,” one worker told inspectors.

The inspectors’ report, based partly on a video of the procedure, didn’t detail the girl’s eventual medical care or the extent of her injury. She was discharged in August.

Hospital officials declined to give her name or discuss her treatment, citing confidentiality rules. The Courier-Journal obtained the state inspector’s report through a state open-records request.

The state conducted the inspection on behalf of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — which requires hospitals to meet safety conditions and other requirements to receive federal funding.

The findings prompted the agency to threaten to cut off reimbursements to the Louisville psychiatric hospital and its parent company, Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s HealthCare.

But the cutoff was averted after Our Lady of Peace changed its procedures, including adding a requirement that doctors be involved in such assessments.

Based on those changes, the Medicare program told hospital officials Sept. 12 that the facility was back in compliance with federal regulations.

“We’re trying to put in every single protection and process and policy in place to prevent any injury to any patient,” said Thomas Gessel, the hospital’s interim chief executive. “We want to make sure that we have a safe environment.”

Allison Martin, spokeswoman for Attorney General Jack Conway, confirmed Friday that the office’s Medicaid Fraud and Abuse unit is investigating the incident.

The case was referred to the office by the health services cabinet’s Child Protective Services section in July, she said.

Martin said that she could not release details of the investigation. No charges have been filed.

When asked why the six-month-old investigation has not been concluded, she said: “It’s a complex issue (and) we are looking at many different factors … and it is our goal to be thorough.”

She said Conway wasn’t available for an interview Friday because he was traveling out of state.

JoAnne Maamry, chief executive officer of Our Lady of Peace at the time of the incident, resigned in August. She is not working now.

Reached by e-mail, Maamry declined to comment on the case or her resignation.

Gessel, the interim chief, would not say if Maamry’s resignation was related to the incident, saying personnel matters are confidential.

He also said the hospital provided the attorney general’s office with some documents it asked for, but he said he doesn’t know more about the criminal investigation.

‘Assessments’ are rare

Our Lady of Peace, on Newburg Road, is one of the nation’s largest nonprofit psychiatric hospitals.

About 70 percent of its patients are younger than 18, many of them wards of the state.

Gessel said “functional analysis assessments” of disturbed and uncommunicative patients — which can include watching them hurt themselves — are fairly rare at the hospital, used on 20 or fewer patients last year.

They are made by behavioral analysts — certified clinicians who typically have advanced degrees but are not doctors or nurses.

But such assessments were suspended in August and won’t resume until safety policies are honed, Gessel said.

In a plan of corrections submitted to state and federal authorities in September, Jewish Hospital & St. Mary’s pledged that procedures for functional analysis assessments would be revised to require doctors’ involvement and having nurses present.

The company also said hospital staff would be trained to determine how long an assessment exercise should last, grounds for stopping it, and the use of protective equipment.

Despite agreeing to those and other changes, however, the company disputed that it had been out of compliance with health-care regulations.

The May 13 session involving the 17-year-old girl consisted of five 10-minute segments, including one in which she was alone, inspectors reported.

Staff members conducting the session disregarded an order from the patient’s doctor to put a helmet on her if she began banging her head, the state report said.

The behavioral analyst in charge of the session — whom the hospital refused to identify — later told inspectors that despite the doctor’s order, it was his decision when to apply the helmet, and that nurses were not present because “they would stop the session.”

After the patient hit her head on the tile-over-concrete floor 129 times, intermittently biting her arms, employees put a helmet on her. She then stopped the banging, the report said.

“The patient appeared dazed, as she swayed back and forth while knocking on the door to get staff’s attention to let her out of the room,” the report said.

Michelle Spurlock, chief nursing officer and vice president of Our Lady of Peace, would not say whether the analyst was disciplined over the incident. She said he is still employed there.

National experts on autism said that while an observation session is a valid diagnostic method, the May 13 session lacked the proper controls.

If patients regularly bang their heads, watching the behavior can help “understand what sets it off, what keeps it going,” said Dr. Fred Volkmar, director of the Child Study Center at the Yale University School of Medicine. But, “you want to be sure, first and foremost, of the person’s safety.”

“It sounds like the behavior analyst did not display good clinical judgment,” said Robert LaRue, assistant director of research and training at Rutgers University’s Douglas Developmental Disabilities Center and a certified behavioral analyst. “If you’re letting a kid hit a hard linoleum or concrete floor 130 times, you’re probably not doing it right.”

LaRue said that with a head-banging patient, he might change the assessment procedure to measure how fast a stimulus such as noise triggered head banging, rather than how long the banging lasted.

“They’re lucky that she didn’t split her forehead open,” said Sandra Harris, executive director of the Rutgers center, who has studied autism since 1972.

State inspectors’ report

In their report, the state inspectors concluded that Our Lady of Peace lacked procedures to make sure such patients received prompt medical attention.

They also wrote that hospital officials failed to thoroughly investigate the incident, reprimanded a nurse who reported it to the patient’s doctor, wrongly secluded the patient in a locked room without a doctor’s approval and failed to report the incident to state authorities.

Spurlock said the locks have been removed from the treatment room since the report was written.

Gessel said that he does not know why the incident was not reported, because it is the hospital’s normal practice to do that.

State inspectors also said the hospital failed to ask the patient’s legally appointed state guardian for permission to conduct the assessment. The guardian told inspectors that she would not have consented to an assessment that allowed the girl to continuously bang her head.

The guardian also wasn’t told that an X-ray of the patient’s head was performed and wasn’t given the results, the report said.

Reporter Patrick Howington can be reached at (502) 582-4229.

To Improve Psychiatric Care, We Have to Start By Reforming Our Jails and Prisons for Adults and Teens

Every time there is a chance of closing a state mental institution people of good will and concern speak up and object.  Why? Why when they know most of these state institutions, especially for children and teens, are not good places for anyone to be?  The answer is that our juvenile detention centers are run like adult prisons and our adult prisons are run like Hells on earth.  We have completely given up on rehabilitation, second chances such as parole in Virginia, educational opportunities for adults in prison, decent, even semi-adequate medical care to the point that people die simply because they are in prison when they get sick, we do nothing about prison rape, even joke about it, we have thrown prisoners, adult and children away as if they were not even human. 

So anyone who has been inside of a jail, prison or juvenile detention center is going to look at a state run facility, no matter how many human rights violations, excessive restraints, patient on patient violence occurrences due to mixing of people who should not be mixed together due to archaic NGRI release policies, even deaths as at Central State Hospital, and think, “well, it’s not as bad as prison or a juvenile detention center.”  And it isn’t.  But that should not be our basis for comparison, people with illnesses who have not committed a crime, 3 year olds who should never be in a state psychiatric institution, should not have to suffer institutional abuse because we have not had the political will to reform our prisons, jails and juvenile detention centers.

So let’s start where we need to start.  Let’s start on prison reform, it’s only as old an idea as the nineteenth century, we’re only in the 21st century, could we just maybe go forwards instead of backwards?

Behavioral Health May Be A More Honest Description of What DMHMRSAS Does and Cares About

I object to to the term “behavioral health”, a term invented by managed care companies, not by individuals who seek mental health or substance use disorder services nor by the folks who treat them.  It is insulting, offensive, all that.  It is the same name used for the sex offender facility in this state.  It is stigmatizing, prejudicial.  But perhaps, for once, the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse is being honest about who they are and what they do and care about by pushing this name on us with a push poll on their site in the summer in which 3 out of 4 choices included behavioral health and the 4th was too vague to be usable. 

Because DMHMRSAS does care and act only on behavior, not emotions and feelings of people served by it.  DMHMRSAS does not care as an agency about the feelings of people with mental illness nor people with substance use disorders nor people with intellectual disabilities.  They offer practically no services that help people deal with feelings, they do not mandate counseling of any kind in their community services nor in their state hospitals.  They sometimes “act” as if they care about advocates with mental illness they are forced into contact with by federal and state mandates, but most of them, most of the time, are only acting as if they care and a few of them, only if others are watching them. 

So I will oppose this name change but if it passes anyway, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that DMHMRSAS has been forced to be honest for once about who they are and what they do and  who they care about and who they do not care about.  And that’s something.  Not much, but something, because honesty from DMHMRSAS?  Really, that’s priceless.

Psychiatric Solutions Owned Facilities in Virginia–Be Aware, Be Safe

Read Pro Publica’s year end wrap up of their extensive investigation of Psychiatric Solutions facilities across the country here:  http://www.propublica.org/feature/where-things-stand-troubles-with-private-mental-hospital-conglomerate-1231

Virginia

Crawford First Education
825 Crawford Parkway
Portsmouth, VA 23704
757-391-6675 (Phone)
757-391-6651 (Fax)

Cumberland Hospital
9407 Cumberland Road
New Kent, VA 23124
800-368-3472 (Toll Free)
804-966-2242 (Phone)
804-966-5639 (Fax)

First Home Care
1634 London Blvd.
Portsmouth, VA 23704
757-393-7211 (Phone)
757-393-7219 (Fax)

The Hughes Center for Exceptional Children
1601 Franklin Turnpike
Danville, VA 24540
434-836-8500 (Phone)
434-836-8552 (Fax)

Liberty Point Healthcare, Inc.
1110 Montgomery Avenue
Staunton, VA 24401
540-213-0450 (Phone)
540-213-0456 (Fax)
800-496-7941 (Toll Free)

North Spring Behavioral Healthcare, Inc.
42009 Victory Lane
Leesburg, VA 20176
703-777-0800 (Phone)

The Pines Residential Treatment Center
825 Crawford Parkway
Portsmouth, VA 23704
757-393-0061 (Phone)
877-227-7000 (Admissions)

Poplar Springs Hospital
350 Poplar Dr.
Petersburg, VA 23805
804-733-6874 (Phone)
804-861-0076 (Fax)

Virginia Beach Psychiatric Center (VBPC)
1100 First Colonial Road
Virginia Beach, VA 23454
757-496-6000 (Phone)
757-496-4550 (Fax)

Whisper Ridge Behavioral Health System
2101 Arlington Boulevard
Charlottesville, VA 22903
434-977-1523 (Phone)
434-872-1573 (Fax)

Psychiatric Technicians, Psychologists Among Health Workers Not Checked For Criminal Pasts

Health & Science

Many California Health Workers Not Checked for Criminal Pasts

by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber December 29, 2008 9:25 pm EST
Tags: California, Nurses

This story was co-published with the Los Angeles Times and also will appear in the Times‘ Dec. 30, 2008 edition.

