It is a bottom line fact that any number of the seriously mentally ill adults at The Arizona State Hospital are subjected to retaliation and related undue exposure to harm on a day to day basis. I attest to this from the heart, for I witnessed it all the goddamned time. And as illustrated in the following data, I also experienced it firsthand, for doing nothing other than meet my civic duty in terms of reporting clearly unlawful practices at ASH to those directly responsible for seeing that such issues not be in effect.
In my April 9, 2012, article (see this blog: 04/09/12 "Fact #3), I described details relating to my having been unlawfully transferred from a markedly peaceful patient unit at the Arizona State Hospital (ASH) to a one of the most violent units precisely one business after the submission of a formal grievance report that was produced on my behalf by a former representative of the Arizona Department of Health Services Office of Human Rights advocate named John Gallagher (dated September 2, 2011, and relating to events that occurred in late May, 2011). As such, it is clear to me that the unit transfer was imposed on me as matter of criminal retaliation that was imparted on me by my then attending physician, Dr. Pervaiz Akkter, in complicity with former ASH Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Steven Dingle, and Dr. Lynn Lydon, as well as ASH' legal representative, Mr. Joel Rudd (who is an assistant with the Office of the Arizona Attorney General), solely because I had exercised my fundamental right to voice dissent and good faith concern over abuse of authority and related administrative misconduct at ASH.
THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT OF 1990 (INC. 2008 AMENDMENTS)
-TITLE 42- THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE
-CHAPTER 126) EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
a) Retaliation. No person shall discriminate against any individual because such individual has opposed any act or practice made unlawful by this chapter or because such individual made a charge, testified, assisted, or participated in any manner in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing under this chapter.
b) Interference, coercion, or intimidation. It shall be unlawful to coerce, intimidate, threaten, or interfere with any individual in the exercise or enjoyment of, or on account of his or her having exercised or enjoyed, or on account of his or her having aided or encouraged any other individual in the exercise or enjoyment of, any right granted or protected by this chapter.
c) Remedies and procedures. The remedies and procedures available under sections 12117, 12133, 12188 of this title shall be available to aggrieved persons for violations of subsections (a) and (b) of this section, with respect to subchapter I, subchapter II and subchapter III of this chapter, respectively.
As to the retaliative transfer, I was advised in a September 06, 2012, letter, drafted and signed by then ASH Supervisor Cory Nelson and former ASH Chief Medical officer, Dr. Steven Dingle, that I was being transferred from the notably peaceful Palo Verde East unit to the very violent unit, Desert Sage East. The actual decision to impose this transfer on me was made business day after the Sept,. 02, 2011, grievance report arrived in the administrative offices at ASH. I have attached this letter and a handful of other related documents further below; therein, a sequence of administrative actions designed to punish me for having participated in a lawful, good faith report of gross administrative abuse of authority that discriminated against me and abridged a number of my constitutional rights to dignity, freedom from undue restriction and restraint, fair treatment, and several other very serious liberties and protections afforded me and all patients at ASH under the provisions of the congressionally created ADA statute, and the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.
However, before we look at the specific data illustrating the undeniable facts specific to this issue, I am including the following Arizona Republic newspaper article about a man named Joe Saucedo Gallegos, who bludgeoned two little boys to death with a baseball bat in 2008, because Mr. Gallegos and his story as it stands today has direct bearing on the validity of my concerns. It is my not my desire to worsen Mr. Gallegos personal life at this date, for he is also a victim of the mental health system, in my humble opinion, this despite my feelings about the heinousness of the crime that he was recently prosecuted for. But the fact of the matter is, Mr. Gallegos' presence at ASH directly relates to the retaliation that I was subjected to, as follows:
As though to add insult to injury, I didi not learn about this man's history and violent nature in the above newspaper article (a good 5-6 weeks after I discharged form ASH in late February, 2012) that I realized the graphic extent to which ASH administrative and clinical staff had gone in order to criminally attempt to suppress my voice as a patient and human being. But I came into direct contact with Joe Saucedo Gallegos on a daily basis as soon as I was subjected to the retaliative unit transfer that I describe above, because I became his new bathroom-mate (for lack of a better term), making us virtual roommates. Initially unbeknownest to me, too, Mr Gallegos was aware of my efforts to address ASH' staff involvement with illicit tobacco and other substances sales and use at ASH, and he harbored a very real resentment towards me for this reason, because he was very active substances dealer, and a loan shark, of sorts. Due to these circumstances, I was subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation by this man (and other patients on Desert Sage East) for the entirety of my final six months at ASH. Staff was fully aware of these facts, and the ongoing threats of violence directed at me by this man were documented on numerous occasions after I reported it, but I was never aware of how radically dangerous my situation was.
