Is UVA Hospital Above the Law? C’ville and Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorneys’ Offices and UVA Police Seem to Think So

Ever tried to report a crime committed against you at UVA? Well good luck to you.  The Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney office may tell you you have to figure out whether the crime was committed in Albemarle or Charlottesville and won’t answer your reasonable question of whether it was a federal or local crime, attorney supposedly consulted too busy to look it up?  Albemarle is more polite but still insists on you calling UVA police.  UVA police are downright rude and derisive and insist you must be “on grounds” to report a UVA crime when there office is off grounds on Ivy Road.  Also insist you bring all the evidence and prove intent just to report a crime.  Gee, and I thought police were supposed to investigate crimes, not ask victims to present complete and proven cases, silly me.  I have found no way to report a crime against me at UVA and everyone suggests I get a lawyer? To report a crime.  I guess the next step is to walk into both Charlottesville and Albemarle (where is it) Police Departments and insist one of them take my report of a crime, talk to a REAL policeman, not a company man playing policeman at UVA.  And folks wonder why crime is low as reported at UVA, maybe because it isn’t investigated and people give up on reporting it after being sent through circles by C’ville, Albemarle and UVA? Anyone still willing to say this isn’t a company town and the company is the University of Virginia? 

I have had a crime against me go uninvestigated 17 years ago, I’m not giving up, but most people will. And they will suffer the sense of not being an equal citizen, because if you can’t report a crime against you and have it investigated, what are you? A citizen or a member of the underclass?  Let’s not forget our history in Charlottesville and the United States in general as it continues today as crimes against people of color, people and even children with disabilities, transgender folks, etc., are not investigated, prosecuted nor sentenced in proportion to crimes against middle class and upper class whites.  That is not a democracy.

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………..

Alexis Glover Could Be Alive Today if Professionals Weren’t Prejudiced to Believe Disabled Equals Liar

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/06/AR2009070601862.html?nav=hcmoduletmv&sid=ST2009070601951

“A Prince William County woman pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of leaving her adopted 13-year-old daughter for dead in a frigid creek in January, and county police acknowledged that they could have responded better to numerous reports that the girl was being abused and neglected….

Court testimony yesterday and comments by authorities tell a long, sad tale of abuse, during which Gregg-Glover was able to persuade authorities to discount Lexie as a disabled, dishonest, habitual runaway.”

May the soul of Alexis, tortured for six years, rest in peace.

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..

Someone Alert Region Ten that the APA Does Not Support Their Service Approach

http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/44/13/8?etoc

Psychiatrists Lament Decline of Key Treatment Modality

Evidence of the efficacy of psychotherapy has increased dramatically in recent years even as the place of psychotherapy in the identity, practice, and training of psychiatrists is diminishing—a fact that was widely recognized and just as widely deplored during a workshop at APA’s 2009 annual meeting in San Francisco in May.

Psychiatric Trauma and Other Traumas, the Gift that Keeps On Giving

Yes I woke up from a nightmare, no this does not mean I am ignoring my “sleep hygiene” nor that I am manic, I wish I was, I would feel better.  No it’s just the usual but I know better now than to call SAARA nor SHE in Stepford/C’ville because people like me don’t have real trauma, we have the fake kind that just requires years of therapy to give the appearance of Stepford normality in public….  Funny how so many years ago, 25 I believe or more, Philadelphia’s Women Organized Against Rape had a special self-defense course for women with trauma histories, guess they were just stupid instead of one of the first Rape hotlines and organizations against rape led by women in the nation.  Stepford knows better.  Stepford knows only certain women count when it comes to trauma of any kind.  Stepford knows that a homeless women 3 weeks away from her abuser is past it already and too late for SHE’s help.  Stepford knows people with psychiatric traumas even if they have other traumas too can only be helped by “Professionals” and shouldn’t bother SAARA.  Or they can go to a regular group where they will feel right at home talking about being assaulted in a psychiatric unit in this oh so enlightened town about psychiatric survivors….  Or they could just be quiet or go away.  Oops, that sounds like the patriarchy talking a bit doesn’t it?  Oh well.  You can’t buy books on feminism in used book stores here, can’t even find Sonia Sanchez in new book stores, Adrienne Rich isn’t in Barnes and Noble, we have overcome, we don’t need to read feminist writers any more.  Audre Lorde is dead of cancer, who would want to read her cancer chronicles, women aren’t getting cancer anymore, especially not lesbians nor women of color…  We have the women’s Four Miler, we are going to cure cancer by running and walking and too bad if sick women can’t run nor even walk 4 miles, and too bad if more women are dying of lung cancer because lung cancer is just, well, icky, how could Christopher Reeves’ widow die of such an icky disease? Let’s not talk about it, that will help.  Let’s teach our children to yell at adults who smoke because yelling at addicts in public is a proven method of rehab.,not.  Let’s sit in front of an ashtray outside with our expensive earbuds and not hear the person asking us if we mind if they smoke until we glare at them and then do the fake smile when they walk away from the smoking area to bow to your superior non-addiction and superior electronic gadgetry….. 

Let’s tell everyone they can be healthy too even if they have kidney failure or cancer or heart failure or liver disease if they just keep a perfect blood pressure and get a massage, that’s the ticket, than we can save money on icky expensive medical treatment and all live forever in fantasy land, a land called Charlottesville that looks like Stepford except for the hopeful signs of all these icky newcomers moving in who don’t know how to act in Stepford and break the rules by being themselves and don’t care who you know or who your parents were…..

Oops, got off on a rant, nightmares will do that to you as will the prospect of getting up in a few hours for blood work with too little sleep.  Maybe I’ll cancel and put off till Tuesday, would that be okay with the compliance police? Because these nightmares and flashbacks are really kicking my butt despite my long swim today and yesterday and walking several times each day and giving to a soup kitchen, how could that be, bad things only happen to bad people, right?

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.

Thanks for the 600 plus dollars out of my pocket UVA 5 East for Zyprexa I Shouldn’t Have Been Prescribed and Didn’t Agree for you to Fill at YOUR Pharmacy

Warning: PTSD patient anger displayed below, watch out, anger by people like me in words on a blog has been known to cause hurricanes and linked to global warming………

That’s right, over 600 dollars towards my reaching the doughnut hole on my Medicare D for a drug I only took for 3 weeks and that you didn’t ask if I agreed to have filled at your pharmacy instead of shopping around or maybe just not taking it as was my perfect right since you had no order to force me to take it once I left your “care”.   The nurse who thought I couldn’t drive just handed them to me and expected gratitude, I thought maybe they were free the way she expected gratitude for  a pharmacist not herself filling them without my request nor permission.  Well I’m not grateful and I don’t have a spare 600 dollars.  So thanks again for not respecting me as a citizen and “consumer” in this instance with choices and legal rights.  I don’t suppose you will be offering to pay me back Nurse you must be stupid because you are a patient here.  Guess what Nursie, I have a Masters and almost a Ph.D. What you got besides an inability to control your eating habits?  I got off of dialysis by controlling mine, so guess I am up in the self-control competition too.  But you like yourself so well and think you are so superior to your patients there is no need for me to like you.

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

An Old Essay of Mine for World Mental Health Day for our Local MHA-Learning to Cope With the Medical System

Learning to cope with the medical system

February 24, 2007 by hymes

How to reconcile oneself to a medical system that almost killed one and in the end most likely will be the cause of one’s death? I think you don’t, but that instead you make compromises and deals with yourself to do what you need to do to survive and keep the anger intact so that when one wants to despair one can instead say, “I’m not going to let “them” kill me!” in jest, under one’s breath.  And of course one develops a really warped sense of humor or maybe you already had one and that is why you survived in the first place.  Or perhaps a friend is right who says that G-d has a really odd sense of humor.  And seeing a whooping crane, well you have to agree with that.

But day to day the anger can’t keep you going and you have to reach for grace and transcendence.  Friends past and present, living and dead, provide models of how to do this and you think to yourself you will never be as agile as them in handling everything thrown your way but trying makes you quicker on your feet.

You learn to let go of the small stuff and how much stuff is small, you learn to forgive others and yourself for most things and when you can’t you learn to move on.  You learn to smile and laugh at each little piece of beauty that comes your way, whether it is a friend who is there for you or a river beach you didn’t expect or your dogs playing a very silly game they are far too old to be playing.

You begin to accept that these doctors and nurses are neither evil nor saintly but human like yourself no matter whether they agree with that assessment or not and that helps a lot when they disappoint you or hurt you or discount you.  And you learn to treasure the ones who care the way you used to think they all should care, for their worth is beyond measure.

C’ville Weekly Journalist Calls Local Children and Teens with Psych. Disabilities “head cases”.

I am reposting this because the article remains in the C’ville Weekly archive with no retraction and no apology for the demeaning and prejudiced and inaccurate language used about children and adolescents treated in the Commonwealth Center for Children and Adolescents. Children (and their parents) with psychiatric disabilities are members of our community, for a popular weekly to publish this kind of prejudiced language without apology is saying that they are not “really” members of our community in my view. I had hoped that mental health providers and agencies and advocates in our community would speak up about this degradation of members of our community by now, but only one person wrote a letter to the editor and as far as I know she is not associated with any mental health provider nor mental health advocacy group in our community.

http://c-ville.com/index.php?cat=121304062461064&ShowArticle_ID=11802302094565042

He also speculates with no evidence that most of the children (as young as 3 and 4 at  Commonwealth) are violent and dangerous.  But go read the whole thing if you can stand it.  This is a complex issue, reasonable people can disagree on what is best but nothing is gained and much is lost by perpetuating prejudice and ignorance about children with emotional disabilities and focusing on violence when every expert knows that kids and teens and adults with all disabilities but especially psychiatric are much more likely to be victims of crime than the average person and more likely to be victims than perpetrators by far. 

This is unacceptable hate speech about children.  Speak up, speak out, object to this sensationalized simplistic article that fails to address any of the complexities of the issue but chooses instead to make it even less likely that children with emotional problems will be accepted and integrated into our schools, neighborhoods, Little League, churches, homes of friends in our home town because it is our children he is writing about. 

This must not go unchallenged.  It is prejudice.  It is about children.  It is not okay.

Excellent Blog Post at Bad Cripple Got Me Thinking About Psychophobia Again

http://badcripple.blogspot.com/2009/04/cumulative-impact-of-disability-based.html

Please read his post about the cumulative impact of disability based prejudice on all people with disabilities, especially the part about how Governor Patterson said the Saturday Night Live sketch that made fun of his disability actually affected his behavior and feelings for some time afterwards despite thinking he was beyond all that at this point in his life and the analysis of the deliberate attempt to humiliate Governor Patterson for his disability.

Please read it and substitute psychiatric disability and see if you can even get yourself to do so.  I suspect many will not be able to.  I suspect many will say that Governor Patterson has a “real” disability and that it should not be mocked but that somehow, for some reason, people who have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disability or have a psychiatric history or have come home from Iraq and Afghanistan with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or survived a childhood or adult trauma but emerged with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or any other psychiatric diagnosis do not.   I suspect that the analogy will not work for most.  And I keep wondering why that is?  Part of it clearly is the continual demonization and fear-mongering of all people with psychiatric diagnoses and histories in the press, in the blogosphere and in every day life.  Part of it is the attempt by some to say that psychiatric disability does not exist and that people just need to buck up or become “mindful” or take a pill, that will fix it.  Or the oh so helpful suggestion that what people really need is a better social network.  Um. Well, yes.  But how exactly is that going to happen if the people who would be in that social network exclude people who they suspect or know to have a history of psychiatric disability, even if they are in recovery, even if they are doing well, let alone if they are having a bad day or two?  How exactly is that going to happen outside of the ghettoization of people with psychiatric diagnoses into their own groups, their own special housing, their own day programs, their “own kind” if psychophobia persists?

I also wonder if people think that someone with a psychiatric history will necessarily ask more of them than someone without.  That is certainly not my personal experience, in fact I know many folks with psychiatric histories who are more reluctant to ask for help from their friends or family than people who do not have diagnoses, out of long reinforced ideas that they are too “needy” even if they are in real need, in a situation where anyone would ask for support such as the death of a loved one or a medical problem or a move or a new job or the loss of a a job or any of the situations that we all face in our lives.  I also wonder about the responses those who do reach out to friends and family get that lead them to stop asking for ordinary every day human support.  I have seen people with common, everyday stresses in their lives told that they are symptomatic when in fact they are not.  I have seen unasked for advice given that trivializes the real issue a person is facing, whether it be a loss, a  major life stresser, an illness, a death, a scare.  I have seen people try to “fix” real life problems with magic solutions rather than listen and really hear what is going on in a person’s life when if it were a person without a label or diagnosis this would not be the usual reaction. 