 

Michael Marcus, a dentist from San Jose, Calif., was arrested in July 2005 for allegedly touching a 17-year-old patient’s breasts and making inappropriate comments to her during an exam. Although he is set to stand trial next month, he still practices without restriction. Marcus said the criminal charges are not true.

California’s failure to check the criminal backgrounds of health professionals extends well beyond nurses, encompassing tens of thousands of doctors, dentists, psychiatric technicians and therapists.

 

The Times reported this fall that regulators had not vetted about 195,000 of the state’s registered and vocational nurses, exposing patients to caregivers with histories of violence, addiction, predatory behavior or corruption.

Prompted by those articles, the state Department of Consumer Affairs has identified 104,000 more professionals from all levels of medical care to add to that tally.

All told, the agency now estimates that close to a third of the state’s 937,100 licensed healthcare workers have not been screened through fingerprint checks.

Licensing boards maintain inconsistent rules about who must be fingerprinted and when. Fingerprints are the primary tool that regulators can use to root out convictions and allow law enforcement agencies to automatically alert regulators if a licensee has ever been arrested.

Those who have not been fingerprinted include almost three-quarters of psychiatric technicians; nearly half of family therapists, social workers and dentists; and 12 percent of physicians.

“We depend on the state of California…to screen out those who are incompetent or impaired or dishonest or otherwise unqualified,” said Julianne D’Angelo Fellmeth, administrative director of the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego. “If the state doesn’t do that for whatever reason, we’re all in trouble.”

After the reports by the Times, which collaborated with the investigative news organization ProPublica, the state Department of Consumer Affairs moved quickly.

Agency Director Carrie Lopez ordered the 20 health-related boards and bureaus she oversees, including the Medical Board of California, to collect fingerprints from any licensee who had not provided them.

She also told the agencies to begin asking licensees whether they had been convicted of a crime since their last renewal. Other states’ boards, including those in Arizona and Texas, already do that.

Lopez urged regulators to more quickly pursue professionals who may pose a danger to the public.

“I have and fully intend to make use of all resources to ensure that we remove threats to the public safety and well-being of Californians,” Lopez said in a written statement.

The Board of Registered Nursing received expedited approval from the state Office of Administrative Law last month to collect fingerprints from the 147,000 nurses licensed before 1990. The board estimated that the new fingerprinting requirement will cost more than $4 million to implement over the first three years and $1.7 million annually thereafter.

In seeking the requirement, nursing board officials wrote that the Times’ “articles packaged information in a different way and in a different light than the board had done in the past. Moreover, these articles raised the issue with respect to specific licensees with notable criminal histories that the board had never disciplined.”

The Bureau of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians plans to seek a fast-track review for proposed fingerprint regulations. It also has sought to discipline some of those mentioned in the Times’ articles, including Cynthia Knott, convicted in 2007 for selling drugs that had been stolen from her job at the Fresno County Jail to an undercover investigator.

The consumer affairs department, which oversees all licensed professionals in the state, said it is focusing on healthcare first but intends to expand fingerprinting to other boards as well, including those that govern auto repair and contractors.

Fingerprinting requirements originally were adopted because boards believed that some crimes could reflect poorly on a licensee’s character, competence or ability to safely perform the job.

But gathering missing fingerprints has not been a priority.

The Dental Bureau of California, for example, started requiring fingerprints in 1986 but has almost none on file for any dentist licensed before then — some 16,000 people, said Cathleen Poncabare, the board’s executive officer.

 

 

Kiyoshi Fukuda, a dentist from Santa Rosa, is a registered sex offender.

The new background checks will probably flag such cases as that of Kiyoshi Fukuda, a dentist from Santa Rosa.

 

Licensed in 1969, he has a clear record, according to the bureau’s Web site. Yet reporters found that he is a registered sex offender, listed on the state’s Megan’s Law Web site.

Fukuda, 63, was convicted in 1990 of two counts of oral copulation on a child under 16.

 

In an interview, Fukuda said he had disclosed his conviction to the board when he renewed his license years ago and never heard anything back. He closed his private practice in January and said he recently sent a request to the dental board to cancel his license.

The conviction “did not have anything to do with my office, my profession or anything. It was something that was on the private side. But should they have checked? My guess would be yes. …I’ve done everything since then to try to atone for this,” he said.

Poncabare, who has been in her post about six months, said she couldn’t explain why the bureau did not seek fingerprints from every dentist sooner.

“It’s perplexing to me that it was never done,” she said.

Fingerprinting is not always the issue. Some licensing boards have known about professionals’ convictions or pending charges for years but still have not acted.

Michael Marcus, a dentist from San Jose, for example, was arrested in July 2005 for allegedly touching a 17-year-old patient’s breasts and making inappropriate comments to her during an exam.

Prosecutors charged him with misdemeanor sexual battery against three patients, and he is set to stand trial next month. Although the dental board cooperated in the investigation, Marcus continues to practice without restriction, and the board’s Web site lists only a previous disciplinary action against him from 1996. In that case, the dental board suspended him for 30 days and placed him on five years’ probation for fondling the breasts of three patients.

In an interview, Marcus said the criminal charges are not true and should be dealt with by the courts before any action is taken by the dental board. A spokesman for the Department of Consumer Affairs said the board was aware of the case but could not comment on it.

Laura Moskowitz, a staff attorney for the National Employment Law Project in Oakland, said the state should proceed with caution as it gathers arrest and conviction information on health professionals. The law requires proof that the convictions are “substantially related” to the qualifications and duties of the job, she said.

“There are thousands and thousands of people who may have had something happen in the past, and it’s not reflective of who they are today and the kind of work they can perform,” she said.

The Times and ProPublica have found more than 115 recent cases involving registered nurses and an additional 27 cases among vocational nurses in which the state didn’t seek to pull or restrict their licenses until they had racked up three or more convictions.

Many of the convictions involved off-the-job incidents, such as driving while intoxicated, stealing and taking drugs, or petty thefts. But the chaos and impairment often affected the nurses’ ability to care for patients, sometimes in critical-care settings.

 

Weeks later, Cahill-Therrien was fired from a different hospital job after she appeared to be drunk and refused to take a drug and alcohol screening test. Even after the board filed an accusation against her, she was able to get work at another hospital. She was fired after showing up drunk there too, the judge wrote. Her license was revoked in 2007.

Cahill-Therrien could not be reached for comment. Her former attorney declined to discuss her case, citing attorney-client confidentiality.

Linda Whitney, chief of legislation for the medical board, which oversees about 125,000 physicians, said her board plans to seek prints from up to 15,000 physicians licensed before 1968, who have never provided them. But, she said, her board has long used other methods to snag convictions among doctors.

“Could something slip through the cracks? Absolutely,” she said. “There could be a doctor licensed in 1965 that could be convicted next week and we may never hear about it. …For consumer protection, which is our No. 1 mission, we don’t want even one to slip through the cracks.”

This story was co-published with the Los Angeles Times and also appears in the Times‘ Dec. 30, 2008 edition.

ProPublica Investigation: California’s Criminal Nurses

• Board Knew of Nurses’ Criminal Records But Took Years to Act, by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, November 1, 2008
• California Nursing Board Will Require Fingerprints From All Licensees, by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, October 24, 2008
• California Takes Steps to Probe Nurses’ Criminal Backgrounds, by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, October 11, 2008
• Criminal Past Is No Bar to Nursing in California, by Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, October 4, 2008

The Stats on Fingerprinting

• 
• Health Care Fingerprinting in California

Document Dive

• Statement from Director Carrie Lopez (PDF), Re: Fingerprinting of Licensees
• Notice Publication/Regulation Submission (PDF), Board of Registered Nursing, State of California
• The Case of Michael Marcus (PDF), Accusation and Settlement Before the Board of Dental Examiners
• Press Release on Michael Marcus (PDF), San Jose Police Department, July 5, 2005

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Regressive Mental Health Laws Inhibit Free Speech

Someone once told me that I don’t share enough about myself on this blog.  I didn’t agree but it is true that there are many important things I never write about on this blog.  Why? Because Virginia, and to be fair, most other states in this country, have now passed such regressive commitment laws that they inhibit my free speech.  Anything I put on this blog could and would be used against me in the kangaroo court they call a civil commitment proceeding under the regressive laws passed as “reform” last year due to the high emotions after Virginia Tech. in which no leader in this state was willing to step up and ask citizens not to take their feelings out on everyone with a psychiatric label or history or mislabel or even the perception of such.  Even George W. Bush eventually spoke publically of the need not to scapegoat American citizens who happened to be Muslim or from the Middle East after 9/11.  But no one in this state had the courage (sic) of George W. Bush when it came to people with psychiatric labels. 

So I don’t write as much these days.  I value honesty and full disclosure, but I value my health and well being and freedom more.   But hey,  free speech isn’t for people like me anyway, who do I think I am?  A law abiding citizen who has never even gotten a parking ticket and has voted  in every election since I was 18 except one where I was too ill? A volunteer for many groups in my community who has probably spent more money volunteering than I ever earned working?  People like me absolutely should not have free speech, that just makes good……..prejudice and bigotry and intimidation.

Who Would Lock Up Jesus Christ? The State of Virginia, That’s Who

Questioning the authority of the government, getting angry and knocking over furniture (tables in front of the temple), announcing he was the Son of G-d, attracting crowds, walking on water, preaching outside, not in a church or synagogue, no visible means of support, no home of his own, walking everywhere, upsetting people of means and status, of course Jesus Christ would be commitable under the current and soon to come lowered standards for involuntary commitment to a mental hospital in Virginia. 