And believe me when I say that, Joe Saucedo Gallegos was far from the only patient on the Desert Sage unit where I was unlawfully forced to reside on who possessed proven propensity in terms of highly violent behavior. Indeed, on the Desert Sage unit, I was constantly subjected to very aberrant patient behavior, including violence in a variety of senses, at a rate that absolutely eclipsed any such behavior I encountered on my unit of origin. I attest to this fact.
It is that simple, it is that bad.
Below, I have included a copy of the September 06, 2012, letter, drafted and signed by then ASH Supervisor Cory Nelson and former ASH Chief Medical officer, Dr. Steven Dingle, that I was being transferred from the notably peaceful Palo Verde East unit to the very violent unit, Desert Sage East. This transfer notification was in itself in clear violation of a range of hospital rules, for it makes no mention to me of the expected therapeutic benefits (to me) in terms of my being relocated away from Palo Verde unit, nor any other like justification in that context. It is critical to realize that such rules are established in accordance with both state and federal law, and the willingness of these two individuals to engage in administrative actions that clearly defy such established law and policy falls nothing short of unlawful abuse of their grated authority. This applies to Dr. Dingle's specific obligations as a licensed physician, as well as Cory Nelson's required responsibility as the director of a public health care facility. It is that clear- It is that bad. As follows:
As a matter of clarifying my contention the illegitimacy of the above notification,
As a matter of clarifying my contention of illegitimacy of the above notification, wherein imposed transfer did occur from the most peaceful unit at ASH to one of the most violent one, I have included a copy of the applicable standard, as spelled out in Arizona Department of Health policy, policy is required to be implemented in accordance with state and federal law. While the general content of this document has direct significance to this issue, I direct your attention to the Special Notation section of the document, and most specifically, # 3. of that section (below). As illustrated herein, and as applied in considering the above notification, it is clear that:
The formal notification that was drafted by the Hospital's chief Medical Officer, Dr. Stehen Dingle, in complicity with the Hospital's supervisor, Cory Nelson, is absolutely barren in terms of the required protocol, most clearly in terms of my right to be fully apprised of the expected therapeutic benefits of the transfer itself. As follows:
Not only was the transfer clearly imposed upon me as a matter of retaliation, it was in violation of very straight forward ADHS rules and procedure, too; for, as shown below, there is a specific protocol whereby the patient and the patients entire inpatient treatment and discharge planning team is to be provided with a reasonable explanation of the expectant therapeutic benefits of a unit transfer, which the letter above clearly does not include. In fact, the entire sequence of events specific to the transfer process in this case were void of any of the required terms described below, in terms relating to the planning of a unit transfer, as well as in terms of immediate follow up procedures. In short, I was blatantly denied every benefit in the book as a patient of ASH and client department of health, which again, I contend would never be allowed to occur in a hospital not designed to exclusively treat mentally disabled persons, or a private hospital for that matter.
To put it plainly, I find it insulting that these people believe they can pull this sort of egregious misconduct on the serially mentally ill patients at The Arizona State Hospital. But they do so, and they do it as a matter of standard practice. I attest to having been subjected to a wide range of like violations of established protocol, and to the fact there of highly egregious patterns which do occur at ASH on a day in and day out basis. This only occurs because the Hospital's administrators- including but not limited to ASH's primary legal representative, Joel Rudd- willfully exploit the known vulnerability of ASH's seriously mentally ill and disabled patients on the very basis of said disability.
In order to further clarify this fact, I offer the following:
The Arizona State Hospital is a public entity under state and federal law. This is particularly evident in the language of the Americans With Disabilities Act. As such, via the findings and applicability of the ADA in this context, ASH' staff as a whole, and any state officials in the affiliated Department of Health/Behavioral Health Services who have been appointed to oversee ASH's general operation (including Joel Rudd, and his supervisors in the Arizona Office of the Attorney General), are all subject to the scrutiny of federal oversight flowing from the provisions of the ADA and other like law and policy standards, as shown below:
THE AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT OF 1990 (INC. 2008 AMENDMENTS)
-TITLE 42- THE PUBLIC HEALTH AND WELFARE
-CHAPTER 126) EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
SUBCHAPTER II- PUBLIC SERVICES
Part A- Prohibition Against Discrimination and Other Generally Applicable Provisions
Section 12131. Definitions
As used in this subchapter:
1) Public entity. The term "public entity" means
(A) any state or local government;
(B) any department, agency, special purpose district, or other instrumentality of a State or States or local government.