Life is not easy for anyone.  We all have real life problems and stressors.  We all need each other at times.  What people with psychiatric histories or labels do not need is to get less support for real life stressors and problems than people without do.  What people with psychiatric diagnoses do not need is to to have ordinary reactions pathologized or trivialized as not real or valid.  People do not need or want to be told how to feel, how to think, what to think about, what to do when every day problems and stressors arise in their lives as they do for everyone.  Nor do they want to be offered whatever someone else thinks will be “healing” when the only thing that will heal many losses and stresses is time and support and freedom to feel what needs to be felt.    I do not mean that all advice and suggestions are unhelpful, but if your first response to someone who is grieving or stressed for good reason and who also happens to have a psychiatric label is to stop listening and start “fixing”, how is that not prejudice, conscious or not, at work?

FAIL–”Psycho Donuts” Owners Think Strait Jackets and Traumatic Brain Injury Are Hilarious

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11926613?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com

Hat tip to Justice For All’s blog-  http://jfactivist.typepad.com/jfactivist/2009/03/psycho-donuts-to-open-with-a-fun-mental-institution-theme.html for finding this and writing about it. You can see there a comment from one of the owners that they had no intention of offending.
Um, well maybe, but how could they think in this day and age that “massive brain injury” was something funny? Do they think our soldiers’ injuries are hilarious? Do they think letting Children play with strait jackets will make them more sensitive to the rights and feelings of citizens with psychiatric disabilities or hospitalization experience when they are grown? What are the parents of these kids thinking taking their children to such a place?

Maybe the problem is just total lack of thought and therefore thoughtfulness at all. FAIL as the younger folks say. Just FAIL.

Until the Killing of People With Disabilities Is As Important as the Killing of Temporarily Able-Bodied, We Who Believe in Freedom Can Not Rest

People with disabilities are being murdered by family members and caretakers and staff in institutions and allegedly by the Final Exit Network all over this country and this world. (For factual information on how far the Final Exit Networks wants to go including killing people with Alzheimer’s, children with severe disabilities  and any adult who someone considers a burden please read Stephen Drake’s latest post at:  http://notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspot.com/2009/03/final-exit-advisory-board-members.html )  Until the killing of people with disabilities is as important to our society as the killing of temporarily able-bodied people in this country,  we do not have freedom nor equality and we can not rest until we get it. 

When major media insist on calling alleged forcing of folks to continue with suicide “assisted suicide” instead of murder, when they continue to ignore the non-terminal status and the admission of FEN that they do not restrict their death work to people who are at the end of their natural life, we know how far we have to go before we reach equality, freedom and simple respect for our person-hood. 

Speak up when you hear someone using demeaning terminology about anyone with a disability of any kind.  Don’t be polite about it, don’t let someone else do it, don’t not speak up because you think it isn’t important enough to speak up and educate about, your silence in the presence of demeaning language is taken as agreement, it reinforces the prejudice and it tells people with disabilities that you do not see them as equals no matter how much of a good person you may be.  It takes practice, it takes courage, it takes time and patience and I don’t expect that everyone will be able to do it every time, but if people don’t start practicing, start at least noticing when this demeaning language is being used and thinking of a response later, don’t think about what they could do to be a real ally to people with disabilities when people with disabilities are not there, we will not get there, we will not be free, we will not be equals.  As Romanovsky and Phillips wrote: 

Be Political, Not Polite
When you speak you often use
Some racist word or sexist phrase
That makes me stop you in your tracks
To note the error of your ways
And I know you find it boring
But it seems to me the only way
To correct you, to object to
The hurtful things you say

chorus:
Right the wrongs of human rights
The risk you take could save a life
Silence keeps us all in darkness
We can’t change it overnight
But we can shed a little light
Be political, not polite

I cannot be satisfied
Knowing just how much you care
I want an ally with a voice
Defending me when I’m not there
‘Cause being actively supportive
Is the greatest gift that you could give
By demanding understanding
We can change the world in which we live

(chorus)

Words can hurt, words can heal
Make us think, make us feel
And they’re every bit as deadly
As a bullet tearing through the land
For if our words create the climate
Then the blood is on our hands

Every time we hear a joke
That takes a shot at someone else
If we speak up for their rights
We are speaking for ourselves
‘Cause we will never have true freedom
‘Til everyone one of us is free
From the silence, and the violence
That’s become our history

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.

C’ville Weekly Reader Speaks Out, Speaks Up in Print about Fear-Mongering and Prejudice

http://www.c-ville.com/index.php?cat=141404064423910&ShowArticle_ID=11800203092814347

Don’t blame the victim

I am writing in response to the cover story, “Under Threat” [February 24].  I appreciate your attention to the important issue of ensuring adequate mental health treatment resources for Virginia’s children and adolescents. To meet these needs, a spectrum of treatment options should be available, including community-based treatment and acute inpatient hospitalization. However, I was profoundly disturbed by the irresponsible and inflammatory language used to portray the children and adolescents in need of such treatment. The author’s descriptions of people with mental illness as “the off-kilter minds of Virginia’s most disturbed children” and “kids who are so messed up in the head”  and “deranged kids,” only serve to reinforce existing pervasive negative stereotypes. In addition, the article’s repeated focus on violent themes is misleading and unbalanced. The general public continues to link mental illness to violence, with little understanding of the true picture. The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent, and the vast majority of violent acts are perpetrated by people without mental illness. In fact, people with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violent crime than to be perpetrators. This fear mongering is irresponsible. Inaccurate stereotyping of people with mental illness strengthens stigma and fear. Societal discrimination against the mentally ill is actually largely responsible for the chronic underfunding of the U.S. mental health system, leading to woefully inadequate treatment resources. It is vital that the media work to create an accurate portrayal of mental illness and its treatment in order to correct public misperceptions and build the support needed to appropriately care for these children and their communities.
 
Lillian Mezey
Albemarle County

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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

SB1142 Proposes to Violate the Nuremberg Code In One of its Provisions

The hearing for this bill has been moved to this Thursday, February 5th at 9 a.m. in Senate Room B in the Education and Health Committee.

http://www.richmondsunlight.com/bill/2009/sb1142/fulltext/

SB1142: Advance medical directives; revises Health Care Decisions Act regarding.

An advance directive may authorize an agent to approve participation by the declarant in any health care study approved by an institutional review board pursuant to applicable federal regulations, or by a research review committee pursuant to Chapter 5.1 ( 32.1-123 et seq.) of Title 32.1 that (i) snipped OR

(ii) aims to increase scientific understanding of any condition that the declarant may have or otherwise to promote human well-being, even though it offers no prospect of direct benefit to the patient.

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

 Regulations and Ethical Guidelines

Back to Regulations and Ethical Guidelines Menu

Directives for Human Experimentation

NUREMBERG CODE

1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonable to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the quality of the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs or engages in the experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.
2. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature.
3. The experiment should be so designed and based on the results of animal experimentation and a knowledge of the natural history of the disease or other problem under study that the anticipated results will justify the performance of the experiment.
4. The experiment should be so conducted as to avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering and injury.
5. No experiment should be conducted where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur; except, perhaps, in those experiments where the experimental physicians also serve as subjects.
6. The degree of risk to be taken should never exceed that determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem to be solved by the experiment.
7. Proper preparations should be made and adequate facilities provided to protect the experimental subject against even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death.
8. The experiment should be conducted only by scientifically qualified persons. The highest degree of skill and care should be required through all stages of the experiment of those who conduct or engage in the experiment.
9. During the course of the experiment the human subject should be at liberty to bring the experiment to an end if he has reached the physical or mental state where continuation of the experiment seems to him to be impossible.
10. During the course of the experiment the scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment at any stage, if he has probable cause to believe, in the exercise of the good faith, superior skill and careful judgment required of him that a continuation of the experiment is likely to result in injury, disability, or death to the experimental subject.

---

Reprinted from Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Vol. 2, pp. 181-182.. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949.

Why Did Republicans Vote to Violate the Nuremberg Code Today? Are They Anti-Life?

What is going on in Virginia’s General Assembly and who is pushing an anti-life agenda through under cover of a mental health bill  and clarifying the Health Care Decisions Act? Yes, anti-life.  Allowing guardians and powers of attorney and oral consent from the dying to experiments that have no expectation of health benefit to them as patients is anti-life and anti-people with disabilities and evil. 

Me, I am going to tear up my living will/durable medical power of attorney when/if this bill/bills pass.  And wait until I move to a less anti-life state than Virginia to write another one.  I never thought I would be writing these words.  Never.  Right and wrong do exist and manipulation and deceit in the service of an anti-life,, anti-disability rights agenda are unethical no matter who you are nor how well you think of yourself and your intellect.  Very intelligent people supported eugenics in Virginia and the rest of the United States.  Very intelligent people supported killing psychiatric patients in hospitals in the ’40’s until the revelations of the Nazi regime made such a stance untenable (or politically incorrect).  Very intelligent people are equally capable of evil acts as anyone else.  And equally likely to be completely lacking in insight into the consequences of their actions on others or perhaps not to care about the effects of their actions on others.

Virginia Senate Passes Name Change to Behavioral Health and Developmental Services with 5 Nays

After a push poll with 3 out of 4 suggestions including the name “Behavioral Health” on the former Department of Mental Health etc.’s website, after one Senator spoke very eloquently about how wrong and inappropriate it was to call mental health and mental retardation “behaviors”, after one woman senator said that the former DMHMRSAS said they only had 28 votes in opposition to Behavioral Health, a disappointing behavior on the part of the Department, Virginia’s Senate changed the name of the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse to a  name no one in any of those groups served wanted and a name that makes Virginia look backwards (Developmental) and corporate and sheep-like (Behavioral Health) and offended every citizen and their families who are forced to use the Department’s services due to lack of money or insurance or lack of alternatives where they live.

After last year I thought maybe the General Assembly was finished with insulting and degrading and ignoring the voice of people with disabilities, but I was far too optimistic to think that.    I do wish to thank the gentleman who spoke so eloquently againsgt the name change despite knowing he would lose and will try to find his name and update this post to reflect that.

Diving Too Deep into the Ocean of Corruption and Cynicism

Icarus flew too close to the sun.  I have dived too deep into the ocean of corruption and cynicism that is Virginia’s mental/behavioral/authoritarian/coercive/punitive/retaliatory/gas-lighting/insincere/self-serving/two-faced “system” and political system  and I must now swim up to the waves so I can breathe again.

My plan is to leave Virginia and return to my home of 32 years.  I never planned to move to Virginia.   It was sheer fate that I fell so ill and spent more than 7 weeks including a week in the ICU while I was on vacation in Virginia.  The doctors thought I was too ill to live alone.  I proved them wrong but I had already moved.  I have been here 12 years now but it is really the last 3 or so that have taught me I will never be comfortable in this state.  I dove too deep, got too close to how sausages/laws are made, into the real way our lives are ruled, into the reality that in Virginia  it is still well off white men and a few women who have never known prejudice or been treated badly simply because of who they are perceived to be by others who call the shots. I have seen through the fiction of Councils with no power, Commissions and task forces that are designed to come to the conclusion wanted by the powers that be before they even begin.   I have been lied to to my face and to my ear and then had to stand and listen to fake expressions of apology/concern/respect/you-name-it.  I have seen people sell out others of their group for mere approval by their own oppressors.  I have seen so-called professionals lie about others to preserve their own unrealistic self admiration and egos.  I have seen too much.  It is time to make plans to go home.

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.

Modern KKK Tactics in Katrina’s Aftermath Documented by the Nation Institute

Katrina’s Hidden Race War produced by the Nation Institute.  Documents white residents of town on the way to a Katrina evacuation point that was dry shooting randomly and maliciously at innocent African Americans escaping New Orleans and even threatening their African American neighbors who had lived there all along.  Why was there no coverage of this in the mainstream media?  Why is this only coming out now. How can it be that not one person has been arrested for these crimes?  And can folks stop repeating the idiotic idea that our race problems in this country were solved by the election of Barack Obama?