But, you say, there was that one, that one who shot people up, he was one of “them”, even if he wasn’t really, even if he had a very rare disorder and even if most of “them” are less likely to be violent than the general population, still we must make an example of all of “them” because of that one.  We need someone to blame, of course we do, in fact, as we did 2,000 years ago, we need a scapegoat, someone or some group to take the blame for our own sins and our own faults and omissions.  Human beings have had scapegoats for thousands of years, why should the present be any different?  But it’s medicine or science you say.  No, it’s not.  It’s social control and it’s intolerance of difference and it’s archaic and brutal and largely avoidable if voluntary CARE is available to all, which it is not.  But never mind, we need scapegoats.  And we forget, those of us who are Christian, that G-d already gave us His only Son so that we would not need to scapegoat each other anymore. 

Merry Christmas.

How to Join the PAIMI Council of the Virginia Office of Protection and Advocacy

 

Virginia Office for Protection and Advocacy

Virginia’s Protection and Advocacy System Serving Persons with Disabilities

Home     News     Staff     VOPA Board     Advisory Councils     Programs/Goals     Links    Speakers Bureau
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PROTECTION AND ADVOCACY FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH  MENTAL ILLNESS ADVISORY COUNCIL (PAIMI) Meetings   Upcoming meeting dates include:  To be announced. Meeting Minutes (Click on this link to take you to Meeting Minutes.)       Council Mission The PAIMI Advisory Council’s mission is to provide recommendations to the Governing Board of the Virginia Office for Protection and Advocacy (VOPA) on policies and goals to be implemented to assure that individuals, covered by the PAIMI Act, are free from abuse, neglect, and related rights violations.       Council Membership The PAIMI Advisory Council is comprised of 15-20 members and shall be broadly representative of the diverse culture and geography of Virginia.  The membership of Council shall include individuals who have received or are receiving mental health services and family members, attorneys, mental health professionals, individuals knowledgeable about mental illness, and providers of mental health services.  At least sixty percent of the membership is composed of individuals who have received or are receiving mental health services or who are family members of such individuals.  The Council includes at least one member who is the parent of a minor child with mental illness. If you are interested in joining Council, please complete the Council Application (Word/PDF) and return the form to VOPA.  If you have questions about the Council, please contact VOPA at 804-225-2042 or 1-800-552-3962 or e-mail to general.vopa@vopa.virginia.gov.

“All Our Lives We Must Struggle to Rid the Earth of All Such Crimes”

Two Good Arms by Charlie Parker sung by Holly Near

We All Matter

I Aspire To Be Just Like My Father :)

“In the early 1970s, John Szwed, Erving Goffman, and Hymes founded the Center for Urban Ethnography at the University of Pennsylvania. Szwed recalls that Goffman, a renowned sociologist, was famously critical and acerbic in his judgments, but Hymes was never the victim of his coruscating tongue. One day, Szwed asked Goffman why. Goffman’s reply: “That’s because he’s a principled man and principled people are dangerous.”‘

Cesar Chumil’s Company in the Activity Room Looks Really Friendly Doesn’t It?

Male Patient with Criminal History Rapes Female Patient In Bedroom ACROSS From His

http://www. tampabay.com/news/health/article928112.ece

Still no need for giving patients the option of single gender units Virginia?  You are building a new Western State Hospital, unfortunately, and you are not taking advantage of this opportunity to create a building that allows female and male patients to make the choice to live on single gender units.  Not units with a day room in the middle, but truly single gender units/wards is what is needed to keep (mostly) female patients safe.  Also in need of change is Virginia’s system of release of NGRI and lacking capacity forensic patients who in the present system can not be released unless they move up to units where they are mixed with civilly committed patients who have no criminal history.  You can say all you like that those who are convicted are no different than those who are not but I am not buying it, that is just stigmatizing all psychiatric patients and comes from working too long with forensic patients and with released convicts.  We need separate forensic units and we need to make it possible for NGRI folks (until we get rid of this out of date and harmful plea option which leads to more time locked up than simply pleading guilty or being convicted) to be released without putting other patients in danger of being raped in a hospital.

How Minnesota Is Observing International Human Rights Day-By Forcing ECT on Ray Sandford Who Lives in the Community

 Ray’s Next Scheduled Involuntary Outpatient Electroshock is:
     10 December — International Human Rights Day!

by David W. Oaks, Executive Director, MindFreedom International

This Wednesday, 10 December 2008, human rights activists all over the
world will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the signing of the
United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

10 December is the UN’s official International Human Rights Day.

10 December is also the day that Ray Sandford is scheduled to receive
his 35th involuntary outpatient electroshock.

NEW ON WEB: Learn Ray’s story — Frequently Asked Questions About Ray
Sandford Campaign, click here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/shield/ray/sandford-faq

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Latest News on Ray Campaign

Unless action is taken swiftly, then this Wednesday morning, as he
has been for most mornings in the last few months, Ray will be
awakened early by staff in his room at the group residence Victory
House near Minneapolis.

Once more an escort will bring him against his will the 15 miles to
Mercy Hospital, where once more — under court order — doctors will
place electrodes on his head for another electroconvulsive therapy
(ECT), or electroshock, that can and has wiped out precious memories
and cognitive abilities from Ray.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     The Good News About Ray Campaign:

Because of MindFreedom’s campaign to support Ray Sandford:

* The Minnesota Governor’s office reports receiving “hundreds” of
complaints. Thank you everyone!

* Three agencies are now working to replace Ray’s non-responsive
court-appointed attorney with a new attorney.

* National media has finally interviewed Ray for an upcoming broadcast.

     The Bad News: It is Not Enough! Speak Out Now!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      ** ACTION ** ACTION ** ACTION **

It is time to take the Ray Campaign up a notch, peacefully but strongly!

Let this become a top issue in the Governor’s office.

Telephone Governor Pawlenty’s office *NOW*:

Call any day, but especially call *before* Ray’s scheduled
electroshock next Wednesday, 10 December 2008.

Call from anywhere in the world phone (651) 296-3391.

  From inside Minnesota phone toll free (800) 657-3717.

You have the best chance of reaching staff from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm
Central Time weekdays.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     WHY WON’T GOVERNOR PAWLENTY REPLY? Find out! Ask!

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty has completely stone-walled!

* His office refuses to issue any statement on the policy of forced
electroshock.

* He claims he can do nothing, that the courts are in charge, when he
could at least make sure Ray gets better legal representation for a
stay or appeal.

* His office operators have been instructed to immediately redirect
calls about Ray into a voice mail. No one we know of has ever heard
back. Some operators have hung up on callers.

* Meanwhile, the Governor is sponsoring a $200-a-head luxury hotel
conference about International Human Rights Day!

     It is time to get creative!

* Ray will not give up!

* We will not give up!

* Don’t you give up!

     Please be peaceful, but be CREATIVELY MALADJUSTED in your next
phone calls to Governor Pawlenty’s office.

First, get the name of the operator and write it down. Then start by
asking polite but firm questions about advocacy…

* about citizen input…

* about who to talk to about mental health policy…

* about the names and phone numbers of the Ombudsman office

* about mental health policy and the mental health division…

* about how poor people can have adequate legal representation…

And only then ask about why the Governor is refusing to speak out
about Involuntary Outpatient Electroshock (IOE)?

Insist on speaking to a live real person about this issue.

If you do not get a real person with a real reply, CALL BACK.

If an operator hangs up on you, call back and ask to speak to a
manager and complain.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

REMEMBER:

Telephone Governor Pawlenty’s office *NOW*:

Call any day, but especially call *before* Ray’s scheduled
electroshock next Wednesday, 10 December 2008.

Call from anywhere in the world phone (651) 296-3391.

  From inside Minnesota phone toll free (800) 657-3717.

You have the best chance of reaching staff from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm
Central Time weekdays.

If you do receive any helpful information or leads, e-mail it to news-
at-mindfreedom.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Learn more about Ray on the all-new “Frequently Asked Questions”
page about the Ray Campaign.

Learn about:

* The back story about Ray.

* How MindFreedom filed an official torture complaint about the State
of Minnesota to the United Nations.

* And what else you can do to help.

Click on the Frequently Asked Questions page here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/shield/ray/sandford-faq

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A clickable version of above Ray Alert 5 is on web here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/shield/ray/alert-5-sandford

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Get Around the Media Blackout! Forward this human rights alert to
all people who care about human rights, on and off the Internet!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Encourage Everyone to Join MindFreedom International During the Fall
2008 Support Drive

Build the people power it will take to stop the kind of torture that
Ray is experiencing!

For information about how you can join MindFreedom today, click here:

http://www.mindfreedom.org/join-donate

Surprising and Welcome Update to: Virginia Department of Mental Health Complete Whitewash of the Tragic History of Western State Hospital

http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/virginia/dp-va–westernstatehospi0415apr15,0,4147515.story
from the story above and please read the whole story:
In a 1933 report from the board of directors to John G. Pollard, then Virginia’s governor, sterilization is claimed as the facility’s “greatest work”–105 patients that year were prevented permanently from having offspring.

“This is the greatest economical measure we have as it prevents the reproduction of the unfit by the unfit and enables us to turn back into the world, under supervision, these patients without any danger of reproduction or bringing into the world extra burdens for the state in the form of criminals and dependents,” Pollard said. “We have sterilized in the State of Virginia 1,444 patients and Virginia ranks second in the number of sterilizations in the United States.”

Pollard extolled sterilization’s future by referring to another person known to be employing the measure–Germany’s Chancellor Adolf Hitler–and predicted that the measure was becoming a universal idea.

Unlimited institutional stays remained commonplace until the 1960s, when community-based treatments were introduced as the preferred option.

In 1974, a law limited involuntary commitment to a maximum of 180 days.

“Just cause had to be shown in order to extend the commitment up to another 180 days,” Beghtol said.

Someone who returned to Western State on a daily basis was Ralph DeWitt Jr., who worked for Western State for 47 years, beginning in 1953 as an aide then later as a registered nurse. About 3,500 patients lived at the hospital then.

“There’s a stigma about mental illness and the public likes to keep them hidden away,” DeWitt said.