As the above definitions show (via the ADA), The Arizona State Hospital is a public entity, as is the state's Department of Health, and the Office of the Attorney General, and so on; and any employees of these variously related state agencies who function in their positions in direct relation to ASH are equally subject to the direct oversight and applicability of the ADA document in all senses. This is bottom line law, and no state authority in any part of our nation has the right or privilege to violate the dictate of this document.
In terms of the patient community at ASH, the ADA document continues as follows:
Section 12131. Definitions
As used in this subchapter:
2) Qualified individual with a disability. The term "qualified individual with a disability" means an individual who, with or without reasonable modifications to rules, policies, or practices, the removal of architectural, communication, or transportation barriers, or the provision of auxiliary aids and services, meets the essential eligibility requirements for the receipt of services or the participation in programs or activities provided by a public entity.
By and large, all of the patients at The Arizona State Hospital are disabled as per state and federal law. In some cases, this may not apply, but for purely technical reasons (in my learned opinion), for some number of ASH patients arrive and are admitted there before going through the protocol by which the status of disabled is formally applied. But I contend that this has no bearing on the fact that ASH, as a matter of fact, operates in order to serve the needs of persons affected serious mental illness. The official ADHS web site and related information specific the ASH makes this clear, in fact, and there is no just cause for anybody to limit any ASH patients protections and rights in the context of the ADA.
In terms of ADA's absolute ban on discrimination, the following language of the ADA document presents the following:
Discrimination. Subject to the provisions of this subchapter, no qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such entity.
In the context of the ADA document, which I was familiar with by this time (thanks to the help of a friend in the state's own office, who brought me a full copy of the ADA), I immediately recognized that required procedures had been disregarded to an extreme that definitely extended to the realm of federal protections and so on, but as always, I began a process of fundamentally good faith reporting that relied upon the willingness of the patient advocate at ASH, Sonya Serda, to do her part in terms of at least addressing the fact that hospital and ADHS procedure hadn't been followed.
Below is a copy of the standard ADHS/ASH grievance document that I submitted on September 11, 2011, to the Hospital's patient advocate:
Needless to say at this point, Ms. Serda refused to acknowledge the merits of my grievance report, which along with everything else at ASH in the context of established protocol and related misconduct, is standard practice across the board.
I had also drafted a letter to Cory Nelson himself concerning this matter, and about two full weeks later, I received his a written record personal interpretation of his given authority. It is a shocking to the conscience document to consider, which I will elaborate on in a moment, as follows:
THEREIN, THE MAN WITH THE MOST AUTHORITY AT ASH EXHIBITS HIS INEPTITUDE AND RELATED BELIEF THAT THE STATE OF ARIZONA'S SOLE LONG TERM PUBLIC MENTAL HEALTH FACILITY HAS NO MORE SIGNIFICANCE THAN A MOTEL SIX HAS TO ARIZONA'S SERIOUSLY MENTALLY ILL CITIZENS. REJECTING HIS REQUIRED RESPONSIBILITY IN THIS CONTEXT BY SUGGESTING AS SUCH THAT ANY PATIENT WHO HAS ELECTED TO REPORT WRONGDOING AT ASH SHOULD SEEK TREATMENT ELSEWHERE, RATHER THAN ACKNOWLEDGING THE MERITS OF ANY SUCH REPORT, IS PATENT NEGLIGENCE IN EVERY SENSE OF THE TERM, THIS IN LAW AS I KNOW IT TO APPLY.
Mr. Nelson's position on these matters, as stated in this letter, reeks of willful negligence and related administrative abuse of power, and is 100% on point with the discriminative practices of ASH physicians in terms of how they so often abuse their respective authority, doing whatever they want to with no concern whatsoever for the wellbeing of their patients, and then chalk it off in the context of treatment needs. In both contexts, it is criminally extreme abuse of the "powers" and directly related responsibilities that people like Mr. Nelson are granted and assigned, and in my learned opinion, absolutely pollutes the purpose of their roles, and further disqualifies them from the privileges that we the taxpaying citizens have granted them.