Maine Governor John Baldacci Also Acts to Protect Women and Children From Abuse, What about Virginia?

http://www.bangornews.com/detail/94918.html

The Governor of Maine thinks that increased deaths of women from domestic violence is a crisis and held a press conference to urge routine and universal screening for domestic violence and abuse by all medical providers.  Virginia continues to act as if people with psychiatric labels are never victims of domestic violence nor abuse when in fact all studies show they are at increased risk relative to the rest of the population so if you go to your obstetrician in Virginia you will be screened for domestic violence without any sign of such, just as a universal precuation but if you go to a Community Services Board hysterical after an episode of abuse you may never be asked why you are hysterical and be thrown into a psychiatric ward where you will have the lovely chance to relive the authoritarianism you endured in your own home and now your abuser can tell the police you are crazy if you ever dare to call them when he abuses you.  Great job Virginia, not protecting women with disabilities in so many ways it is hard to keep count.

“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

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

Blacks Disproportionately Involuntarily Committed in the United Kingdom, Also UK Campaigners Fight for Single Gender Wards, Why Not U.S. Advocates?

http://psychminded.co.uk/news/news2008/nov08/mental_health_race_row007.htm

“THE row over the vastly disproportionate rate that black people are detained in psychiatric units intensified yesterday after the release of figures indicating no improvement since the government vowed to tackle the problem three years ago.”

“Campaigners were also furious that the commission’s Count Me In census found 68% of psychiatric inpatients not being on single-sex wards. They are particularly concerned about vulnerable female patients sharing wards with male patients”

Virginia is unfortunately building a new Western State Hospital for millions and millions of dollars but there is no talk at all of providing the option of single gender units to women and men who would prefer them.  And it isn’t even up for discussion.  Why not?

People With Psychiatric Labels in Canada Get Cancer Less, Die of Cancer More

This is clearly not about lifestyle factors since people with psychiatric labels are actually getting cancer less than the rest of the population in Canada.  Clearly this is about discrimination by medical professionals in how they treat patients with psychiatric labels compared to people without labels.  Just as people with psychiatric labels are less likely to get timely and appropriate treatment in U.S. Emergency Rooms for heart attacks, it seems that people with labels in Canada are less likely to be referred for cancer screenings and perhaps to get the appropriate or most advanced/aggressive treatment once diagnosed with cancer. 

What can we do about this?  For one we can stop blaming the victim as most “wellness” programs do by blaming all early mortality rates on lifestyle choices.  Second we can empower ourselves and each other to insist on cancer screenings appropriate to our gender, family history of cancer and age.  All women should have a gynecologist or an internist who will do gynecological exams.  All men should be screened for prostate cancer when they reach middle age and continue to be screened.  Both men and women should be screened for colon cancer in middle age and follow the recommendations on how often to be screened after baseline that are given depending on the results of the first screening.  Women need to have mammograms, when they start should depend on family history of breast and ovarian cancer.  We need to insist that we and our friends are referred for cancer screenings of all kinds, including for skin cancer, especially if we are at high risk due to age (folks who grew up before sunscreens and got sunburns in childhood), fair skin, family history or suppressed immune status due to transplant or AIDS or other reasons. 

Don’t let medical discrimination and prejudice kill you or your friends!

http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1092447.html

People w/ Psychiatric Disabilities More Likely To Die Of Cancer; Canadian Researchers Find Fatality Rate Significantly Higher Than That Of General Population

By John Gillis The Chronicle Herald

Nova Scotians with mental illnesses are much more likely to die of cancer than others in the province, even though their rates of cancer are no higher, a new study has found.

Dalhousie University researchers found men who received treatment for mental illnesses had a 72 per cent higher mortality rate from cancer and women a 59 per cent higher rate than the general population.

Dr. Joseph Sadek, a psychiatrist and co-author of the study — published this month in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry — said men with mental illnesses were actually less likely to develop melanoma or prostate, bladder, and colorectal cancers but were still more likely to die of those diseases than the general population.

The research drew on a database of records on almost 250,000 Nova Scotians who received psychiatric treatment between 1995 and 2001.

The findings raise important questions about the care people with mental illnesses get for other health problems, Dr. Sadek said.

“Why are they dying more?” he asked. “Are they dying more because they weren’t diagnosed . . . or they were diagnosed but they didn’t get the treatment? We don’t have an answer for that.”

One in five Canadians will have a psychiatric illness in their lifetime, so any increase in mortality for that group of people poses a great public health concern, Dr . Sadek and epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Kisely say in the paper.

He suggested the nature of mental illness may increase the risk a person’s cancer may go undetected.

“Sometimes when there is a psychiatric illness, people are not paying attention to their physical complaints,” he said. “That’s a common thing.”

And there is a need to educate patients being treated for mental illness about symptoms of cancer and what to do about them.

He said access to family doctors and routine screening tests may be an issue for people with mental illnesses.

Dr. Sadek said health-care providers may also need to be more vigilant about ensuring patients with mental illnesses get appropriate cancer screening and diagnosis.

In earlier research, Dr. Kisely found that people who received treatment for psychiatric illnesses were also significantly more likely than the general population to die of heart disease or stroke. Despite that elevated risk, those patients were no more likely (and, in some cases, were significantly less likely) to receive treatments like angioplasty, bypass surgery or cardiac catheterization that could alleviate circulatory problems.

 

 

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

Western State Local Human Rights Committee Minutes in Which They Deprive Cesar Chumil of His Human Rights, Again

http://www.wsh.dmhmrsas.virginia.gov/docum/LHRC200811.pdf

DRAFT

Western State Hospital

Staunton, Virginia

Local Human Rights Committee Meeting Minutes

Jeffreys Building, Room 95 at 12:30

 

 

 

 

 

November 12, 2008

Present:

 

 

 

 

 

David Reed, Linda Thumma, Ski Washington, Donna Gum, Hal Meyers, Committee

Members; Jerry Thomas, Advocate; Chuck Collins, Regional Advocate; Gail Burford,

Director’s Liaison

 

 

 

Guests:

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Jack Barber, Director; Karen Walters, Office of Attorney General on behalf of

WSH; Nathan Veldhuis, attorney on behalf of Mr. C.C. and family; Kimberly Crett,

Court Reporter, Cavalier Reporting and Videography,

 

 

 

Absent

 

 

 

 

 

: Debbie Harris, Committee Member

David Reed, Chair, called the meeting of the Local Human Rights Committee to order on November 12, 2008.

A quorum of members was present. .

Jerry Thomas reviewed with the committee the Human Rights Regulation

 

 

 

 

 

12 VAC 35-115.220

 

on Variances.

Mr. Reed announced the request for a Variance to

 

 

 

 

 

12 VAC 35-115-110 (Use of seclusion, restraint, and time

out)

 

 

 

 

 

of the

Rules and Regulations to Assure the Rights of Individuals Receiving Services from Providers

Licensed, Funded or Operated by the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse

Services

 

 

 

 

 

presented by Dr. Jack Barber in regards to patient CC.

Nathan Veldhuis objected to the Local Human Rights Committee going into “closed session”.

The committee made a vote to have the court reporter excluded from the “closed session”.

Mr. Veldhuis also objected to this decision.

 

 

 

Upon a motion made by Hal Meyers and seconded by Donna Gum, the Local Human Rights Committee

convened in Closed Session pursuant to Virginia Code, 2.2-3711(15), for the purpose of discussion or

consideration of medical and mental records excluded from the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

Upon reconvening in public session, each member of the committee certified that to the best of each one’s

knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempt from statutory open meeting requirements, and only

public business matters identified in the motion to convene the Closed Session were discussed in the Closed

Session.

The specific regulations to which WSH requested variances along with the LHRC’s decisions are as follows:

12 VAC 35-115.110.C.3:

 

 

 

 

 

Only residential facilities for children that are licensed under the Regulations for

Providers of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Substance Abuse Residential Services for Children (12

VAC 35-45) and inpatient hospitals may use seclusion and only in an emergency

LHRC Decision: The committee unanimously recommends the approval of this variance for a period of

six months.

12 VAC 35-115.110.C.13.(a-e):

 

 

 

 

 

Providers may use seclusion or mechanical restraint for behavioral purposes in

an emergency only if a qualified professional involved in providing services to the individual has, within one

hour of the initiation of the procedure.

LHRC Decision: The committee unanimously recommends the approval of this variance for a period of

six months.

12 VAC 35-115-110.C.17:

 

 

LHRC Decision: The committee unanimously recommends the approval of this variance for a period of

six months.

12 VAC 35-115-110.C.15:

 

Providers shall not issue standing orders for the use of seclusion or restraint for

behavioral purposes.

LHRC Decision: The committee unanimously recommends the approval of this variance for a period of

six months.

There being no further business to discuss, the meeting was adjourned.

 

 

 

 

12 VAC 35-115-110.C.17:

 

Providers shall monitor the use of restraint for behavioral purposes or seclusionthrough continuous face-to face observation, rather than by an electronic surveillance device.

 

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.

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.

Erosion of Educational Confidentiality Laws for “Benign MH Purposes” Could Have Malignant Unintended Consequences

The Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, while insisting on confidentiality for its own work by not releasing already completed task force reports to the public that they are using in their own deliberations and by not publishing the names of members of its new task forces nor holding any open meetings of its task forces/committees, is still working on loosening confidentiality protections for anyone in Virginia with a psychiatric label or history including students.  Maybe they should not only open up their deliberations to the public and concerned stakeholders but also step outside their comfort zone and look at the malignant consequences when officials do not abide by educational privacy laws for their own reasons as evidenced in this report in the Washington Post on lives disrupted and people demeaned by a school violating educational privacy laws:

“School officials in the City of Manassas admitted this week that they skirted federal privacy laws when they divulged personal information about a number of Hispanic students to city inspectors investigating anonymous complaints about overcrowded housing.”

“Inspectors came to Taylor’s home late one night in December 2005 and inspected it when the only person present was her 15-year-old daughter. They gave Taylor 30 days to evict her niece or be found in violation of the city’s overcrowding ordinance.

Taylor did so in December 2005, turning her niece’s family into the street just days before Christmas. On Dec. 25, Taylor’s extended family gathered for Christmas dinner. Distraught after bouncing from relative to relative for weeks, her niece begged Taylor to let her stay at her home for just one night.

“I had to say no. I was afraid they would come back,” Taylor said in Spanish. “That was the most difficult moment. Your family is your family. But I had to say no.”

 Taylor, without the income from her niece’s family, lost her home and now lives in an apartment.”

Mental Disorder as a “Sin”? What Century Is This at the New York Times?

I have no idea why a television critic is doing areview of a book on anorexia nervosa in the New York Times but they chose her and printed it so it is fair to ask what the heck are the editors at the New York Times thinking to let this get past them?  I have not read the book in question, a collection of first person accounts of surviving anorexia nervosa, a recognized mental disorder in the DSM.  It is the review that shocked me in its judgmental tone ending in a sentence that calls the behavior associated with this mental disorder a “sin”.  “Sin” is the last word of the book review in fact.  What is going on here?  Hey, a lot of us know that even within the mental health profession people with anorexia tend to be treated with less respect than other patients, and there is surely something about the disorder that provokes counter-transference in professionals and lay people alike, but to call the behavior which can lead and often does lead to disability and death a “sin”?  This is helpful?  This is a modern approach to psychological disorders?  If I didn’t live in Virginia I think I would just write WTF???????? and let it go at that actually.  This is outrageous and the New York Times should issue an apology to the survivors of those who have died from anorexia nervosa and to the folks living with it today.

Massive Resistance (closing of 2 C’ville schools by Governor rather than allow integration) this Friday

Massive Resistance Remembrance: 4pm September 19 at the Free Speech wall on the east end of the Downtown Mall.

Senator Shelby (R, Alabama) To Activists with Disabilities: “I don’t help people who can’t help themselves.”!

From Ms. Cripchick’s weblog via an ADAPT press release, sadly Representative Barney Frank (D, Massachusetts) refused to speak to ADAPT and has turned his back on promises to ADAPT to help fund independent affordable housing for people with disabilities.  As noted in a previous post on the protest, Senator Obama’s campaign accepted ADAPT’s housing platform. 