He also said any threatening behavior could be cause to get a person committed.

“It was an easy way to get rid of a (spouse),” he said, adding that the hospital’s primary duty was to warehouse patients.

“It was what the public wanted,” DeWitt said.

“I don’t know if I could’ve stood it. A lot of the behavior was caused by us locking them up. We kept people in seclusion for unlimited periods.”

DeWitt believes assessment is the key to gaining a better understanding of patients.

Today, Western State is a 260-bed facility and is similar to a college campus, providing up to 86 classes per day that teach patients about recovering from their illness, Beghtol said. The system involves three tracks: symptom recognition and medications; total wellness, which includes job and living skills and exercise; and recreation skills.

“We’ve come a long way, but if you have the attitude that the patient is subhuman, they’re going to prove to you they can be,” DeWitt said. “We’ve got a ways to go. They are people, too.”

P>

Information from: The News-Virginian, http://www.newsvirginian.com

So, DeJarnette is mentioned as a long serving director of WSH but no mention of his notoriety as a major promoter and perpetrator of forced sterilization on patients of Western State Hospital and the role that Virginia’s eugenics law played in the mass eugenics in Nazi Germany and even at the Nuremburg Doctor trials?  No mention of his notorious complaint that the Nazis were ahead of Americans when we had invented eugenics?  No mention of torture of patients through insulin comas, cold water packs, beatings and of course always restraints and seclusion.  No mention of forced lobotomies by the notorious Walter Freeman at Western?  No mention of all the folks who had no reason to be there at all who were locked up for life?  Well I guess if you are going to justify tearing down a site of historic torture and human rights violations as if it were just any other set of buildings than you would need to pretend there is nothing to the history of this place to make such a plan abhorrent to decent people who respect the memories of those who have been tortured and mutilated and had their lives stolen in the name of pseudoscience and sexist “morality” and religious intolerance and all the other unconstitutional and un-American happenings at this historic set of buildings. 

Or, you could actually tell the truth as they do on the University of Virginia website about UVA’s role in eugenics or just tell the truth and shame the devil.  

 http://www.wsh.dmhmrsas.virginia.gov/history.htm

Western State Hospital was founded in January 1825 by an Act of the General Assembly becoming the second mental health facility for the Commonwealth of Virginia. A Court of Directors was commissioned by the Governor to select and purchase “a site near the town of Staunton in Augusta County to the West of the Blue Ridge Mountains and to thereupon construct an appropriate asylum for the receipt of patients.”

The original building (which is still standing and registered as a National Historical Landmark) was opened on July 24, 1828, with Mr. Samuel Woodward designated as Keeper, and his wife, Mary Woodward assigned as Matron. A visiting physician, Dr. William Boyes of Staunton, provided care for patients admitted during the early years of the hospital.

The first patient was admitted the morning of July 24, 1828. He was a teacher whose diagnosis was “hard study.” A second patient was admitted that afternoon from Goochland County, Virginia, but remained only a few months at the facility before he escaped. The first woman arrived on July 25, and was admitted with a diagnosis of “Religious Excitement.”

Shortly after the facility opened, it was filled with patients and the Court of Directors implemented an admissions screening process to limit admissions to only those patients “who were either dangerous to society from their violence, or those who were offensive to its moral sense by their indecency and to those cases of derangement where there is reasonable ground to hope that the afflicted may be restored.”

The first director of the hospital, Dr. Francis T. Stribling, was appointed in 1840. He served the hospital until his death in 1874. Dr. Stribling embraced the concept of “Moral Therapy” and was one of the thirteen founders of the American Psychiatric Association. In 1905, a physician who began working at Western State in 1889 as a medical intern was appointed Director of the facility.

Dr. Joseph DeJarnette served as Director from 1905 until 1943, 38 years, which represents the longest tenure of any of the sixteen facility directors serving the facility since its opening.

The facility’s name was changed in 1894 from Western Lunatic Asylum to Western State Hospital. The facility continued to increase in size through the 1950’s and 1960’s with the opening of a second site in 1949-1950. The facility’s patient population eventually increased to above 3,000 at two sites.

Beginning with the Commonwealth’s move toward deinstitutionalization in the early 1970’s, the population declined substantially until, by the late 1970’s, it stood at approximately 1,350. Further reductions were realized over the last fifteen years as hospital programs were related to sister facilities and the communities. A more restrictive criteria for admissions and improved prescreening programs have also been implemented. Substantial improvements in psychopharmacology and community treatment modalities along with earlier intervention have also contributed to reduced census.

In 1978 the University of Virginia (UVA) expanded its affiliation with the hospital providing for joint faculty appointments and the assignment of psychiatric residents and medical students to the facility for training. This program continued to expand with particular highlights in 1985 with the appointment of Dr. Spradlin as the Facility Director at Western State. In 1990, the hospital received the first National Award from the American Psychiatric Association as the exemplary program in Collaborative Services between a public mental health facility and a university.

Western State Hospital has extensive affiliations with colleges and universities involved in all of the major professional groups including. Various staff at Western State Hospital had joint faculty appointments with a number of institutions of higher education; staff with the Department of Psychiatric Medicine interdigitate with hospital programs for the provision of services and educational supervision.

Inspiration in the Face of Setbacks–We Can Keep This up to Our Late 80’s Too!

If It Is Any Night of the Week, Cesar Chumil Is Locked in His Cell With No One to Say Good-Night to Him

Good night Cesar, sleep tight.

Why Feminists Should Be Concerned About the Next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-lane16-2008nov16,0,5678764.story

Parental Alienation Syndrome, which has no scientific basis whatsoever, is most often used against women in custody cases including by ex-husbands with documented histories of domestic violence against their ex-wife and/or children.  It does not mean “alienated parent” as the author above implies, it means that a parent, usually a mother, is being accused in court of alienating her child or children from their father by being truthful about the danger they pose to their child’s physical safety or the mother’s safety.  Courts seem to love the made up syndrome as an excuse to give custody rights or shared custody to men who have abused their wives and/or children, but until now there has been no official status for this made up syndrome.  If it makes it into the DSM’s next version, divorce lawyers and abusive divorcing spouses will have even more ability to continue to abuse their exes through the courts and to put their children in danger in some cases.  Women will continue to be labelled hysterical for reacting normally to horrible experiences such as discovering their children have been sexually abused by their father but now there will be so called scientific backing for these made up claims in court.  Up for inclusion again is making women’s menstrual cycles into a psychiatric condition also.  We now have many more women psychiatrists than we did when the first DSM came out, why do women continue to be the target of sexist and destructive labelling by the American Psychiatric Association behind closed doors even so?  While there is a dearth of concern about psychiatry and its destructive effect on women over the ages today, nothing like the great work that was done in the ’70’s and 80’s is out there now and in fact many feminist blogs are guilty of the same continuation of prejudice against people with psychiatric labels as the rest of society, forgetting their history altogether in my personal opinion, maybe the threat to custody of children will start to wake feminists up to the destructive and continuing sexist power of psychiatry over the lives of women in the United States.

About PTSD From Punishment Used As “Treatment” In People With Autism But Applicable to Punishments Used As “Treatment” In People With Psychiatric Labels

Can Aversives and Restraints Produce PTSD in People with Autism?
Published in The Communicator, the newsletter of The Autism National Committee (Summer 1998)

