Citizens Commission on Human Rights: State Hospitals are Still Snakepits of Patient Abuse, Betrayal of the Public

       Numerous state psychiatric hospitals have recently been exposed for violations and/or deficiencies in patient care and safety, including several that have come under U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation. The reports show that these facilities are not safe, sanitary or rehabilitative places. The DOJ reports in particular found near-identical violations and deficiencies in each facility it investigated—including inappropriate, excessive or inadequately documented use of seclusion and restraints, as well as drugs being used as chemical restraints. The number of hospitals and the range of similar abuses throw up a red flag that says “systemic patient civil rights abuses.”
       Often referred to as “snakepits” in the early 1900's, for prevalence of violence and degradation and absence of rehabilitation, today's state mental institutions don't appear to have changed much.

    The above passage is one segment of an article written by S. Wagner, who is the Director of Litigation and Prosecution with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR- see www.cchr.org), based in Los Angeles, CA. Patients at the Arizona State Hospital are not allowed access to the internet under any conditions, so I was unable to conduct any independent research concerning the ongoing presence of administrative corruption and patient abuse at state hospitals in the US today. I did begin to sense the severity of wrongdoing at ASH pretty quickly, though, not long after my admission there in early Jan. 2011, and I always had a feeling that there must be a lot going on in terms of the overall situation in this context.
     Information concerning the existence of resources such as the CCHR came to me almost immediately after I discharged from ASH in February, 2012, and this article reminded me of a process that I had engaged in fairly early on in my time at The Arizona State Hospital, as follows: 
     Specifically, in early May, 2011, when I as a patient was beginning to grasp the severity of the unlawful conduct and substandard conditions at The Arizona State Hospital, a former advocate from the Arizona Department of Health Services Office of Human Rights (ADHS/OHR) named John Gallagher made me aware of the requirement that institutions like ASH establish patient-client based human rights panels, and as soon as I got a look at the document shown below I submitted my formal inquiry to the Department of Behavioral Health Services as to why there was no such committee at ASH, as required. But I never heard a damn thing back from anybody about this, and I can only speculate as to why. As I have already described, my outgoing mail at ASH was unlawfully seized on any number of occasions (a fact that was verified by USPS and ACLU staff, and of course I have documentation to this effect), and I am also willing to bet that the person at the other end of this communication (presuming my letter did go out) felt that I wasn't worthy of a response because I was a patient at ASH. Such was the case when I was a patient at ASH and had interactions with numerous state and municipal authorities who were/are assigned the responsibility of seeing that mentally ill persons-patients at ASH (and beyond) are nor deprived of their fundamental rights, liberties and privileges; and in my opinion today, such is the case when it comes to the stigmatization towards mentally ill persons that still exists throughout society. The fact that documents such as the one below exist, and yet, no such committees have been established at places like ASH despite my direct communications with the agency assigned to this particular situation, sickens me as a human being, and further proves my contention that the state of Arizona's mental health care system is absolutely broken, out of keeping with commonly understood law and policy, and still in the process of severely detrimenting the lives of the hundreds of patients in ASH today.

        Mentally ill adults are the most marginalized population of adults in the United States today, and the existence of well established guidelines, including federal law and congressional enactments, as well as mandates such as the above document, reflect the expectation that mentally ill persons will be most assuredly protected from abuse in institutions like The Arizona State Hospital,which are supported by tax payer money and subject to the distinct requirement that patients undergoing treatment there are in no way deprived of the fullest possible protections available today. 

        Ironically, however, the administrators and clinicians at ASH somehow fail to recognize this basic tenet, in clear complicity with affiliated state agencies and representative officials; and rather then being a safe haven, the conditions at ASH are clinically dangerous, due to systemic discrimination and criminal negligence. While a patient at ASH, I witnessed and experienced this discrimination in all of the various settings found there, imparted upon myself and the other patients by staff at every level, and recognizable by virtue of the fact that ASH is the only hospital where I have ever seen such blatant denials and abuse of patient rights; and the absence of the above described, required patient-client structured human rights committee is only one example of the fundamental negligence that I can attest to as being standard practice at ASH, and throughout the affiliated state agencies.

      As research shows, mentally ill persons far too often find themselves subject to undeniable discrimination in all corners of society, which effectively aggravates their condition, and in many cases, leads them to places like ASH. This is, in fact, why places like ASH exist (of course). How is it, then, that the deplorable conditions I encountered at ASH are allowed to exist? 

       In closing, my experiences at ASH did, at times, extend to interactions with outlying state agencies, and I have documentation of abuse and discrimination in terms not only hospital staff and department of health representatives, but from the Phoenix Police Department, as well, this following an episode wherein I was physically assaulted and injured by a staff technician at ASH (see entry dated April 08, 2012, Fact #2). I will be outlining more of the details concerning that assault and the related sequence of unlawful followup by the ADHS Office of Grievance and Appeals in the next few days, as I have a May 17, 2012, court date in the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings concerning the matter. The hospital will theoretically be represented by an attorney named Joel Rudd, who is an assistant with state's Office of the Attorney General, and  a man who is, in fact, party to one of the other very serious grievance issues that I will be presenting at hearing later on in time.

       I have still not succeed in getting the Phoenix Police department to investigate the discrimination that I experienced in this case, despite letters to (and from) Maricopa County (Phoenix) Attorney, Bill Montgomery, and direct communications with several police officials. But I will be getting on top of that issue as this court date nears, and intend to fully present my experience to the administrative law judge assigned to this hearing. And I do, of course, have documentation of these things, which I will also update to this site before long.

      What will it take to bring the publics awareness of these very critical issues up enough to bring about meaningful reaction and response to my pleas for help? Please, anybody, add yourself to the mix, and help me address these matters NOW. Until something is done, the situation remains the same: Patients at the Arizona State Hospital are being abused even as I write, and the current administration is dirty, too, and quite clearly unwilling to do anything much about it.   

paoloreed@gmail.com