50 Arrested as ADAPT Takes Affordable, Accessible Housing Crisis to Congress

ADAPT PRESS RELEASE:

Washington, D.C.—From their base at “DUH City”, groups of ADAPT activists fanned out on the Hill to hit congressional leaders who have responsibility to help solve the housing crisis for low income people with disabilities. Visits to the offices of Rep. Barney Frank (D, MA), a longtime leader on housing issues, and Senators Chris Dodd (D, CT) and Richard Shelby (R, AL), the Chair and ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs resulted in a total of 50 arrests.

“Our first stop was to see Rep. Barney Frank,” said Diane Coleman of ADAPT in Rochester, New York. “ADAPT has been in talks with him over the past year, and early on he told us in no uncertain terms that he could get 500 housing vouchers from HUD that would be targeted to free people with disabilities who live in nursing homes and other institutions. He repeated that promise for months, and we kept trusting his word, and then one day he suddenly says he can’t help us. We were also working with him to get funding that pays for segregated housing redirected to support integrated housing and more vouchers. Sen. Frank arranged a hearing on this funding, and not only did he not invite any people with disabilities to testify, he didn’t even notify us about the hearing. So, today, we decided to confront him on his broken promises and bad faith.”

Shortly after 13 ADAPT members entered Franks’ office, he ordered staff to have them arrested, refusing to even discuss the ADAPT concerns, or strategies to address the housing crisis for low income people with disabilities trapped in institutions for lack of affordable, accessible, integrated housing.

ADAPT went to the offices of Dodd and Shelby because HUD and housing fall under the purview of their committee. Sen. Shelby declined to work with ADAPT saying, “I don’t help people who can’t help themselves.” There were 19 arrests made in Shelby’s office. An aide to Sen. Dodd spoke with ADAPT, but declined to put her remarks on paper after indicating she might be willing to do so. ADAPT continued to wait for the written statement, and eventually nearly 25 people were arrested.

“The TV is full of news about the bank crisis, and the mortgage crisis, and the need for candidates to appeal to middle income people,” said Cassie James, Philadelphia ADAPT organizer. “Meanwhile, people who live on disability benefits, and people who are trapped in nursing homes because of no housing are being held hostage while the government bails everyone else out. Rent has gone up so much, it’s higher than many monthly disability benefits. Not only do us younger people with disabilities need affordable, accessible housing, older people need it, too. This is a crisis, and we need help to solve it.”

ADAPT has been in D.C. since September 13, erecting DUH City, a tent city, on the plaza outside HUD headquarters to bring attention to the situation of the people who have been ignored in this election year- low income people with disabilities. The crises with the economy and housing extend well beyond the middle class, but the Presidential candidates and their parties have seemingly forgotten that fact. Not so, ADAPT.

Feministe Invites Ms. Cripchick to Guest Blog, My Respect for Feministe Goes Up 1000%

Hat tip to F.R.I.D.A for this.  The wonderful Ms. Cripchick is guest blogging at Feministe for the next 2 weeks.  After giving up on Shakesvilledue to excessive use of the term “wingnut” and other variations of bad or stupid or corrupt behavior equals psychiatric disability it was a real upper to see that Feministe has invited a feminist disability blogger to guest blog.

Would the New York Times Print a Poorly Written and Judgmental Essay About People With Kidney Disease?

Dr. Sally Satel is at it again in the New York Times, this time writing an essay that conflates intentional behavior with both circumstances someone is born into and illness someone does not choose to acquire.  She rails that we should not say that drug and alcohol addiction does not discriminate because some ethnic groups are more prone to it and because children who are sexual abused are more prone to it as adults and because people with co-occuring mental illness have a harder time recovering from it.  And then she rails about the many bad decisons made by those who relapse in their drug and alcohol addiction and how it is really their fault, they missed or purposely ignored the signs of a relapse coming on, they made bad choices, they are at fault, it is not a disease.  Okay then, why is she as a medical doctor treating these people if it is not a disease one could reasonably ask?  And why if she despises her patients so much does she not get another job, go into another field of medicine?  Or even another branch of psychiatry? 

Would the New York Times print such a badly written and researched and logically inconsistent essay by a nephrologist judging his patients with kidney disease and pointing out the reality and true fact that kidney failure does discriminate, it is not an equal opportunity disease.  Poor people and ethnic minorities are more likely to develop chronic kidney disease.  Behavior plays an enormous role in the development and progression of kidney failure in many patients, diabetics who do not take care of their diabetes, folks with diagnosed high blood pressure who do not take care of their hypertension, folks who have been prescribed nephrotoxic drugs at some point in their lives and never check to see if there has been damage to their kidneys until they are in full renal failure as Dr. Satel herself has admitted caused her own kidney failure.  Now I’m of a mind not to judge her on that one.  I bet no one warned her of the possible dangers to her kidneys just as no one warned me.  And I think it is very difficult for people who inherit type I diabetes as children to keep to the rigid diet and blood testing required to stay healthy and I know even when folks do everything right they can still end up with kidney failure.  I am not prepared to say that the only folks who should not be judged for their kidney failure are those who have PKD and those whose kidneys were injured by malpractice or medical accident.  In fact I have no interest in judging anyone with kidney failure for the fact that they have kidney failure.  Nor in saying because certain groups are more likely to get it we should downplay the possibility that anyone could get it and decrease the chance that kidney disease research might get decent funding some day.  In fact the whole idea that certain groups are more likely to get a disease as relevant to what we do about them is repugnant to me.  Can you imagine an essay in the New  York Times about sickle cell anemia only affecting certain groups?  I can’t. 

Is there really no other right wing psychiatrist the New York Times can find to write essays for them?  There is no shortage of which I am aware and many psychiatrists write and reason quite well even if I disagree with many of them.  Is it too much to ask for a well written, non-prejudicing, well reasonsed essay in the New York Times?

Maybe Western State Hospital Can Not Find Spanish Speaking Mental Health Staff Because They Are Not Even Looking For Them?

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

Is a listing of positions Western State Hospital is actively recruiting for including a general psychiatrist, nurses and direct care staff.  Not ONE of these ads says “Spanish speaking staff encouraged to apply” or Spanish language competence a plus.   Jack Barber and Western State Hospital keep saying they can not find Spanish speaking staff to work with Cesar Chumil.  Well gee, maybe that is because they aren’t even trying to find Spanish speaking staff?  You think?  Sheesh.

Cesar Chumil

I don’t know when if ever I will be able to write about the man I saw in a film on Friday, the man held for years and years in solitary confinement at a so called “hospital” by a so called “physician” less than 2 hours from my home.  I feel stained and touched by evil after that hearing and being in the same room with this man’s jailer while watching this human being talk and even smile while talking to his lawyer through a translator and watching our state’s human rights committee, the one that is supposed to oversee all local human rights committees in our state, let the jailer off for being late with his appeal but holding the man in the cell’s attorneys to a much stricter scrutiny all the while getting their legal advice (and none of them seemed to be lawyers themselves as in the past) from an attorney with the state Attorney General’s Office which also is responsible for representing the hospital that holds this man.  And her interpretation of the regulations and what the committee could do was never on the man in the cell’s side in the public portion of the hearing.  In the closed hearing on the variance I saw her speak often while the man’s attorney was kept out of the room.  This is our State Human Rights Committee?  This is out state’s human rights system at work?  The man got more from them than before, I’m supposed to be happy, but I am saddened and appalled and sickened.  The Committee chose to wait until the end of all their decision making to watch the film of the man.  I guess they did not want to have their decisions influenced by seeing there was a real human being at the center of their deliberations.  Or maybe they hoped the few members of the public there would grow tired and leave before the end.  I can not know their motivation of course. 

I can only know that I came away knowing that no one in Virginia’s state mental hospitals has any real protection of his or her human rights at all, only the pretense that they do.  I came away knowing it could be any of us with labels stuck in that room based on a decision by one so called physician who has never been held accountable for his actions and instead is asked to speak at a “Trauma-Informed” conference in Northern Virginia last year?  And asked to serve on the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform? And asked to speak elsewhere and everyone too polite to mention the man locked in his attic in his hospital.  I wanted to exorcise the room and I’m not even Catholic.  How can the presence of this jailer and the pervasive defense of his actions throughout the state mental health system not contaminate everyone in it? 

My friend who has more distance and more sense than I has written a cogent summary of the situation with suggestions for action.  Please read it here:  http://lunarrose.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/fifteen-years-in-the-hole/

How to File A HIPPA Privacy Complaint for Yourself or Anyone Else with the Office For Civil Rights

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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services • Office for Civil Rights  

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HOW TO FILE A HEALTH INFORMATION PRIVACY COMPLAINT
WITH THE OFFICE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

 

If you believe that a person, agency or organization covered under the HIPAA Privacy Rule (”a covered entity”) violated your (or someone else’s ) health information privacy rights or committed another violation of the Privacy Rule, you may file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). OCR has authority to receive and investigate complaints against covered entities related to the Privacy Rule. A covered entity is a health plan, health care clearinghouse, and any health care provider who conducts certain health care transactions electronically. For more information about the Privacy Rule, please look at our responses to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and our Privacy Guidance. (See the web link near the bottom of this form.)

Complaints to the Office for Civil Rights must: (1) Be filed in writing, either on paper or electronically; (2) name the entity that is the subject of the complaint and describe the acts or omissions believed to be in violation of the applicable requirements of the Privacy Rule; and (3) be filed within 180 days of when you knew that the act or omission complained of occurred. OCR may extend the 180-day period if you can show “good cause.” Any alleged violation must have occurred on or after April 14, 2003 (on or after April 14, 2004 for small health plans), for OCR to have authority to investigate.

Anyone can file written complaints with OCR by mail, fax, or email. If you need help filing a complaint or have a question about the complaint form, please call this OCR toll free number: 1-800-368-1019. OCR has ten regional offices, and each regional office covers certain states. You should send your complaint to the appropriate OCR Regional Office, based on the region where the alleged violation took place. Use the OCR Regions list at the end of this Fact Sheet, or you can look at the regional office map to help you determine where to send your complaint. Complaints should be sent to the attention off the appropriate OCR Regional Manager.

You can submit your complaint in any written format. We recommend that you use the OCR Health Information Privacy Complaint Form which can be found on our web site or at an OCR Regional office. If you prefer, you may submit a written complaint in your own format. Be sure to include the following information in your written complaint:

 

Your name, full address, home and work telephone numbers, email address. If you are filing a complaint on someone’s behalf, also provide the name of the person on whose behalf you are filing. Name, full address and phone of the person, agency or organization you believe violated your (or someone else’s) health information privacy rights or committed another violation of the Privacy Rule. Briefly describe what happened. How, why, and when do believe your (or someone else’s) health information privacy rights were violated, or the Privacy Rule otherwise was violated? Any other relevant information. Please sign your name and date your letter. The following information is optional: Do you need special accommodations for us to communicate with you about this complaint? If we cannot reach you directly, is there someone else we can contact to help us reach you? Have you filed your complaint somewhere else?

The Privacy Rule, developed under authority of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), prohibits the alleged violating party from taking retaliatory action against anyone for filing a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights. You should notify OCR immediately in the event of any retaliatory action. To submit a complaint with OCR, please use one of the following methods. If you mail or fax the complaint, be sure to follow the instructions above for determining the correct regional office.

Option 1: Open and print out the Health Information Privacy Complaint Form in PDF format (you will need Adobe Reader software) and fill it out. Return the completed complaint to the appropriate OCR Regional Office by mail or fax.

Option 2: Download the Health Information Privacy Complaint Form in Microsoft Word format to your own computer, fill out and save the form using Microsoft Word. Use the Tab and Shift/Tab on your keyboard to move from field to field in the form. Then, you can either: (a) print the completed form and mail or fax it to the appropriate OCR Regional Office; or (b) email the form to OCR at OCRComplaint@hhs.gov.

Option 3: If you choose not to use the OCR-provided Health Information Privacy Complaint Form (although we recommend that you do), please provide the information specified above and either: (a) send a letter or fax to the appropriate OCR Regional Office; or (b) send an email OCR at OCRComplaint@hhs.gov.