As we learn to listen to people with autism, to their families and to their friends, evidence is growing that, in certain extreme circumstances, behaviors typically explained away as newly-emerged symptoms of the person’s autism may in fact indicate something else: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.
The general public may have heard of this disorder occurring among Vietnam veterans, Bosnian civilians, or even the young witnesses to the recent spate of schoolyard shootings. In the book Trauma and Recovery (NY: Basic Books, 1992), Judith Lewis Herman, M.D., describes the origins and consequences of PTSD:
“The human response to danger is a complex, integrated system of reactions, encompassing both body and mind. Threat initially arouses the sympathetic nervous system, causing the person in danger to feel an adrenalin rush and go into a state of alert. Threat also concentrates a person’s attention on the immediate situation. In addition, threat may alter ordinary perceptions: people in danger are often able to disregard hunger, fatigue, or pain. Finally, threat evokes intense feelings of fear and anger. These changes in arousal, attention, perception, and emotion are normal, adaptive reactions. They mobilize the threatened person for strenuous action, either in battle or in flight.
Traumatic reactions occur when action is of no avail. When neither resistance nor escape is possible, the human system of self-defense becomes overwhelmed and disorganized. Each component of the ordinary response to danger, having lost its utility, tends to persist in an altered and exaggerated state long after the actual danger is over.
Traumatic events produce profound and lasting changes in physiological arousal, emotion, cognition, and memory. More-over, traumatic events may sever these normally integrated functions from one another. The trauma-tized person may experience intense emotion but without clear memory of the event, or may remember everything in detail but without emotion. She may find herself in a constant state of irritability without knowing why. Traumatic symptoms have a tendency to become disconnected from their source and to take on a life of their own.” (p. 43)
Among the symptoms of PTSD described by Dr. Herman are alterations in affect regulation, which may be manifested as self-injury or explosive anger; alterations in consciousness, including the unwanted reliving of experiences, either in a sudden, intrusive manner or as a preoccupation or thought that won’t go away; and alterations in a person’s sense of self or of relations with others, resulting in manifestations of helplessness, paralysis of initiative, isolation, or withdrawal. (p. 121)
As Dr. Herb Lovett observed, “People who have been hurt in the name of therapy may not understand their plight any differently than survivors of cult abuse or sexual abuse. A common feature of post-traumatic stress syndrome is the flashback in which a person acts as if a memory is present reality…. every time they recall their previous maltreatment, unless their panic and rage are recognized as a function of stress, they are likely to be further stigmatized as `impossible to serve.’” (p. 208, Learning to Listen, 1996).
Those who are without speech, whose ability to produce the needed words “on demand” is unreliable, or whose words are discounted, not only may be more vulnerable to what we perceive as “typical” criminal acts, but also to experiences of intense frustration, helplessness, and entrapment in “no-win” situations. An unreliable sensorimotor system — a body that does not always do what you want it to do — in combination with “treatments,” services, and living facilities which not only fail to help the person accomplish what they need to do, but make their quality of life contingent on their successful accomplishment of what someone else wishes them to do, may, however unintentionally, establish a situation of intense threat from which neither victory nor escape are perceived possible. Those families and people with autism who have reported to the Autism National Committee on trauma-type symptoms often connect them to experiences of this type of “entrapment.”
Despite fairly abundant anecdotal evidence, knowledge of the nature, prevalence, and treatment of psychological trauma in the lives of people with severe disabilities is lacking. Herman’s book suggests a possible reason. In outlining the historical roots of PTSD research, she observes that “Periods of active investigation have alternated with periods of oblivion.” (p. 7). Three forms of trauma have come to light over the past century, and “Each time, the investigation of that trauma has flourished in affiliation with a political movement.” (p. 9).
The first to come to public awareness was “hysteria,” which the late nineteenth century was briefly inclined to consider as a possible manifestation of the isolated, politically powerless lives led by most Western women (an interpretation later dismissed in favor of Freudian reductionism). The second form of trauma to be studied was “shell shock” or combat neurosis, which became an issue in England and the United States after the First World War and reached a peak after the Vietnam War. Here the political context was the growth of an antiwar movement and a re-thinking of the effects of armed combat in the modern world. The last and most recent type of trauma to achieve widespread public awareness was sexual and domestic violence, spotlighted by the feminist movement as well as modern political advocacy to secure the human rights and protection of children. Many people with disabilities and their advocates would like to add to Herman’s list a fourth category, but its recognition may well be dependent on their success in bringing political awareness of issues such as aversive “treatments” and institutional living conditions.
The personal and public recognition of trauma which occurs at the hands of another human being is difficult to achieve, Herman notes: “When traumatic events are natural disasters or `acts of God,’ those who bear witness sympathize readily with the victim. But when the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides.
It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering. …
In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make certain that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rational-ization….The perpetrator’s argu-ments prove irresistible when the bystander faces them in isolation. Without a supportive social environment, the bystander usually succumbs to the temptation to look the other way….” (pp. 7-8)
How much more operative might this principle be when the victim can be characterized as a person with a severe disability and problem behaviors who must experience aversive “treatments” as a “medical necessity,” and when the perpetrator seems both pleasant and reasonable? As Herman observes, those who expect a purveyor of abuse to radiate warning signals will find themselves confused: “Since he does not perceive that anything is wrong with him, he does not seek help — unless he is in trouble with the law. His most consistent feature, in both the testimony of victims and the observations of psychologists, is his apparent normality….Authoritarian, secretive, sometimes grandiose, and even paranoid, the perpetrator is nevertheless exquisitely sensitive to the realities of power and to social norms. Only rarely does he get into difficulties with the law; rather, he seeks out situations where his tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired. His demeanor provides an excellent camouflage, for few people believe that extraordinary crimes can be committed by men of such conventional appearance.” (p. 75).
Nor do perpetrators of abuse have to resort to violence in order to cause trauma: “Although violence is a universal method of terror, the perpetrator may use violence infrequently, as a last resort….Fear is also increased by inconsistent and unpredictable outbursts of vio-lence and by capricious enforce-ment of petty rules.” (p. 77)
Dr. Herman finds other key elements in the development of PTSD to be “isolation, secrecy, and betrayal (which) destroy the relationships that would afford protection.” (p. 100). In the absence of relationships with caring, affirming people, the foundation of personal develop-ment is undermined.
The only way back from severe psychological trauma is through re-establishing connectedness with others: “Traumatic events destroy the sustaining bonds between individual and community. Those who have survived learn that their sense of self, of worth, of humanity, depends upon a feeling of connection to others. The solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair, and the strongest antidote to traumatic experience. Trauma isolates; the group recreates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms.” (p. 214).
It may be significant that the reestablishment of trust and connectedness to others is also the factor credited with improving the lives of people with autism who believe, or whose families believe, that certain of their symptoms originated in psychological trauma. Clearly we have much to learn as this issue begins to receive the attention it deserves.
http://www.autcom.org/articles%5CPTSD.html

Information Sharing Policy
AUTCOM believes in the power of good information to drive out bad. You are welcome to download, copy, reprint, and redistribute any information from our Home Page. When doing so, please give credit to the Autism National Committee. If possible, drop us a note and let us know what proved useful and what is still needed

Research Shows Most Psychiatrists Are Not Taking Adequate Care of Their Patients’ Medical Needs

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/43/21/2?etoc

Despite all the warnings and all the publicity about the medical dangers of second generation anti-psychotics, the majority of psychiatrists are not monitoring their patients cholesterol and diabetes.  If psychiatrists want as they say they do to be as respected as other medical doctors in the United States, which they currently are not by far, they need to step up their practice of medicine and stop just handing out pills in the quickest appointments they can manage and or earn the biggest bucks in psychiatry by doing ECT because it pays so well compared to medication monitoring and psychotherapy.  First do no harm applies to every medical doctor, including psychiatrists.  Instead of blaming the lower respect and trust in psychiatrists compared to other medical specialities on stigma associated with their patient population, psychiatrists need to look in the mirror at their own behavior.

American Citizen Forced to Have Weekly Electroshock Against His Will From His Own Home

MindFreedom International — 7 November 2008
Human Rights Alert: Involuntary Electroshock
http://www.mindfreedom.org – please forward

    If it’s Wednesday, then Ray Sandford is Getting
    Escorted from His Home for Another Forced Electroshock

    Minnesota Resident Gets Involuntary Electroconvulsive
    Therapy (ECT) On A Weekly Ongoing *Outpatient* Basis

    ACTION: How You Can Easily E-mail Minnesota Governor

    by David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International

The past Wednesday morning after the historic USA election what were 
you doing?

I know what Ray Sandford, 54, was doing.

Each and every Wednesday, early in the morning, staff shows up at 
Ray’s sheltered living home called Victory House in Columbia Heights, 
Minnesota, adjacent to Minneapolis.

Staff escorts Ray the 15 miles to Mercy Hospital.

There, Ray is given another of his weekly electroconvulsive therapy 
(ECT) treatments, also known as electroshock. All against his will. 
On an outpatient basis.

And it’s been going on for months.

Ray says the weekly forced electroshocks are “scary as hell.” He 
absolutely opposes having the procedure. He says it’s causing poor 
memory for names such as of friends and his favorite niece. “What am 
I supposed to do, run away?” Instead, Ray phoned his local library’s 
reference desk to ask about human rights groups, and the librarian 
referred him to MindFreedom International.

Ray called me at our office here at MindFreedom International about 
two weeks ago. At first I wasn’t sure I believed him.

Of course, MindFreedom International has documented proven cases of 
electroshock against the expressed wishes of the subject all over the 
world, including in the USA. MindFreedom succeeded in having the 
United Nations World Health Organization call in writing for a global 
ban on all involuntary electroshock.

But this is the first time I’ve been on the phone with someone 
getting court-ordered forced shock while living out in the community, 
on an outpatient basis.

This is the ultimate double whammy.

I confirmed Ray’s story by calling two staff at Victory House as well 
as his court-appointed conservator, Tonya Wilhelm of Luthern Support 
Services of Minnesota.

Ms. Wilhelm said, “We are following the letter of the law.” She said 
the State of Minnesota had secured a variety of court orders that 
require Ray to have forced electroshock against his expressed wishes. 
Ms. Wilehlm says it’s all legal and she can’t do anything about it.

Krista Erickson, chair of MindFreedom’s Shield Campaign, sees it 
differently. “This is terrible. This is a serious human rights 
violation that should stop. I hope MindFreedom members and supporters 
speak out. Even if Minnesota is following the letter of the current 
law, the law ought to be changed. And Ray has not had the legal power 
to appeal to higher courts.”

I pointed out to Conservator Wilhelm that the public — when they 
find out about forced electroshock — is passionately opposed to 
their taxpayer money being used to force such brutality on citizens. 
Ms. Wilhelm did let slip that what is happening to Ray — involuntary 
outpatient electroshock — is not that uncommon in Minnesota.

But when Ms. Wilhelm found out we at MindFreedom are issuing one of 
our public human rights alert to you and others, at Ray’s repeated 
request, she said something chilling.

Ms. Wilhelm claimed she had a legal right to stop MindFreedom!

Ms. Wilhelm told me, “Only I can give you permission legally to say 
anything publicly about this.”

I pointed out we are not a medical facility, and that if she falsely 
claims we’re doing anything illegal then this is defamation. Which 
really is illegal.

Ms. Wilhelm laughed loudly in the phone, said “let our lawyers talk,” 
and hung up on me. I hope she hung up to read the First Amendment.

Let’s disobey Ms. Wilhelm!

Spread Ray’s alert far and wide! Speak out against this electrical 
torture, now!

Because… Remember… While the world marvels at the power of USA 
democracy:

If it’s Wednesday morning, then Ray Sandford is being led from his 
home — which is supposed to be his castle — to get another weekly 
forced procedure that can cause brain damage and wipe out memories.

- David W. Oaks, Director, MindFreedom International

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mind your freedom. Disobey Ray’s conservator now!

Forward this alert to all appropriate places on and off the Internet, 
IMMEDIATELY!

And take the *below* actions. Thank you. Ray and I are counting on you!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

      * * * ACTION * * * ACTION * * * ACTION * * *

You can do this in a moment. It’s free! DO IT NOW!

E-mail your firm but polite message to Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

SAMPLE MESSAGE — your own words are best:

“Investigate the weekly involuntary outpatient electroshock of Ray 
Sandford. Every Wednesday morning, MindFreedom says Ray is brought 
from Victory House in Columbia Heights, Minnesota to Mercy Hospital 
for forced electroshock. Stop all forced electroshock today! Taxpayer 
money should not fund torture!” [Your name/contact.]