The Arizona state Hospital is not a Motel Six, and my very clear dissatisfactons with my treamemnt at ASh were always founded upon equally clear reports of staff misconduct and related unlawfulness.
As evidenced in Mr. Nelson's langauge in the above letter, these specific matters offer an outstanding example of the severity of administrative negligence that I experienced while hospitalized at ASH, and very clearly represents the substandard conditions that the patients at the Arizona State Hospital are subjected to on a daily basis. My "treatment" at ASH was not unusual, in this sense, and it goes to show that ASH operates in direct defiance of the ADA and other highly valued mandates of common deciency and protocol on a daily basis.
At this time, I have prevailed in fighting ASH' and ADHS' attempts to cover up the highly egregious retaliation that I was subjected to by the September 06, 2011, unit transfer from what is possibly the most peaceful unit at ASH to the arguably most violent one; and I have yet to hear, but as with the original September 06, 2011, grievance report that led to ASH Supervisor and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steven Dingle's decision to punish me for my self advocacy efforts, there is a pending (yet to be scheduled) hearing that will be conducted in the Arizona Office of Administrative a hearings in downtown Phoenix in specific relation to my allegations concerning retaliation, and the high degree of risk that was posed to me for the last 6 months of my so called "treatment" at the Arizona State Hospital.
I cannot easily describe the extent of violence that I was exposed to after my transfer to Desert Sage East unit, but suffice it to say, it is a unit specifically staffed and designed to house the most problematic, and potentially violent, patients on the civil side of ASH . As such, the atmoshpere on Desert Sage East contradicts my personality characterstics and the very heart of my given diagnosis. My experiences on that unit were deeply disturbing to me at the time, very detrimental to my overall well being as a person affected by mental illness, and as such represent a clear and undeniable dynamic specific to how dismal the overall flow treatment at ASH so often is.
In sum, I was assaulted by mentally disturbed patients on nine occasions during the whole of my nearly two year period of hospitalization in mental health facilities, ASH and elsewhere circa 2010-2012, and in none of those occasions did I so much as strike back in my own defense or otherwise engage in violent acts. I am a nonviolent person dedicated to civil interactions with others at all times to the best of my ability, I have no history of violence or related criminal record, and to quote a rather well known Kinks song: "I'm not the world's most physical guy...".
It is my express contention that ASH administrators and clinicians knew this about me (how could they not?) when they opted to subject me to the highly volatile and clearly dangerous environment of Desert Sage East. I am still bothered by very real anxiety and fear that stems directly from the months I spent on that unit, and I am uncomfortably distrustful of medical authorities now, too, in direct relation to the radically criminally malfeasant abuse of power that was subjected on me in this matter.
It is a bottom line fact that any number of nonviolent mentally ill adults at The Arizona State Hospital are subjected to retaliation and related undue exposure to harm on a day to day basis. I attest to this from the heart, for I witnessed it all the goddamned time, and as illustrated above, experienced it firsthand, for doing nothing other than meet my civic duty in terms of reporting clearly unlawful practices at ASH to those directly responsible for seeing that such issues not be in effect.
IN CLOSING: Hopefully, these documents will give readers an idea of the systematic manner in which ASH administrators and department of health representatives flaunt their ill conceived sense of power and authority over persons effected by serious mental illness and related disability as matter of standard practice. I attest to the fact that the individuals granted the most authority in the context of this issue carry on as such as a matter of standard practice, on the direct basis of the ASH patient community's (as a whole) given disability(s). As a matter of established federal and state law, it is criminal; and in terms of common morality, it is patently inhumane to the nth degree. Let's stop it today.
paoloreed@gmail.com
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I would really love input of any kind from anybody with any interest whatsoever in the issues that I am sharing in this blog. I mean it, anybody, for I will be the first one to admit that I may be inaccurately depicting certain aspects of the conditions
at ASH, and anonymous comments are fine. In any case, I am more than willing to value anybody's feelings about my writing, and I assure you that I will not intentionally exploit or otherwise abuse your right to express yourself as you deem fit. This topic is far, far too important for anything less. Thank you, whoever you are. Peace and Frogs.