If you require an answer regarding a general health information privacy question, please view our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). If you still need assistance, you may call OCR (toll-free) at: 1-866-627-7748. You may also send an email to OCRPrivacy@hhs.gov with suggestions regarding future FAQs. Emails will not receive individual responses.

Website: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa

OCR Regional Addresses
Region I – CT, ME, MA, NH, RI, VT Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services JFK Federal Building – Room 1875 Boston, MA 02203 (617) 565-1340; (617) 565-1343 (TDD) (617) 565-3809 FAX	Region VI – AR, LA, NM, OK, TX Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 1301 Young Street – Suite 1169 Dallas, TX 75202 (214) 767-4056; (214) 767-8940 (TDD) (214) 767-0432 FAX
Region II – NJ, NY, PR, VI Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 26 Federal Plaza – Suite 3313 New York, NY 10278 (212) 264-3313; (212) 264-2355 (TDD) (212) 264-3039 FAX	Region VII – IA, KS, MO, NE Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 601 East 12th Street – Room 248 Kansas City, MO 64106 (816) 426-7278; (816) 426-7065 (TDD) (816) 426-3686 FAX
Region III – DE, DC, MD, PA, VA, WV Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 150 S. Independence Mall West – Suite 372 Philadelphia, PA 19106-3499 (215) 861-4441; (215) 861-4440 (TDD) (215) 861-4431 FAX	Region VIII – CO, MT, ND, SD, UT, WY Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 1961 Stout Street – Room 1426 Denver, CO 80294 (303) 844-2024; (303) 844-3439 (TDD) (303) 844-2025 FAX
Region IV – AL, FL, GA, KY, MS, NC, SC, TN Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 61 Forsyth Street, SW. – Suite 3B70 Atlanta, GA 30323 (404) 562-7886; (404) 331-2867 (TDD) (404) 562-7881 FAX	Region IX – AZ, CA, HI, NV, AS, GU, The U.S. Affiliated Pacific Island Jurisdictions Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 90 7th Street, Suite 4-100 San Francisco, CA 94103 (415) 437-8310; (415) 437-8311 (TDD) (415) 437-8329 FAX
Region V – IL, IN, MI, MN, OH, WI Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 233 N. Michigan Ave. – Suite 240 Chicago, IL 60601 (312) 886-2359; (312) 353-5693 (TDD) (312) 886-1807 FAX	Region X – AK, ID, OR, WA Office for Civil Rights U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 2201 Sixth Avenue – Mail Stop RX-11 Seattle, WA 98121 (206) 615-2290; (206) 615-2296 (TDD) (206) 615-2297 FAX

 

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Round up of News Stories on Fridays State Human Rights Committee Hearing on Man Secluded for Years at Western State Hospital

Don’t be lazy, click on the links as our pals at the Fascism Advocacy Center will tell you… LOL.  Speaking of oppression and its side effects, one of the first casualties of the oppression of Cesar Chumil for all these years at Western State Hospital under the direction of its director, Jack Barber M.D. and with the permission of the current Commissioner James Reinhard M.D. and the previous Commissioner Robert Kellog and on and on and with the implicit permission of the Commissioner’s boss, Secretary of Health Marilyn Taverner and her boss, Governor Tim Kaine, has been adherence to the first ethical principal of medical care, confidentiality.  From the number of Western state staff who feel free to make public comments on news stories referencing information (often misinformation) they learned while employed at Western and from the number of times Mr. C.’s confidentiality has been broken to me by folks who work or worked at Western State (again, often with misinformation), it is quite clear that defensiveness about this horrible situation has bred an all bets are off attitude towards confidentiality among Western State staff.  People who have no responsibility for his care are clearly being told stories about him.  There is no provision in the confidentiality laws nor regulations that permit sharing of protected health information with another staff member who does not and will not be working with a patient.  Sharing of information is only allowed for purposes of treatment of the individual, not for purposes of defending your employer or your institution and certainly not for purposes of spreading misinformation to counter bad publicity for your employer. 

The only Western State Hospital staff who may legally share information about Mr. Chumil are the Director because he is being sued over human rights violations and/or his designees speaking on his behalf.  So people who just happen to work at Western who have not been asked to speak for Dr. Barber or for the Department of Mental Health have no legal leg to stand on if they speak or write about him to the public or even to other staff who are not involved in his so called treatment. 

Someone needs to show some leadership and put an end to the climate of Us against  C.C, his attorneys and anyone who is on his side among staff at Western State.  Sadly, I just can not think of anyone with the authority to do so who will. 

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/02/panel-tells-hospital-to-relax-15-years-of-patient-/

http://www.newsvirginian.com/wnv/news/local/article/western_state_patient_to_remain_secluded/25694/

http://www.newsleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080801/NEWS05/80801011/1002/NEWS01

http://www.whsv.com/news/headlines/26199054.html

Update on Vigil For Esmin Green and Co-Sponsors and Vigils in Support Around the World

DEMONSTRATE YOUR SUPPORT

CONDEMN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

Scroll down to see
co-sponsors,
individual endorsers,
& directions to the Vigil.
 

POSTED: JULY 23, 2008

WE THE PEOPLE

Contact: Lauren J. Tenney, MA, MPA, Psychiatric Survivor          FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cell: 516-319-4295
e-mail: lauren@theopalproject.org
website: www.theopalproject.org/vigil.html

A DEMONSTRATION AND CANDLE LIGHT VIGIL TO MOURN THE LOSS OF MS. ESMIN ELIZABETH GREEN AND CONDEMN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS.
 

WE THE PEOPLE Call For An End Of Abuse, Torture, And Neglect In The Wake Of Ms. Green’s Death On June 19, 2008, While Detained At Kings County Hospital Center’s Psychiatric Emergency Room.

The death of Esmin Green is indicative of a failure in the system that was supposed to be there to care for her.  The solution to protecting the lives and dignity of people with psychiatric histories is not simply to increase staff and services and/or to improve staff training.  As evidenced by Ms. Green’s death, these measures are nothing more than temporary band-aids that consistently fail.  Fully implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is a real solution that will promote respect, human rights, and dignity of people who have a psychiatric history.  The principles of the CRPD include respect for inherent dignity and individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s own choices; non-discrimination; the respect for differences; and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity.  Clearly, several articles in the CRPD contain protections that might have saved Esmin Green’s life.

Other International law has been violated as well including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention Against Torture, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.  (For more information about the CRPD and other protections see www.mindfreedom.org; www.theopalproject.org/vigil.html.)

Daniel Hazen, of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®) and Stop Force said,  “This could only happen within a system that uniformly ignores complaints of physical problems by people who have been labeled with serious mental illness.  This is particularly dangerous because of the extremely harmful nature of psychiatric drugs.  Was Ms. Green’s medical emergency in any way related to the toxic and debilitating psychiatric drugs she might have been taking, possibly through intimidation, coercion, or force?  This seems likely in light of the known connection between such drugs and fatal leg blood clots. A thorough investigation is necessary.”

The experience of involuntarily detainment in a psychiatric emergency room or in a psychiatric institution is tantamount to torture.  Human rights and feminist activist Kate Millett during the negotiations on the UN Convention on the subject of forced treatment and confinement of persons with disabilities stated, “The power of an entire civilization massed against one lone individual.  Every phone and lock and guard and drug . . . Everything conspires to make you completely alone and terrified.  Malleable.  These are the conditions of torture”.
 
David Gonzalez, founder and Senior Consultant of the Recovery x-Change and a former patient of the “G” Building at Kings County Hospital Center will be speaking at the demonstration.  Gonzalez states, “What has brought Ms. Green’s appalling death to public scrutiny is not that it was unusual or uncommon in any way, but that it was caught on video.  The lack of compassion, callous indifference, and subsequent cover-up exposes not only the hypocrisy which allows this type of systemic abuse to take place under the guise of treatment, but more importantly exposes the perversion of institutional psychiatry”.
 
On July 25, 2008, we invite all people to join us and stand united in support of the demand that everyone receive the full benefit of their human rights and the preservation of their liberty, dignity, and respect. There are vigils happening all over the world for Ms. Green on July 25, 2008 to stand in solidarity with New Yorkers.  If you can attend the vigil or not, on Friday, July 25, 2008, call Governor Patterson (518) 474-8390, Mayor Bloomberg, (212) NEW-YORK, and your elected Representatives to express your outrage about Ms. Green’s murder and insist that the City of New York stand in full compliance with International law and Human Rights.

Who: All People.

What:  A demonstration and candle light vigil to mourn the loss of Ms. Esmin Elizabeth Green and condemn human rights violations.

Why:   WE THE PEOPLE call for an end of abuse, torture, and neglect in the wake of Ms. Green’s death on June 19, 2008, while detained at Kings County Hospital Center’s Psychiatric Emergency Room.

Where: Kings County Hospital Center, Psychiatric Emergency Room, Building G. 606 Winthrop Street Brooklyn, NY 11203

Date: July 25, 2008

Time: Demonstration begins at 5 PM, Candle Light Vigil, 8:30 PM

Websites: www.theopalproject.org/vigil.html  www.mindfreedom.org

If you would like to co-sponsor or endorse this demonstration, vigil, and its follow up forums, please contact us.

WE THE PEOPLE

###

Special thanks to Myra Kovary, UN Representative of MindFreedom International, for drafting this press release   For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact:

Contact: Lauren J. Tenney
Cell: 516-319-4295
e-mail: lauren@theopalproject.org
website: www.theopalproject.org/vigil.html

Contact: David W. Oaks
Phone: 541-345-9106
e-mail: office@mindfreedom.org
website: www.mindfreedom.org

 

POSTED: JULY 9, 2008

WE THE PEOPLE

Contact: Lauren J. Tenney, MA, MPA, Psychiatric Survivor                                              FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cell: 516-319-4295
e-mail: lauren@theopalproject.org
website: www.theopalproject.org
 
VIGIL TO MOURN THE LOSS OF MS. ESMIN ELIZABETH GREEN AND CONDEMN VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Who: All People.
 
What: Candle Light Vigil to mourn the loss of Ms. Esmin Elizabeth Green and condemn violations of human rights.
 
Why: WE THE PEOPLE call for an end of abuse, torture, and neglect in the wake of Ms. Green’s Death on June 19, 2008, while detained at Kings County Hospital Center’s Psychiatric Emergency Room.
 
Where: Kings County Hospital Center, Psychiatric Emergency Room, Building G. 606 Winthrop Street Brooklyn, NY 11203
 
Date: July 25, 2008

Time: 5 PM – 10 PM, Candle Light Vigil, 8:30 PM
 
WE THE PEOPLE Call for an End of Abuse, Torture, and Neglect in the Wake of Ms. Green’s Death While Detained at Kings County Hospital Center’s Psychiatric Emergency Room.
 
Advocates, human rights activists, and community members are holding a vigil and demonstration to mourn the death of Ms. Esmin Elizabeth Green.  WE the PEOPLE are calling attention to the reported horrific inactions and complete neglect that Ms. Green was subjected to while detained at the Kings County Hospital Center’s Psychiatric Emergency Room.
 
According to the Associated Press, after being involuntarily committed to the institution, Ms. Green sat waiting for a bed to become available for nearly 24 hours before she collapsed on to the floor.  She lay there helpless for nearly an hour until she received medical attention, which came too late[i]. Further, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, facility staff  possibly falsified documents, stating that Ms. Green was “up and went to the bathroom” and was “’sitting quietly in the waiting room’ – more than 10 minutes after she last moved”[ii].  The surveillance tape shown on CNN Video portrays Ms. Green dying on the floor as people pass her by[iii]. In fact, on the Internet, one can find a mass of comment on this tragedy by individuals all over the world – a question repeatedly asked, “Where is the humanity?”
 
All people must be treated with dignity, humanity, and respect.  We must not tolerate violations of human rights that individuals who are assigned psychiatric labels often endure.
 
We ask you, wouldn’t you be depressed and possibly even ‘agitated’ if you were going to lose your home and employment? Reportedly, this is what led to Ms. Green’s commitment[iv]. Any one of us could be labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis and subjected to inhumane ‘treatment’ if we are thought to be ‘agitated’, particularly if we are poor. 

How many more people labeled with “mental illness” will be subjected to torture and neglect before something is done to protect human rights within psychiatric systems?  David Oaks, Executive Director of MindFreedom International states, “I encourage us all to reflect on the need for a deep nonviolent revolution in the field of mental health, far beyond the “reforms” that have gotten us to where we are today, with televised death via neglect of a mother of six”.