E-mail address: tim.pawlenty@state.mn.us

Or use this handy web form:

http://www.governor.state.mn.us/contacts/Forms/askthegovernor/index.htm

or this link:

http://tinyurl.com/mn-governor

~~~~~~~~~~~~

      * * * ADDITIONAL ACTIONS TO SUPPORT RAY! * * *

1) E-mail a complaint to Luthern Social Services of Minnesota (LSSMN) 
about Ray’s conservator.

Sample message:

“Investigate allegations that LSSMN employee Tonya Wilhelm tried to 
stop a public human rights alert by MindFreedom International about 
her client, Ray Sandford, who is receiving weekly outpatient 
involuntary electroshock at Mercy Hospital in Minneapolis. If 
verified, please reprimand, fire and replace Ms. Wilhelm, and please 
place this in her permanent personnel record. Please support human 
rights.” [Your name/contact.]

Use LSSMN’s web page:

http://www.lssmn2.org/contact_lss.htm

Or phone Luthern Social Services at: (218) 726-4888

You can copy your message to headquarters of The Evangelical Lutheran 
Church in America (ELCA):

info@elca.org

 From ELCA’s web site about their church: “It’s a story of a powerful 
and patient God who has boundless love for all people of the world, 
who brings justice for the oppressed.”

More at:

http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe.aspx

2) E-mail a complaint to Allina Hospital and Clinics, owner of Mercy 
Hospital.

Sample message:

“Investigate allegations that your patient Ray Sandford of Victory 
House is receiving involuntary outpatient electroconvulsive therapy 
against his will each Wednesday at Mercy Hospital.”

Use this web page:

http://www.allina.com/ahs/help.nsf/page/contact

Or phone: (763) 236-6000

3) Ray is open to visitors and supportive postal mail:

Ray Sandford
Victory House
4427 Monroe St.
Columbia Heights, MN 55421-2880 USA

MindFreedom will print out and mail to Ray some of your e-mail 
messages to the Governor and others, and put some on the web. E-mail 
a copy of what you write to news@mindfreedom.org.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

AND ONE MORE THING!

Say “no” to mental health system censorship!

Disobey Ray’s conservator now!

PLEASE forward this public human alert to all appropriate places on 
and off the Internet, IMMEDIATELY! Thank you!

Applebaum and Monahan-Compare and Contrast Biases Stated or Otherwise

John Monahan ends his editorial on leverage in mental health (in which he makes the mistake of conflating SSI payments with SSDI disability payments and the mistake of assuming the ADA allows landlords to legally discriminate against people with psychiatric disabilities) with the statement that “Contrary to the confident claims of advocates on either side of the debate, the legal status of many forms of mandated treatment is currently uncertain. Given the recent origins of many kinds of leverage, it will be some time before we know which will survive constitutional or statutory challenge.” As if John Monahan were not himself an advocate for outpatient commitment!?  What exactly was he voting for on the Commitment Task-force of the Virginia Supreme Court’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform? For expanding the use of outpatient commitment in the state of Virginia, that’s what.  Monahan has made previous statements in articles implying that there are overly dramatic activists on both sides of the outpatient commitment debate while he himself is a disinterested, unopinionated academic observer.   No one who has seen him in discussions of the issue can make sense of these claims in my humble opinion.

Paul Applebaum on the other hand has just come out with a reviewof E. Fuller Torrey’s new book promoting stigma and forced treatment that takes on Torrey’s misleading use of anecdotes and limited and dated statistics to make his case.  Applebaum is not a civil rights activist by any stretch of the imagination, he actually believes it is still too hard to commit folks to psychiatric hospitals in some parts of this country (some people will not be happy until we have a 100% commitment rate in every state), but he points out the huge gaps in funding for services in the community and does not claim that these need to be coercive or leveraged to be effective, a claim with no proof nor merit in my opinion that Monahan seems to be making.  The existence of leverage does not prove that it works, it only proves that it exists and no more.  Applebaum is honest enough to point out that even the best funded mental health system (or any system) can prevent rare acts of random violence by anyone, “mentally ill” or sane and that preventing all acts of violence by people labelled with mental illness would do little to promote the safety of the American public given how low a percentage they comprise of the total.  Applebaum also points out that using fear of violence as a strategy to get what one wants makes the lives of people with psychiatric diagnoses harder not better. 

Of course there are no bias free human beings, academics or otherwise, but it does get old when some folks claim they are the unbiased one in the room or world while others are wild-eyed activists.  No matter who it is claiming to be the unbiased voice, Monahan or anyone in a position of prominence in mental health policy in Virginia.   Personally, I actually prefer the wild eyed activists on the other side because I always know what I am dealing with as do they .  Congratulations on your new up to date blog TAC <evil grin>.

Apologies For Slow Posting These Days

Recuperation from kidney transplant surgery turns out to be a lot more involved and interesting than I would have predicted.  Of course I tried not to think about the recuperation process at all ahead of time which would account for how unprepared I was.   No driving for 4 to 6 weeks is much more of a hassle than I would have predicted.  Also following the rules for being home bound and therefore being entitled to a whole 2 short and 2 hour late visits a week from  a home health nurse to take my blood to be tested means I can only legitimately go out for church, a haircut and doctor appointments and perhaps shopping if driven but that’s not really clear, only a suggestion by the home health nurse.  She is of course not “late” but lives far out and could not leave on time to get here when I am scheduled to take my medication and has other transplant patients and the home health agency could not possibly arrange things so that I was not the one who is always forced to wait 2 hours twice a week to take my medications and even have my cup of coffee.  Which pushes my whole medication regime back 2 hours twice a week when we were told in the hospital it was supposed to be strictly 12 hours apart but it is not lateness, I was firmly told I could not call it lateness, it is just the way things are.  Today i would have been late for  a clinic appointment if I had not cancelled it because my ride cancelled because even though I told her I had the appointment she did not come any earlier unless you count 7 minutes earlier.  I feel so special.  Not.  But perhaps it is the fact that she told me “government can’t do everything” when I said it didn’t make sense that I am not allowed to drive and not allowed to lift more than 5 pounds and yet still not considered eligible for home health help with shopping.  She said this is the role of churches, not government.  So if you are an atheist, better join a church anyway in case you ever need help after surgery.  Or maybe complain to the government that people should not be forced to join a church to get Medicare home health services they need when money is being thrown at Wall Street to buy banks and give bonuses to executives?  And how could any church support someone in that way long term?  Are all folks who need intensive home health services supposed to be forced onto Medicaid and give up all their assets and right to a choice of decent doctors in order to survive?  I think I unfortunately know that the answer to that question is “yes.” 

I know, I should be very grateful and I am.  I have a perfect kidney.  Everything is working.  I can eat vegetables and fruit!  (And I am ).  But I can not help thinking of those forced to deal with home health every day of their lives and want to scream and than want to join them in their efforts to improve things.  Anyone hiring a home health activist with a new kidney and need for expensive health insurance coverage? Because it seems one of my medications costs 1,000 a month and I am in the doughnut hole, that lovely hole congress put in instead of allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.  Luckily I only take it for 2 and a half months, unluckily if I hit catastrophic coverage it will go back to zero come January 1st and I will start all over and fall into the doughnut hole again. 

I have this silly idea that after Obama is elected we might actually talk about these issues.  I’ve been fooled before, I thought Clinton would give people on disability the right to keep their Medicare if they returned to work, a win/win if anything is.  I hope I am not fooled again but I have already voted absentee early in person and if anyone might do this it is Obama.

Think Employees Who Spoke Out Today Would Have Any Better Chance of Winning?

http://www.newsleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081101/LIFESTYLE22/811010303

This Week in History

25 Years Ago

Nov. 4: A federal grand jury found in favor of state mental health officials in their long legal ordeal with seven former Western State Hospital employees who claimed they were fired for saying patients at the mental hospitals were abused.

6 Days in Jail for 2 Rapes of the Same State Hospital Patient by a Staff Member

The janitor who was originally charged with sexual assault  in Oregon was allowed to plead to 2 counts of official misconduct and sentenced to a whole 6 days in jail plus probation on the false theory that the woman he raped was able to give meaningful consent to sex in a total institution where new patients are told no one will ever believe anything they have to say and that they are completely dependent on staff for as long as they remain there.  The female patient was also most likely so drugged up as to be unable to give informed consent to anything, her so called consent is about as meaningful as the “consent” of a woman on the date rape drug. 

But let’s build more state hospital beds to keep women and men safer, eh, Treatment Advocacy Center and other fascists in training? Let’s keep calling this snake pits “hospitals” as if they bore any resemblance to a real medical hospital rather than being exactly like a prison by another name with more incapacitating drugs in use.  And let us not even THINK about single gender units as an option when we build new state hospitals, eh Virginia which is rebuilding Western State Hospital, infamous on the street for sex between patients most of whom are incapable of real consent, eh Virginia?  Because women who end up in state psychiatric hospitals are not really women are they?  Not really people deserving of protection from exploitation and rape and trauma, right?

And if this post makes you defensive and angry at me and others who keep bringing up this issue or who report their experience of assault in psychiatric settings I suggest you take a good look at what is making you so defensive rather than thoughtful and proactive.  Have you let reports like this slide by?  Have you failed to report suspected abuse in the past?  Are you feeling guilty and thus defensive?  Here’s a hint: your guilty conscience does no one any good and neither does your defensiveness but your proactive steps now and your support could do a lot of good for a lot of women.  Think about it rather than just react.

Kidney Transplant October 14th, 2008

I got home from the hospital yesterday afternoon, for kidney folks my creatinine is down to .9 and holding and my hemoglobin is still rising since yesterday.   I have no information about my donor nor their family but I have a huge amount of gratitude in my heart and they will be in  my prayers forever.   I had been back on dialysis for exactly one week when the call came in the middle of the night.

Another Day, Another Sexual Assault of a Female State Hospital Patient–STILL No Need for Single Gender Option Virginia???

A psychiatric technician at Western State Hospital in Washington state, (no relation to Virginia’s Western State Hospital), was reported for sexual assault twice with no discipline and no charges laid until finally on the third complaint by an intellectually disabled woman in which the behavior was witnessed by other staff criminal charges were brought.  Who knows how many other women were assaulted in the 2 years since the first complaint?  And yet we hear no response to the request to have a single gender living and personal care option for state hospital patients in Virginia even as a brand new hospital with a brand new opportunity for a different structural layout is being designed for our Western State Hospital.  When will the state of Virginia and most particularly the Department of Health and Human Resources, the Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Substance Abuse and the Governor’s office start showing some concern for this elemental safety precaution?  Are they going to wait until a law is passed requiring them to protect patients as was done in Alaska and signed by Governor Palin?  Or could they just do the right thing now?  Wouldn’t that be a nice surprise?