In 1875, a New York Times article cites abuses of inmates at the Kings County Asylum, spurred by Mr. Nelson Magee, a former inmate. Then-Commissioner Norris reacts to the investigation, “This sort of thing is very common among lunatics; they are always imagining themselves in great danger of being killed by their keepers”v.  How many more centuries have to go by before action is taken to end these abuses and neglect? 
 
WE the PEOPLE stand for change.  We have been abused by the psychiatric system. Our brothers and sisters continue to be abused and murdered, as evidenced by Ms. Green’s untimely demise. Massive human rights violations happen every day in psychiatric institutions but this horrific inaction was captured on videotape. We will call attention to the every day tortures committed in the name of psychiatric “help” including diagnosing life’s challenges as ”illness,” forced pharmaceuticals, restraint, seclusion, and electric shock treatment (ECT) with a Vigil to honor Ms. Green’s memory beginning at 5 PM.
 
There are many questions as to what led to Ms. Green’s death.  Was it in any way related to the toxic and debilitating drugs that people labeled with “mental illness” are intimidated, coerced, and forced into taking? A thorough investigation is necessary to determine the extent of the torture, ill treatment and other human rights violations involved in this case and in the practices of the institution as a whole.  We must stand united to demand social justice, equal rights, and environments free from torture and detention. 
 
On July 25, 2008, we invite all people to join us and stand united in support of the demand that everyone receive the full benefit of their human rights and the preservation of their liberty, dignity and respect.
 

We welcome your involvement as an organizational co-sponsor or an individual endorser of this effort. If you would like to speak at this event, please contact us.
 
WE THE PEOPLE
 
###
 
For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact:
 
Contact: Lauren J. Tenney
Cell: 516-319-4295
e-mail: lauren@theopalproject.org
website: www.theopalproject.org
 
Contact: David W. Oaks
Phone: 541-345-9106
e-mail: office@mindfreedom.org
website: www.mindfreedom.org
 
REFERENCES
[i] Retrieved July 8, 2008 from http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HOSPITAL_WARD_DEATH?SITE=OHRAV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
[ii] Retrieved July 8, 2008 from http://www.nyclu.org/node/1876)
[iii] Retrieved on July 8, 2008 from http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/01/waiting.room.death/index.html.
[iv] Retrieved July 8, 2008, from http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/03/hospital.woman.death/index.html
[v] Retrieved July 9, 2008 from http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F00E6D8103CE63ABC4851DFBE66838E669FDE

Check out MindFreedom International
Special thanks to Daniel Hazen for taking leadership on this effort.  
CO-SPONSORS
&
Individual Endorsers

MindFreedom International
www.mindfreedom.org

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights
www.psychrights.org

Stop Force
www.stopforce.org

 Maurice Frank
Scotland

Dreamweavers Peer Support
www.dreamweaverspeersupport.org

Center for the Human Rights of Users and
Survivors of Psychiatry – CHRUSP

PEOPLe, Inc.
www.projectstoempower.org

Community Consortium
www.community-consortium.org

The Opal Project
www.theopalproject.org

The Mental Patients Liberation Alliance
www.thealliance.org

National Empowerment Center
www.power2u.org

PIPER
www.recoveryisreal.org/piperny/p2_articleid/11

New York City Voices
www.nycvoices.org

F.U.T.U.R.E. Views

National Mental Health Consumers’ Self-Help Clearinghouse
www.mhselfhelp.org

 Texas Mental Health Consumers
www.tmhc.org

The Florida Peer Network
the state organization for consumer/survivors

Hands Across Long Island
Get on the bus!  Thanks HALI!
www.hali88.org

Community Access, Inc.
www.communityaccess.org

Michael Paul Oman-Reagan, Artist
http://fieldgallery.org

Leslie Gonzalez
 
Paul Chipkin

Hugh Mann
www.organicMD.org

Marian Merlino

Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council, Australia
http://forum.vmiac.com.au

Parents in Action
http://www.parentsinaction.net
 
MindFreedom Virginia
 
Felice Debra Eliscu, Artist 
http://www.kabbalart.com

Empowerment for Healthy Minds
www.efhm.com

Ithaca Mental Patients Advocacy Coalition (IMPAC)
Ithaca, New York

Freedom Center
Northampton Massachusettes 
www.freedom-center.org

Diane Engster, J.D.
Alexandria, VA.

  Judene Shelley

Helen Krisilas

Metamorphosis Club
Durham, North Carolina

The Westchester Peer Network

Donnel B. Stern, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist

Marty Raaymakers Recovery That Rocks
www.recoverythatrocks.com

Peter Stastny, MD

Dally M. Sanchez

Stephanie Orlando

Lauren Tenney/Xandi J. Storm 
psychiatric survivor
www.etrash.tv

Steve Periard

Sylvia McConnell Richey

Sabrina Johnson
Weschester, NY

Sheryl Berkley
Springfield, Missouri

d.a. johnson

Alison Hymes
Member, Commitment Taskforce of the Supreme Court of Virginia Commission on Mental Health Law Reform

Don Weitz

psychiatric survivor, antipsychiatry activist
Toronto, Canada

NAMI National Consumer Council
www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=Consumer_Council

  

NYC-PNG
New York City Peer Network Group

Northern Virginia
Mental Health Consumers’ Association (NVMHCA)

Dolores DeVito

Les Cook 
dreamweaverspeersupport.com

William Tyner
Sandra Tyner M.D.
Grants Pass, Oregon

June B. Rodriguez

Carole Hayes Collier
We are holding a memorial service for Ms. Green at Unique Peerspectives in Syracuse on the morning of the 25th.

VOCAL NETWORK 
Virginia Organization of Consumers Asserting Leadership
www.vocalvirginia.org

Transitional Living Services of Onondaga County
 www.tls-onodaga.org

Jasna Russo

 Rozz Poul Lieght
We are having a vigil where we are in Seattle, at the Westlake Center Plaza on 4th and Pine.
We will make it a candlelight vigil starting at 7pm.
for details, e-mail: yangshenmen@gmail.com

NAMI-MASS
www.namimass.org

NAMI GB CAN  Greater Boston Consumer Affiliate/Advocacy Network
   We are organizing our own vigil also on 7/25.
www.namigbcan.org

Karen Henniger
Cultural Environmentalist

The Empowerment Center
www.recoveryisreal.org

Enough Room
Roy Bercaw, Editor
enoughroom.blogspot.com
enoughroomvideo.blogspot.com

Darby Penney

Lauro Puril
The National Committee on the UN Convention,
Sectoral Council for Person with Disabilities,
National Anti-poverty Commission
Manila, Philippines

DK Calkins
Parent, Survivor, Activist and a Student of Human Services as an Ally for our Peers.

John Barrella

Moira Wait

ADAPT NE
The ADAPT NE network will be taking a moment of silence at 9:30 their time, while the vigil is being held at Kings County Hospital Center.
Nebraska

Laura Van Tosh

Moneer Zarou
 
 Mark Davis, M.A.D

Pink & Blues Philadelphia

Main Line Pink & Blues

David Gonzalez

Amy Upham

Marlene Chait, Ed.D

Dr. Huhana Hickey
Solicitor
Auckland Disability Law
New Zealand
 

International Indigenous Disability Group
  IIDCWG

Anne Hawker
President Elect of Rehabilitation International

Frank Mulcahy
Information Officer DPI Europe and
President of Kildare Network of People with Disabilities

Ireland
 
Hiljmnijeta Apuk
Director ” NGO Little People of Kosova” & Main Editor in Chief office of monthly magazine “Newspaper to the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of Kosova”
Kosava
www.lpkosova.com
 
Frank Hall-Bentick
Disability Australia
Chairperson Disability Resources Centre Victoria
Chairperson, Disability Rights Victoria
www.drc.org.au
Australia
 

Julie Shafer

Mindfreedom Ireland
We hope to remember Ms. Esmin Elizabeth Green on Friday from 7 PM – 8 PM at 16 Manor Close, Thornbury Hgts., Rochestown and hope you will be able to join us.
 
Valerie F Swartz

Ronald L. Berman

Depression & Bipolar Support Alliance
Delaware Valley 

Elena Chavez
Founder
ALAMO Promocion de la Salud Mental
WNUSP  Perù
Lima – Peru

MindFreedom Ghana
Ghana, Africa

 Resistance Against Psychiatry
Date: Friday, July 25, 2008

Time: 1pm-3pm

Place: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 1001 Queen St.W. (corner Ossington Ave)
Toronto, Canada
for more information dweitz@rogers.com

Val Farmer
www.myspace.com/redpossum

The Clark-Wittenberg Family
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

International Campaign
to Ban Electroshock (ICBE)
 icbe.wordpress.com
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Mental Health Empowerment Project

Michael Quiles III

M-POWER
Roxbury, MA
Vigil Friday July 25th from 6-8 PM at the State House in Boston, MA.
email: info@m-power.org

NAMI Consumer Council
Restraint and Seclusion Committee

Howard D. Trachtman
www.RestraintFreeWorld.org

Brooklyn Mental Hygiene Court Monitors Project

George Badillo

Gayle Bluebird
Bluebird Consultants
www.bluebirdconsultants.com

Beckie Child
 WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK OUR CO-SPONSORS AND INDIVIDUAL ENDORSERS, TO JOIN THIS EFFORT, PLEASE USE THIS COMMENT BOX. THANKS, WE THE PEOPLE
Full name:
Email address:
Comments:
 

DIRECTIONS TO THE VIGIL & DEMONSTRATION
The vigil is in front of Building G on Winthrop street.  Winthrop Street runs Parallel to Clarkson Avenue. 
BY PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION:

By Subway

Subway 2 or 5 (Flatbush Avenue bound):
(Flatbush Line) Take to Winthrop Street Station. Walk to 606 Winthrop Street

Note: The Flatbush Avenue bound 5 train only makes local stops during rush hours (6:15 to 10am; 3:15 to 8:45pm).

Subway Q (Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue bound):
Take to Parkside Avenue Station and pick up the B-12 East New York bus directly across the street from exit. (See B-12 below.)

By Bus

B-12 Route:
East New York Avenue bus to Clarkson and New York Avenues.

B-44 Route:
Nostrand Avenue bus to Clarkson Avenue.

B-46 Route:
Utica Avenue bus to Clarkson Avenue.

B-35 Route:
Church Avenue bus to New York Avenue. 

BY AUTOMOBILE:

From Manhattan

Via Brooklyn Battery Tunnel:
Gowanus Expressway to Prospect Expressway which becomes Ocean Parkway. First legal left turn onto Beverly Road. Follow Beverly Road to Bedford Avenue. Right turn on Winthrop Street to 606

Via Brooklyn Bridge:
Continue off bridge on Adams Street to Atlantic Avenue. Left on Atlantic Avenue to Flatbush Avenue. Right on Flatbush Avenue. Follow Flatbush Avenue around Grand Army Plaza and continue to Parkside Avenue. Left on Parkside Avenue to New York Avenue. Right on New York Avenue Left on Winthrop Street to 606.

From Staten Island
Via Verrazano Narrows Bridge:
Exit to Fort Hamilton Parkway. Follow Parkway to Caton Avenue. Right on Caton Avenue which becomes Linden Boulevard. Linden Boulevard to New York Avenue. Left on New York Avenue. Right on Winthrop Street to 606 Winthrop Street.

LaGuardia Airport:
East on Grand Central Parkway to Interborough Parkway to Pennsylvania Avenue. Follow Pennsylvania Avenue to Linden Boulevard. Right on Linden Boulevard to New York Avenue. Right on Clarkson Avenue. Right on New York Avenue. Right on Winthrop Street. 606 Winthrop Street.

Kennedy International Airport:
West on the Southern State Parkway (Belt Parkway) to Linden Boulevard exit. Right on Linden Boulevard to New York Avenue. Right on New York Avenue to Clarkson Avenue. Right on Clarkson Avenue. Right on New York Avenue. Right on Winthrop Street. 606 Winthrop Street.

From ALBANY
From:
99 Watervliet Ave
Albany, NY 12206
       
Drive:   
168 mi – about 3 hours 7 mins
1.    Head southwest on Watervliet Ave toward Watervliet Ave Ext        292 ft
2.    Turn right at Watervliet Ave Ext        0.3 mi
3.    Turn right at Everett Rd        482 ft
4.    Turn right to merge onto I-90 E        2.8 mi
5.    Take the exit onto I-787 S toward Albany        3.2 mi
6.    Take exit 1 to merge onto I-87 S/New York State Thruway S  Partial toll road 122 mi
7.    Take exit 13S for Palisades Pkwy S toward New Jersey        0.4 mi
8.    Merge onto Palisades Interstate Pkwy S  Entering New Jersey 18.1 mi
9.    Take the exit toward GW Bridge Partial toll road 1.0 mi
10.    Merge onto I-95 N/US-1 N  Entering New York  1.9 mi
11.    Take exit 1C-3 to merge onto I-87 S/Major Deegan Expy toward Queens        3.4 mi
12.    Take the exit onto I-278 W toward Queens/Triboro Bridge/Manhattan  Partial toll road 3.5 mi
13.    Take the exit onto Brooklyn Queens Expy W/I-278 W toward Staten Is/Brooklyn  6.4 mi
14.    Take exit 31 toward Wythe Ave/Kent Ave        0.1 mi
15.    Merge onto Williamsburg St W        0.3 mi
16.    Turn right at Flushing Ave        0.3 mi
17.    Turn left at Washington Ave        1.8 mi
18.    Turn left at Eastern Pkwy        0.9 mi
19.    Turn right at Brooklyn Ave        0.8 mi
20.    Turn left at Winthrop St        0.3 mi
To:
606 Winthrop St
Brooklyn, NY 11203
   
 FROM UTICA
From:
13 Hopper St
Utica, NY 13501      
Drive:   
253 mi – about 4 hours 27 mins
1.    Head northwest on Hopper St toward King St        0.1 mi
2.    Turn right at Genesee St        1.5 mi
3.    Slight right to merge onto I-90 E/New York State Thruway E Partial toll road 84.4 mi
4.    Continue on I-87 S/New York State Thruway S (signs for Mass Pike/New York/Boston/I-87 S/New York Thruway S) Partial toll road 128 mi
5.    Take exit 13S for Palisades Pkwy S toward New Jersey        0.4 mi
6.    Merge onto Palisades Interstate Pkwy S  Entering New Jersey  18.1 mi
7.    Take the exit toward GW Bridge  Partial toll road 1.0 mi
8.    Merge onto I-95 N/US-1 N  Entering New York 1.9 mi
9.    Take exit 1C-3 to merge onto I-87 S/Major Deegan Expy toward Queens        3.4 mi
10.    Take the exit onto I-278 W toward Queens/Triboro Bridge/Manhattan
Partial toll road 3.5 mi
11.    Take the exit onto Brooklyn Queens Expy W/I-278 W toward Staten Is/Brooklyn        6.4 mi
12.    Take exit 31 toward Wythe Ave/Kent Ave        0.1 mi
13.    Merge onto Williamsburg St W        0.3 mi
14.    Turn right at Flushing Ave        0.3 mi
15.    Turn left at Washington Ave        1.8 mi
16.    Turn left at Eastern Pkwy        0.9 mi
17.    Turn right at Brooklyn Ave        0.8 mi
18.    Turn left at Winthrop St

FROM LONG ISLAND
From:
159 Brightside Ave
Central Islip, NY 11722

      
Drive:   
44.3 mi – about 1 hour 5 mins
up to 1 hour 30 mins in traffic

1.    Head west on Brightside Ave toward Islip Ave/RT-111        223 ft
2.    Turn left at Islip Ave/RT-111        2.1 mi
3.    Turn right to merge onto Southern Pkwy W/Southern State Pkwy toward New York        29.3 mi
4.    Continue on Belt Pkwy W        6.7 mi
5.    Take exit 17W toward No Conduit Ave        0.3 mi
6.    Merge onto Nassau Expy/RT-27 W  Continue to follow RT-27 W 0.6 mi
7.    Slight left at Linden Blvd/RT-27 W (signs for Linden Blvd)        4.0 mi
8.    Slight left to stay on Linden Blvd/RT-27 W        1.0 mi
9.    Turn right at Albany Ave        0.3 mi
10.    Turn left at Winthrop St        200 ft
To:
606 Winthrop St
Brooklyn, NY 11203

Psychiatric Units and Hospitals Judged on Safety Not Competence, Alone Among Medical Specialties

“But the 31 ways in which the facility is assessed are all related to patient safety, not to competence of care—whether there were programs to reduce infections, prevent falls, conduct a “timeout” before starting a procedure, and so on. And the only question with specific relevance to psychiatry is whether patients at risk for suicide were identified.”

How can the state of Virginia make it so much easier to involuntarily admit its citizens to units and hospitals about which there is a dearth to no information on competence of care?  Is the disrespect for the humanity and needs of citizens with psychiatric labels that profound that the legislature and the Governor and everyone who went along with these new regressive laws including DMHMRSAS and the VACSB think the competence of FORCED treatment is not a matter of concern? 

And where is the measure of competence our our Community Service Boards which will implement outpatient commitment under the new laws?  How can the state commit citizens to programs of whose quality they have no real evidence?

Vote For Number 4 But Then Follow Through By Choosing What You Really Want and Calling Your Legislator, Mental Health Is NOT a “Negative” Term, Nor is Disability a “Negative” Experience

Public comment on DMHMRSAS name change by July 31^st 

DMHMRSAS has had its current name for more than 20 years. During that time, many states have updated their agencies’ names to reflect current values and perceptions and to address feelings about certain language and biases. Also, during that time, many, many people, including legislators and advocates, have complained about the Department’s name being unwieldy and far too long. Thus, the time for giving this department a new, more current name has arrived.

The Department’s partners statewide and general public are invited to review the options below and respond with a preferred choice by July 31, 2008. As you review the options below, please keep in mind the goals of the name change:

• To shorten the current name and acronym,
• To consistently use positive terms related to the impact of the Department’s services, rather than listing disabilities or conditions addressed by those services, and
• To use terms that are more reflective of the Department’s values and mission statement and more inclusive of current programs (versus exclusive ‘silo’ terms) and any future additions to the services the Department provides and the populations served.

These choices are listed in no preferential order, only alphabetically:

• Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services (DBDS)
• Department of Behavioral Health and Supportive Services (DBHSS)
• Department of Behavioral and Supportive Services (DBSS)
• Department of Supportive and Recovery Services (DSRS)

 

Please review the options above and click here to respond with a preferred choice or an alternative by July 31, 2008.

 

Remember American Psychiatry’s History as You Make Policy Decisions in the Present

The 1942 ‘euthanasia’ debate in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Joseph J.

La Familia Counseling Service, Hayward, California, USA. jayjoseph2@aol.com

This paper discusses and analyses three articles appearing in a 1942 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. In the first, neurologist Foster Kennedy argued that ‘feebleminded’ people should be killed (an act which he referred to as ‘euthanasia’). The rebuttal was written by psychiatrist Leo Kanner, who argued against ‘euthanasia’. An unsigned editorial discussing these positions clearly sided with Kennedy: that ‘euthanasia’ would be appropriate in some cases, and that parents’ opposition to this procedure should be the subject of psychiatric concern. The arguments are analysed and discussed within the context of eugenics and the murder of mental patients in Germany. Finally, the author points out that currently ascendant genetic theories in psychiatry could be a precursor for future proposals similar to Kennedy’s.

Publication Types:

• Historical Article

PMID: 16013119 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Dangerous, Traumatizing, Humiliating and Sometimes Deadly Restraint Chair Still On Every Unit of Virginia’s Western State Hospital

Stay tuned for information on how to contact folks in charge (if anyone actually is) to complain about the acquisition  and use of a restraint chair for every unit in Western State Hospital at a time when the federal government has mandated restraint reduction for all psychiatric hospitals and when Virginia signed on to a federal grant to learn how to reduce restraint and seclusion, letting Western State Hospital “choose” as if it were it’s own fiefdom, which I guess it is, not to participate in the grant nor the restraint reduction program.  Who is in charge here?  A state hospital director or the Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse?  Is anyone monitoring the folks who are supposed to be monitoring state mental health employees?  Virginia Office of Protection and Advocacy certainly isn’t.  They knew about the restraint chairs at Western and voiced no objection and told no one.  Heck, they praised Western in a report a few years back because although the number of restraints had gone up at least they weren’t using 7 point restraints (!) as much.  Nothing to do with the fact that VOPA doesn’t actually hire anyone with a psychiatric disability as they do folks with other disabilities who might be able to give them a clue about these kinds of issues.  Nothing to do with the fact that VOPA didn’t even have their PAIMI council chair on their board like all other states until recently. 

But back to the torture/oops/restraint chair on every floor and unit of Western.  Here are some more links to the dangers of this chair in use at jails and prisons: 

http://www.kpho.com/iteam/9454105/detail.html  deaths from restraint chair cost taxpayers money

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/politics/09gitmo.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin  Restraint chairs used at Gitmo, Western State Hospital and Gitmo use the same device, how nice….

http://abcnewsstore.go.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/DSIProductDisplay?catalogId=11002&storeId=20051&productId=2009003&langId=-1&categoryId=100024  DVD available from ABC on dangers of restraint chairs in American prisons–and note the date, 2000, long before Western bought their chairs….

http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamo-testimonials-project/testimonies/testimony-of-military-physicians/emergency_restraint_chair.jpg/view  a picture of a different brand of restraint chair at a university human rights center

http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-3/Over-260-doctors-call-for-ban-on-force-feeding-and-restraint-chairs-at-Guantanamo-5880-1/  Over 260 doctors call for ban on use of restraint chairs at Gitmo, but not unfortunately at Western State where they were ordered by a doctor and approved by his boss, a doctor.  

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:R-B2Ux9rcFoJ:www.awionline.org/Lab_animals/biblio/aw6metho.htm+%22restraint+chairs%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=32&gl=us  Research shows restraint chairs cause trauma as indicated by brain chemicals in non-human primates….

Stay tuned, there will not be a test but there will be a letter you can write in your own words to and contact information for  the Commissioner of Virginia’s Department of Mental Health and to Governor Kaine who appointed him.

Stop the Stigma, Start the Love and Support–Arlo Guthrie’s “When a Soldier Makes It Home”

Disabilities Are Not “Behaviors”, Stop the Spread of the Term “Behavioral Health” and Ask Folks With Disabilities What Term THEY Want Used

People with intellectual disabilities and their allies succeeded this year in getting the term mentally retarded changed to intellectual disabilities in the Virginia General Assembly this year. The General Assembly chose to respect their preference for how they wished to be described. People with psychiatric disabilities in Virginia on the other hand are not being consulted by anyone as the insulting and inaccurate term “behavioral health” is increasingly being substituted for mental health across the Commonwealth. Why am I not surprised that once again people with psychiatric disabilities are being dis-empowered, silenced and ignored as to their own preferences by the Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation/Intellectual Disabilities and Substance Abuse? Even though their vision statement and all their public talks speak to recovery and empowerment and self-determination, once again their actions completely contradict their talk.

Why is it even legal to change the names of programs and departments without legislative action for one disability but not another? I have heard the very lame and off point explanation that a more inclusive term was wanted for people with substance abuse, intellectual disabilities and mental health disabilities so the state (and the public?) could lump, oh excuse me, consider them all in one term. The explanation makes what is happening even worse. People with substance abuse problems are not people with mental illness unless they have co-occurring disorders and vice versa. People with mental health disabilities are not intellectually disabled except for the small co-occurring part of the population.

But hey, don’t consult us, lump us all in together and call our real disabilities “behavioral” as if we were misbehaving and if we just behaved we wouldn’t have a disability. Thanks DMHMRSAS and all the Community Service Boards who are ignoring and not even asking for the opinion of people with mental health disabilities, we really appreciate being ignored and silenced once again by the folks who earn their living off of our disabilities. Not.

Abuse of Power Is Contagious and Can Infect an Entire Institution and Its Staff and Patients

“
In one undated document written by Western State’s current director, Jack Barber, Chumil is described as a patient whose demands overwhelmed the hospital’s staff.