We The People Mission Statement

We The People

In remembrance of Esmin Green
who was murdered-by-neglect at the Kings County Hospital 
CenterPsychiatric Emergency Room, June 19, 2008.
Mission Statement

We resolve to work from a human rights platform to end involuntary 
psychiatric treatment and all other forms of abuse and torture in 
psychiatric systems.

We Are

A group of individuals who identify as having experienced psychiatric 
atrocities, people who have psychiatric histories, and our supporters.

Objectives

To address existing harmful structures and dynamics of the public 
mental health system, including:

Situations in which people’s socioeconomic struggles are mislabeled as 
“mental illnesses” and then are subjected to psychiatric diagnoses and 
treatments;
Failures to provide non-psychiatric alternatives to traditional mental 
health and community services;
Violations of international human rights and civil rights; and
The lack of protection of the lives and dignity of people in emotional 
distress or crisis.
Strategies

Actions will be collectively identified, researched, and considered 
through working groups and consensus.  Group members will provide 
testimonies and demand accountability.  Activism in the areas of 
advocacy, legislation, media, networking, human rights, and the 
abolition of forced psychiatric practices will be developed through 
group deliberation.

For more information:
www.theopalproject.org/vigil.html
http://www.mindfreedom.org/as/act/us/new-york/esmin-green/

  Contacts:
Daniel Hazen (315) 528-3385
340 Hudson Avenue, Albany, NY 12210
dan@psychrights.org

Lauren Tenney (516) 319-4295
21 Graham Boulevard
Staten Island, NY 10305
laurentenney@aol.com 
 

Les Cook (646) 596-7269
114 West 116th Street, Suite 16
New York, NY 10026
les@dreamweaverspeersupport.org

Washington Post Disrespects People With Mental Illness

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100301513.html

Lobotomies were not a “treatment”, they were purposeful brain damage.  Behavior modification had not been invented before psychotropic drugs, caging children and shackling folks is abuse and violation of basic human rights, not “behavioral modification” unless the Post wants to start calling whipping of slaves before slavery ended “behavioral modification.”  There were deaths there: yes, patients were killed by STAFF and by neglect and by poor treatment and infectious disease.  Ghosts and people with mental illness?  If there are ghosts, they are ghosts of those who abused innocents because they had power over them and no one cared and because they could and they are paying for it.  Not that I believe in ghosts, but if I did, the people who suffered and died in that horrible institution are in heaven now at peace at last and it is their torturers who are left to wander the asylum for their crimes. 

The writer wondered if it was ethical to take the tour but didn’t wonder if it was ethical to write an article for a paper of record sensationalizing and degrading people with mental illness and their suffering at the hands of ignorance and prejudice?  Yeah, I guess I won’t be subscribing to the Post to read  when I go back on dialysis as I thought I might.  Will have to ante up for the New York Times.  Sheesh, this isn’t about political correctness this is about old fashioned decency.

West Virginia Psychiatric Hospital Expansion Will Not Accept Forensic Patients, A Step in the Right Direction for Patient Safety

http://wvgazette.com/News/200808181545

A non-profit psychiatric hospital in West Virginia is adding 22 beds in its rebuilding so it can accept more people diverted from the state’s over-crowded state hospitals.  It is not going to accept forensic patients who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity or are otherwise in a psychiatric bed after being arrested for a crime.   This may not seem like much to get happy about, but the fact is that mixing forensic and voluntary and civilly committed psychiatric patients has always been a source of danger for patients who have committed no crime and are at their most vulnerable in the total institution that all psychiatric hospitals are.  The mixing of forensic and non-forensic patients may also have a deleterious effect on staff attitudes towards patients of the hospital in general as we are a society that still uses distancing and othering as our only known ways to deal with criminal behavior.  If at some future date we become a society that values and implements restorative justice and other paradigms that work to make shunning and distancing no longer necessary cultural responses than this will all be moot, but we are very far from there yet.

Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry Welcomes the Interim Report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE   Date: September 24, 2008

For Further Information: Tina Minkowitz Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry Telephone: 518-494-0174 E-mail: tminkowitz@earthlink.net

 

The Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry welcomes the Interim Report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture

 

The Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (CHRUSP) welcomes the Interim Report by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak, which signals an end to impunity for psychiatric torture and ill treatment.  The report focuses attention on torture and persons with disabilities, applying the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) to the obligations of states to prevent and punish torture.

 

The Special Rapporteur names forced psychiatric interventions (such as psychosurgery, electroshock and administration of mind-altering drugs including neuroleptics) among practices that may constitute torture or ill treatment.   Other medical practices that may constitute torture or ill treatment are restraint and seclusion, forced abortion or sterilization and involuntary commitment to psychiatric institutions.  The medical context itself is one where “serious violations and discrimination against persons with disabilities may be masked as ‘good intentions’ on the part of health care professionals.”

 

In his conclusions, the Special Rapporteur calls on states to ratify and implement the Convention and its Optional Protocol, to legislate recognition of the legal capacity of persons with disabilities and ensure that support in decision-making is provided where needed, and to issue guidelines on free and informed consent in line with the Convention.  He calls for independent human rights monitoring of institutions where persons with disabilities may reside, and for UN and regional human rights mechanisms to take account of the Convention and integrate its standards into their work. 

 

“This development is significant for several reasons,” said Tina Minkowitz, founder of CHRUSP.  “It makes explicit what the Convention had left implicit:  that forced psychiatric treatment is a serious violation of human rights, even when done with the best intentions.  States that do not make the necessary reforms to eliminate forced treatment and institutionalization and to respect the legal capacity of persons with disabilities may run afoul of their obligations to effectively stop torture and ill treatment.  The report gives us new tools for legal advocacy and redress of violations, in states that have ratified the CRPD and in those that have not yet ratified.”

 

**** END ****

 

About the Center for Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (CHRUSP):

 

The purpose of the organization is to work for full legal capacity, an end to forced psychiatric treatment, and equality and advancement for users and survivors of psychiatry within a human rights framework.

  The aims of the organization are to:

·         Advocate for the advancement of the human rights of users and survivors of psychiatry.

·         Provide international consultation to influence key decision-makers regarding matters that affect users and survivors.

·         Develop model legislation focusing on legal capacity and free and informed consent.

·         Facilitate sharing of information and knowledge among user / survivor organizations around the world

·         Monitor progress on human rights instruments including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities with respect to issues affecting users and survivors of psychiatry

 

***********************************************

 

 

Open Thread for Whining: Free Pass Lasts 48 Hours, I’ll Start :P

I know I should keep up the front that everything is fine and that having kidney failure and neprhogenic D.I. is a walk in the park and that compared to all the folks with really serious problems I have nothing to complain about–which I truly believe on most days and even today.  I’m not undergoing chemo, my hair grew back nicely after half of it fell out from my illness (not cancer) 11 years ago now, I have a good haircut and comfy shoes got in the last week and I own my own home without a mortgage and no flooding or hurricane hit it.  I am doing well comparatively speaking.

But today i need to do a little whining and not be the upbeat, everything’s fine person with a serious medical problem.  Because I wanted to go see Michelle Obama speak tomorrow but as I suspected there is no way I can pull it off.  Too long a trip to deal with the lack of parking, too much standing and waiting, too likely that I won’t be able to bring in enough water to last to cope with my chronic dehydration from the neprhogenic D.I. and frankly, about to go back on dialysis soon, I’m napping most afternoons at least once.  (something about the kidney failure is messing with my circadian rhythms, insomnia is a very common symptom of kidney failure.)  So I can’t go realistically because no one wants to be that woman who faints at a rally, really nobody wants to be that person.  So this is my pathetic whine about it. 

Please share your own non-pathetic I’m sure whines in comments if you are having a non-positive kind of week yourself.

Now That’s a Depressing Research Finding:

Depressed dialysis patients more likely to be hospitalized or die

 

Dialysis patients diagnosed with depression are nearly twice as likely to be hospitalized or die within a year than those who are not depressed, a UT Southwestern Medical Center researcher has found.

 

In the study, available online and in the Sept. 15 issue of Kidney International, researchers monitored 98 dialysis patients for up to 14 months. More than a quarter of dialysis patients received a psychiatric diagnosis of some form of depression based on a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition (DSM IV).

This is the first reported link between adverse clinical outcomes in dialysis patients and depression made through a formal psychiatric interview based on the DSM-IV standards. More than 80 percent of the depressed patients died or were hospitalized, compared with 43 percent of non-depressed patients. Cardiovascular events, which previously have been linked to depression, led to 20 percent of the hospitalizations.

“Twenty percent of patients who start dialysis will die by the end of the first year,” said Dr. Susan Hedayati, assistant professor of internal medicine and the study’s lead author. “What we don’t know yet is, if their depression is treated, could it extend dialysis patients’ survival and improve their quality of life.”

Dr. Hedayati, a staff nephrologist at the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said depression-like symptoms – such as loss of energy, poor appetite and sleep disturbances – are often observed in patients with chronic disease, so it is important to get a scientifically valid diagnosis for clinical depression.

Twenty-six million people in America have chronic kidney disease and more than 20 million are at increased risk, according to the National Kidney Foundation. End-stage renal disease occurs when the patients’ kidneys have failed to the point where dialysis or a kidney transplant is needed. Dialysis filters toxic chemicals in the blood and helps control blood pressure. With hemodialysis, the kind investigated in this latest study, a filter functions as an artificial kidney to remove waste, extra chemicals and fluid from the body.

Coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure and diabetes are known co-morbidities for patients with end-stage renal disease. In this paper, with the addition of each co-morbidity, a dialysis patient was about 30 percent more likely to be hospitalized or die. If the patient had depression, however, the relationship was even stronger, with about a 100 percent increase in these dire outcomes, Dr. Hedayati said.

“Nephrologists don’t have as much data showing that treating anemia or increasing the dose of dialysis will improve survival, and yet during our routine rounds with dialysis patients we intervene on those issues,” Dr. Hedayati said. “Nephrologists don’t usually ask patients about depression. Since depression is so prevalent and can negatively affect dialysis patients, we need to ask about it.”

Depression is a treatable disease, so Dr. Hedayati hopes hospitalizations and deaths can be reduced with further research. Other large trials involving dialysis patients, including some that evaluated treatment of high cholesterol, using ACE-inhibitors or increasing the dose of dialysis, haven’t been shown to make a significant difference in life expectancy or hospitalization, Dr. Hedayati said.

“Now that we know depression in dialysis patients is associated with adverse outcomes such as death and hospitalization, we need to take another step forward and figure out if treating it will make a difference in patient outcomes,” Dr. Hedayati said.

Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center
http://www.physorg.com/news140445079.html

North Carolina State Hospital Where Man Died While Staff Watched Loses Federal Funding

Cherry Hospital in North Carolina where a man died after being ignored by staff for close to 24 hours lost its Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services funding as of September 1.  The state will lose $800,000 a month from the loss of CMS certification, which brings up the question of how effective is the IMD Exclusion that the Treatment Advocacy Center, E. Fuller Torrey and others complain about constantly?  The IMD Exclusion was put into effect when Medicare was created to prevent states from passing on existing expense of running state institutions to the federal government.  It limits payments from Medicare and Medicaid for free standing psychiatric hospitals with more than 15 beds but does not limit payments to psychiatric units within general hospitals.  If just one state hospital is getting close to a million a month from Medicare and Medicaid payments, than it’s pretty clear the IMD exclusion isn’t much of an exclusion in reality.

Indiana Woman Sues For Battery Due to Forced Pelvic Exam in Restraints In State Hospital

A brave woman in Indiana has filed a lawsuit claiming battery for being restrained by a number of staff and forced to undergo a pelvic examination in their presence against her clearly expressed wishes.  It happened the second day of her involuntary commitment to Logansport State Hospital.  The woman was bruised in the restraint and later sought treatment for the trauma of the assaultoutside the hospital (because of course the state hospital is very unlikely to have had therapy available at all, let alone therapy for victims of psychiatric or any other trauma despite the huge percentage of patients in state hospitals who are trauma survivors.)  As usual, the public as represented by trolls commenting on the news story is completely unsympathetic to the victimization of a person labelled a psychiatric patient, which may explain why newspapers do not often run these types of stories and why victims so rarely come forward to file lawsuits when they are abused in psychiatric hospitals.  Even if the woman (whose name I am omitting because I suspect she only gave her name because it was required to file the lawsuit, another reason victims of psychiatric assault rarely file suit nor press charges) does not win her case, she has already won a victory by standing up for her rights and that of every other woman who is involuntarily committed to this state hospital.

Governor Palin and State of Alaska Sued Over Massive Psychiatric Drugging of Children in Foster Care

http://psychrights.org/PR/080902PsychRightsvAlaskaNR.pdf

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 2, 2008

CONTACT:
Jim Gottstein
907-274-7686
jim.gottstein@psychrights.org                                                                                                         

PsychRights Sues State of Alaska to Stop Its Massive, Harmful Psychiatric Drugging of Alaskan Children

Today the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) announced that due to the State of Alaska’s unwillingness, or inability, to enter into substantive talks, it has filed its lawsuit against the State of Alaska and officials responsible for the excessive, ineffective, and extremely harmful psychiatric drugging of Alaskan children and youth.  The lawsuit seeks an injunction stopping the practice of Alaska authorizing or paying for psychotropic drugs to be given children without safeguards being in place to make sure proper decision making occurs.

Jim Gottstein, the president of PsychRights and the attorney bringing the lawsuit, said, “The corrupt influence of the pharmaceutical industry in illegally promoting much of this psychiatric drugging of children has been well established, yet the State of Alaska continues to inflict great harm on the children it has taken away from their families by giving them these drugs.”  It is ludicrous that the State sued a drug company for fraud in hiding the harm caused by one of these drugs and still gives that same drug and other toxic drugs like it, to children.

Dr. Karen Effrem, pediatrician and board member of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (AHRP) and the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), said, “These dangerous and ineffective drugs are tragically overused to merely control behavior of children who are distraught about being taken away from their families.  Missing one’s family or reacting to trauma are wrongly labeled as biological brain disorders that need treatment with powerful medications.  Drugs will not put their families back together or help them overcome their trauma and grief.  These brain and body damaging pharmaceuticals compound the abuse and trauma.  To paraphrase a popular motivational saying, what these kids truly need are ‘hugs, not drugs; hope not dope,’ (even legal dope)”

Governor Palin is one of the defendants because, as governor, she is ultimately responsible for the protection of the children of Alaska, but Mr. Gottstein noted, “I doubt anyone on Governor Palin’s staff has even let her know about the problem of the State harming Alaskan children through excessive psychiatric drugging despite my trying to bring it to her attention ever since she came into office.”  “I know Governor Palin has been focused on the very pressing issue of freeing Alaska, and the nation for that matter, from Big Oil’s stranglehold on the trillions of cubic feet of North Slope natural gas the nation needs from reaching the people that need it,”  Mr. Gottstein continued, “but Alaska’s children also deserve her attention.  We know that Governor Palin is very compassionate about the needs of children with problems and it is hard to imagine she would turn her back on them if she knew about it.”

If, as Governor Palin told the nation on Friday, Alaska has enough money to build the Bridge to Nowhere if it wants to (which it does), it certainly has the money to provide the vital services for these vulnerable children sought by PsychRights in the lawsuit.  These best practices have been proven far more effective and are far less harmful than drugging kids and were assembled by the Critical ThinkRx Program, under the auspices of and funded by a grant from the Attorneys General Consumer and Prescriber Grant Program of which the Alaska Attorney General is member.

Mr. Gottstein concluded by saying, “It is outrageous that the Commissioner of the Department of Health and Services wanted to talk with PsychRights about what might be done to avoid the lawsuit, but wasn’t allowed to do so by the Attorney General’s Office.”

For those who would like more information, in addition to the Complaint, there is a set of Questions and Answers about the lawsuit and Mr. Gottstein is scheduled to speak October 10th on “Critical ThinkRx and PsychRights’ Lawsuit Against the State of Alaska’s Psychiatric Drugging of Children” at the ICSPP conference being held October 10-12, in Tampa Florida.

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of unwarranted forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock. PsychRights is further dedicated to exposing the truth about psychiatric interventions and the courts being misled into ordering people subjected to these brain and body damaging drugs against their will. Extensive information about these dangers, and about the tragic damage caused by electroshock, is available on the PsychRights web site: http://psychrights.org/.

#  #  #

–

James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq.
President/CEO

Law Project for Psychiatric Rights
406 G Street, Suite 206
Anchorage, Alaska  99501
USA
Phone: (907) 274-7686)  Fax: (907) 274-9493
jim.gottstein[[at]]psychrights.org
http://psychrights.org/

 PsychRights®
            Law Project for
       Psychiatric Rights

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of forced psychiatric drugging.  We are further dedicated to exposing the truth about these drugs and the courts being misled into ordering people to be drugged and subjected to other brain and body damaging interventions against their will.  Extensive information about this is available on our web site, http://psychrights.org/. Please donate generously.  Our work is fueled with your IRS 501(c) tax deductible donations.  Thank you for your ongoing help and support.

You have been sent this e-mail because we think you are interested in PsychRights'
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contact@psychrights.org.

Outpatient Commitment Is About Money, Not Public Safety or “Caring Coercion”

Proponents of outpatient commitment (forced drugging and so called “treatment” in their own homes of folks labelled with psychiatric diagnoses) usually use one of two arguments or both to persuade others that it is a good idea.  The argument most often used by E. Fuller Torrey and his Treatment Advocacy Center is that people with mental illness are dangerous ticking time bombs if not force medicated in their own homes who will kill you or your child or your sister on the street if you don’t pass laws to force drugs down their throats NOW!  The argument others use and that the Treatment Advocacy Center also uses sometimes is that not forcing psychiatric drugging and “treatment” on people in their own homes is tantamount to neglect and shows a lack of caring or concern for people with mental illness.  And if the drugs didn’t shorten lives by 25 years and actually worked as they claim rather than by causing brain damage and if we as a society had decided that we were going to force drug everyone with an illness in their own home if they didn’t take medicine voluntarily, well I”d move to another country but they might have more of an argument than they do now. 

But the fact is the push for outpatient commitment in Virginia and elsewhere is not about public safety nor about “caring coercion”.  It is all about money.  Money that taxpayers and legislators and Governors do not want to spend on mental health services in the community but will have to spend if legislation is passed that makes it even easier to force a citizen of Virginia into forced outpatient “treatment”.  Once there is a court order mandating treatment, there is no way out for the legislators and the Governor.  The money will have to be found to “treat” (force drug and monitor) each and every person ordered into outpatient commitment in Virginia.  If the psychiatrists to prescribe aren’t there they will have to be hired and if there is no money in the state pharmacy to pay for the drugs it will have to be found because otherwise state employees and their bosses will find themselves in contempt of court.  Of course the money for outpatient forced treatment will only be forced out of the legislature and the Governor after every last bit of money for voluntary mental health services in the community has been squeezed out of Community Service Board budgets and there is no more voluntary care left in the state for those dependent on the public system of mental health if we can even call it a system.  But no matter right?  It’s not as if self-determination, empowerment, choice, recovery or resilience are part of the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse’s Mission statement and Vision and Comprehensive Plan and Transformation plan and Olmstead Plan or anything….oh wait, they are.

Talk the talk.  Walk the walk.  You can do it.  We can do it.  Yes we can.