“The focus of the staff is primarily on Mr. Chumil, around whom the entire operation is revolving. It is not clear to me how much more of this can be tolerated without a very major issue developing, with a loss of control by the staff, a severe injury, or a massive loss of staff,” the memo reads.

It then lays out a scenario of decreased attention to Chumil by establishing a plan that is “sufficiently restrictive that it restores control of the ward to the staff.”

“I think when there is a degree of crisis which has been building and has now fully arrived, ‘cutting our losses’ is simply all we can do,” Barber wrote.

Gulotta said the memo appears to set up Chumil’s isolation from the rest of the hospital’s population, ending a pattern of shackling or temporarily secluding him for his erratic behaviors.”

It may seem to some outsiders that this case is only about one patient in Western State Hospital and one case of founded violation of his human rights (see eariier posts on Western State Hospital and Mr. C.).  But what I have observed and learned is that the ongoing violation of this one patient’s rights in such an egregious manner has infected the entire institutional culture of Western State Hospital.  Staff are infected by the sense that anything less than the total loss of freedom of Mr. C. is not such a big deal and one Western State psychiatrist has been going around the state of Virginia showing a film of a former patient stating that a week in restraints ( a violation of state and federal regulations on the use/length of use of restraints on its face) was good for him.   This at a time when all psychiatric hospitals are supposed to be reducing the use of restraint and seclusion and viewing it as a treatment failure.  But of course in comparison to 20 years in seclusion, a decade or more of those in restraints 24/7, a week does not seem like much does it?  Even if it is illegal under Virginia law.  So why not boast about it if you are a psychiatrist at Western and see that the state and everybody else will let one person stay in seclusion fed through a hole in a door for years on end?

Patients are infected by being aware of Mr. C’s treatment.  Some are scared it could happen to them, some distance themselves out of  protection and see him as less than human thus identifying with the staff who oppress them.   This will leave lingering scars on all these patients.

Staff feel a need to defend this horrible long lasting situation to the point where they feel free to violate confidentiality and once they feel free to do that in one case, it spreads to other patients who are not Mr. C. and we have staff that just does not get that they have a legal, moral, professional and ethical obligation to keep the confidentiality of patients from outsiders no matter what. 

Senior staff have reacted by re-defining reality to make themselves more comfortable in ways that pervert the very concepts of dignity, respect, recovery and human rights.  One senior staff told me years ago that other patients were “jealous” of Mr. C’s living situation!  If she can say and believe that, how must this situation have infected her ability to see Western State Hospital patients as human beings like herself? 

It is too simple to point fingers at one person although it is tempting to place sole blame on the psychiatrist who started this horror at Western.  What we have here is an entire institution that has been infected with authoritarianism, dehumanization of patients, disregard for the human rights rules and regulations and disregard for confidentiality.  We have something approaching the infamous Zimbardo fake prison experiment, but he closed that experiment down, this has been going on for 20 years. 

I believe this infection has spread beyond the walls of Western State Hospital as well. When conditions are this awful in one hospital, real but less mind boggling human rights violations in other hospitals and other licensed programs in Virginia do not have the same impact and spur the same impetus to reform on our Protection and Advocacy agency and others whose role it is to protect and advocate for people who use our mental health system.

Who will have the courage to step in and take steps to stop the infection at Western State Hospital from festering and spreading?  Commissoner Reinhard?  Governor Kaine?  The Department of Justice?  Who?

Demonstration and Vigil for Ms. Esmin Green July 25th at 5 p.m., Kings County Hospital Center, Psychiatric Emergency Room, Building G, 606 Winthrop St., Brooklyn, NY 11203

WE THE PEOPLE

Contact: Lauren J. Tenney, MA, MPA, Psychiatric Survivor FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Cell: 516-319-4295
e-mail: <mailto:lauren@theopalproject.org> lauren@theopalproject.org
website: <http://www.theopalproject.org/> www.theopalproject.org

VIGIL TO MOURN THE LOSS OF MS. ESMIN ELIZABETH GREEN AND CONDEMN VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
WE THE PEOPLE Call for an End of Abuse, Torture, and Neglect in the Wake of Ms. Green’s Death While Detained at Kings County Hospital Center’s Psychiatric Emergency Room.

Advocates, human rights activists, and community members are holding a vigil and demonstration to mourn the death of Ms. Esmin Elizabeth Green. WE the PEOPLE are calling attention to the reported horrific inactions and complete neglect that Ms. Green was subjected to while detained at the Kings County Hospital Center’s Psychiatric Emergency Room, 451 Clarkson Avenue Brooklyn, New York 11203.

According to the Associated Press, after being involuntarily committed to the institution, Ms. Green sat waiting for a bed to become available for nearly 24 hours before she collapsed on to the floor. She lay there helpless for nearly an hour until she received medical attention, which came too late <http://docs.google.com/RawDocContents?docID=dcqg6vj_0ddjzv4fg&justBody=false&revision=_latest&timestamp=1215634761535&editMode=true&strip=true#_edn1> [i]. Further, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, facility staff possibly falsified documents, stating that Ms. Green was “up and went to the bathroom” and was “’sitting quietly in the waiting room’ – more than 10 minutes after she last moved” <http://docs.google.com/RawDocContents?docID=dcqg6vj_0ddjzv4fg&justBody=false&revision=_latest&timestamp=1215634761535&editMode=true&strip=true#_edn2> [ii]. The surveillance tape shown on CNN Video portrays Ms. Green dying on the floor as people pass her by <http://docs.google.com/RawDocContents?docID=dcqg6vj_0ddjzv4fg&justBody=false&revision=_latest&timestamp=1215634761535&editMode=true&strip=true#_edn3> [iii]. In fact, on the Internet, one can find a mass of comment on this tragedy by individuals all over the world – a question repeatedly asked, “Where is the humanity?”

All people must be treated with dignity, humanity, and respect. We must not tolerate violations of human rights that individuals who are assigned psychiatric labels often endure.

We ask you, wouldn’t you be depressed and possibly even ‘agitated’ if you were going to lose your home and employment? Reportedly, this is what led to Ms. Green’s commitment <http://docs.google.com/RawDocContents?docID=dcqg6vj_0ddjzv4fg&justBody=false&revision=_latest&timestamp=1215634761535&editMode=true&strip=true#_edn4> [iv]. Any one of us could be labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis and subjected to inhumane ‘treatment’ if we are thought to be ‘agitated’, particularly if we are poor.

How many more people labeled with “mental illness” will be subjected to torture and neglect before something is done to protect human rights within psychiatric systems? David Oaks, Executive Director of MindFreedom International states, “I encourage us all to reflect on the need for a deep nonviolent revolution in the field of mental health, far beyond the “reforms” that have gotten us to where we are today, with televised death via neglect of a mother of six”.

In 1875, a New York Times article cites abuses of inmates at the Kings County Asylum, spurred by Mr. Nelson Magee, a former inmate. Then-Commissioner Norris reacts to the investigation, “This sort of thing is very common among lunatics; they are always imagining themselves in great danger of being killed by their keepers” <http://docs.google.com/RawDocContents?docID=dcqg6vj_1z25gp7p2&justBody=false&revision=_latest&timestamp=1215640941159&editMode=true&strip=true#_edn1> v. How many more centuries have to go by before action is taken to end these abuses and neglect?

WE the PEOPLE stand for change. We have been abused by the psychiatric system. Our brothers and sisters continue to be abused and murdered, as evidenced by Ms. Green’s untimely demise. Massive human rights violations happen every day in psychiatric institutions but this horrific inaction was captured on videotape. We will call attention to the every day tortures committed in the name of psychiatric “help” including diagnosing life’s challenges as ”illness,” forced pharmaceuticals, restraint, seclusion, and electric shock treatment (ECT) with a Vigil to honor Ms. Green’s memory beginning at 2 PM.

There are many questions as to what led to Ms. Green’s death. Was it in any way related to the toxic and debilitating drugs that people labeled with “mental illness” are intimidated, coerced, and forced into taking? A thorough investigation is necessary to determine the extent of the torture, ill treatment and other human rights violations involved in this case and in the practices of the institution as a whole. We must stand united to demand social justice, equal rights, and environments free from torture and detention.

On July 25, 2008, we invite all people to join us and stand united in support of the demand that everyone receive the full benefit of their human rights and the preservation of their liberty, dignity and respect.

Who: All People.

What: Candle Light Vigil to mourn the loss of Ms. Esmin Elizabeth Green and condemn violations of human rights.

Why: WE THE PEOPLE call for an end of abuse, torture, and neglect in the wake of Ms. Green’s Death on June 19, 2008, while detained at Kings County Hospital Center’s Psychiatric Emergency Room.

Where: Kings County Hospital Center, Psychiatric Emergency Room, Building G. 606 Winthrop Street Brooklyn, NY 11203

Date: July 25, 2008

Time: 5 PM – 10 PM, Candle Light Vigil, 8:30 PM

We welcome your involvement as an organizational co-sponsor or an individual endorser of this effort. If you would like to speak at this event, please contact us.

WE THE PEOPLE

###

For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact:

Contact: Lauren J. Tenney
Cell: 516-319-4295
e-mail: <mailto:lauren@theopalproject.org> lauren@theopalproject.org
website: <http://www.theopalproject.org/> www.theopalproject.org

Contact: David W. Oaks
Phone: 541-345-9106
e-mail: <mailto:office@mindfreedom.org> office@mindfreedom.org
website: <http://www.mindfreedom.org/> www.mindfreedom.org

REFERENCES
 <http://docs.google.com/RawDocContents?docID=dcqg6vj_0ddjzv4fg&justBody=false&revision=_latest&timestamp=1215634761535&editMode=true&strip=true#_ednref1> [i] Retrieved July 8, 2008 from <http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HOSPITAL_WARD_DEATH?SITE=OHRAV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT> http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HOSPITAL_WARD_DEATH?SITE=OHRAV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
 <http://docs.google.com/RawDocContents?docID=dcqg6vj_0ddjzv4fg&justBody=false&revision=_latest&timestamp=1215634761535&editMode=true&strip=true#_ednref2> [ii] Retrieved July 8, 2008 from <http://www.nyclu.org/node/1876> http://www.nyclu.org/node/1876)
 <http://docs.google.com/RawDocContents?docID=dcqg6vj_0ddjzv4fg&justBody=false&revision=_latest&timestamp=1215634761535&editMode=true&strip=true#_ednref3> [iii] Retrieved on July 8, 2008 from <http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/01/waiting.room.death/index.html> http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/01/waiting.room.death/index.html.
 <http://docs.google.com/RawDocContents?docID=dcqg6vj_0ddjzv4fg&justBody=false&revision=_latest&timestamp=1215634761535&editMode=true&strip=true#_ednref4> [iv] Retrieved July 8, 2008, from <http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/03/hospital.woman.death/index.html> http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/03/hospital.woman.death/index.html
[v] Retrieved July 9, 2008 from http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F00E6D8103CE63ABC4851DFBE66838E669FDE <http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F00E6D8103CE63ABC4851DFBE66838E669FDE>

Impeach the President of the American Psychiatric Association for Statements Unbecoming a Physician

If the members of the American Psychiatric Association do not speak up when their elected leader excuses the death by neglect of a psychiatric patient than they will lose all moral authority as an organization in America.  There was a time when the American Psychiatric Association allowed an article promoting euthanasia of psychiatric patients to be published in its own journal but one would have thought we were long past that kind of evil and disregard for the humanity and civil rights of the people they are paid to treat.  But instead of speaking out when psychiatric patients are the subject of hysterical screeds and hate speech and fear mongering by the likes of E. Fuller Torry, the President of the American Psychiatric Association chose to speak out in defense of fired psychiatrists and mental health workers when for once in a lifetime the American public is actually outraged over the death of someone with a psychiatric diagnosis. 

This is why we can not have nice things such as a well funded mental health system with voluntary services available to all who need them, because even the elected leader of American psychiatry excuses negligence and callousness and outrageous misconduct towards us. 

Impeach Dr. Nada Stotland, remove from office, speak up for the patients you are supposed to be dedicated to serving because if you do not you will continue to have less respect and trust from the American public than all other medical specialities and continue to have difficulty filling your residencies with American medical school graduates.  You, the psychiatrists of the United States are responsible for the image and the moral standing of your profession.  Take responsibility now.

Ella’s Song–We Who Believe in Freedom Can Not Rest Until It Comes