nouna report of the facts about something, esp. a journalistic report that reveals something scandalous: a shocking exposé of a medical cover-up.
For the last six days (Monday Feb. 18- Saturday, 23, 2013) the Arizona Republic newspaper featured an intensive journalistic investigation of abuse in Arizona's juvenile mental health facilities and related administrative negligence in the Arizona Department of Health/Behavioral Health Services. The investigation was thorough, extremely revealing, and will greatly serve the citizens of Arizona in terms of awareness of the crookedness underlying ADHS's utilization of state revenues specifically allocated for the care of Arizona's most vulnerable and at risk population(s).
Kudos to work well done by AZ Republic reporters Craig Harris and Rob O'dell.
TO READ ALL SIX OF THESE ARTICLES IN FULL, PLEASE VISIT: AZCENTRAL.COM AND SEE:
TROUBLED TEENS: AT RISK AND OVERLOOKED
The data found in these six articles offers an outstanding platform by which to understand how and why the conditions at The Arizona State Hospital could possibly be just as substandard as I have described them to be in this blog, to date. There is little difference between the satellite entities referred to in the newspaper articles as Level I residential juvenile care facilities and The Arizona State Hospital, the only marked difference being that ASH houses seriously mentally ill and disabled adults, versus juveniles of the same description. And just so that one other fact is crystal clear at this time, these juvenile facilities operate under the auspices and authority of the same agency branch of Arizona state government as does ASH. Any and all data included in the articles specific to the grossly inept mismanagement of these juvenile facilities applies to the conditions at ASH. This is a simple fact, and there is no way to get around it.
The Arizona State Hospital facility itself is just one of many "satellites" in the overall ADHS system, but it is unique in that it employs a very high number of state employees (no outside health care contractors), while also functioning to care for several hundred seriously disabled Arizona citizens. ASH is the state of Arizona's only long term public adult mental health facility. ASH is a locked down Level I facility, much like a prison, and the myriad events that occur behind the walls and barb wire topped fences of ASH (whether good or bad in nature) occur 100% out of the public's view and earshot. The one's running ASH are fond of referring to the inner workings of ASH as a city within a city, but unlike any community in the free world, there are no outside resources available for the full time residents of ASH to turn to when crisis arises, such as crime of any kind, including episodes of patient abuse in any form. In this sense, ASH's patients are profoundly isolated. And due to the fact that the patient experience at ASH is characterized most pronouncedly by unabridged abuses of power, wherein a majority of staff at all levels of employ systematic methods of intimidation and coercion designed to suppress dissent or language and expression falling along the lines of protest, the patients are forced to adapt as best they can to a realm that is utterly void of safe haven in this context. This is how it is, day in, and day out, and I attest to the fact the atmosphere at ASH is, at times, terrifying for these very reasons.
The disturbing array of shortfalls detailed in this weeks investigative newspaper articles gives rise to the fact that there is arguably no more vulnerable a population of Arizona citizens than those of us who just so happen to be institutionalized in an ADHS Level I behavioral health facility, and in my learned opinion today, there is no more neglected facility in Arizona's public health system than The Arizona State Hospital. Given the findings of these news articles as they relate to ASH, I contend that ASH is an extremely dangerous environment in terms of the care needs and related human rights of Arizona's most seriously mentally ill and disabled adults, for it functions 100% out of the public' mind and eye. Out of mind and out of sight, a condition that virtually eliminates any reasonable guarantee that ASH's patients be provided with the optimum care that they deserve; and much further, one that grants the administrative staff and senior clinicians the opportunity to maintain a literal shroud over the realities specific to the patient experience at ASH, as a whole. It is by way of the Hospital property's profound isolation that these highly paid state employees can go about ignoring the ground level episodes of emotional, psychological, and physical abuse that ASH patients are subjected to day in and day out, while simultaneously practicing grossly substandard medical-mental health care, and engaging in willful dereliction of public duty at the administrative level.
TROUBLED TEENS: AT RISK AND OVERLOOKED
The data found in these six articles offers an outstanding platform by which to understand how and why the conditions at The Arizona State Hospital could possibly be just as substandard as I have described them to be in this blog, to date. There is little difference between the satellite entities referred to in the newspaper articles as Level I residential juvenile care facilities and The Arizona State Hospital, the only marked difference being that ASH houses seriously mentally ill and disabled adults, versus juveniles of the same description. And just so that one other fact is crystal clear at this time, these juvenile facilities operate under the auspices and authority of the same agency branch of Arizona state government as does ASH. Any and all data included in the articles specific to the grossly inept mismanagement of these juvenile facilities applies to the conditions at ASH. This is a simple fact, and there is no way to get around it.
The Arizona State Hospital facility itself is just one of many "satellites" in the overall ADHS system, but it is unique in that it employs a very high number of state employees (no outside health care contractors), while also functioning to care for several hundred seriously disabled Arizona citizens. ASH is the state of Arizona's only long term public adult mental health facility. ASH is a locked down Level I facility, much like a prison, and the myriad events that occur behind the walls and barb wire topped fences of ASH (whether good or bad in nature) occur 100% out of the public's view and earshot. The one's running ASH are fond of referring to the inner workings of ASH as a city within a city, but unlike any community in the free world, there are no outside resources available for the full time residents of ASH to turn to when crisis arises, such as crime of any kind, including episodes of patient abuse in any form. In this sense, ASH's patients are profoundly isolated. And due to the fact that the patient experience at ASH is characterized most pronouncedly by unabridged abuses of power, wherein a majority of staff at all levels of employ systematic methods of intimidation and coercion designed to suppress dissent or language and expression falling along the lines of protest, the patients are forced to adapt as best they can to a realm that is utterly void of safe haven in this context. This is how it is, day in, and day out, and I attest to the fact the atmosphere at ASH is, at times, terrifying for these very reasons.
The disturbing array of shortfalls detailed in this weeks investigative newspaper articles gives rise to the fact that there is arguably no more vulnerable a population of Arizona citizens than those of us who just so happen to be institutionalized in an ADHS Level I behavioral health facility, and in my learned opinion today, there is no more neglected facility in Arizona's public health system than The Arizona State Hospital. Given the findings of these news articles as they relate to ASH, I contend that ASH is an extremely dangerous environment in terms of the care needs and related human rights of Arizona's most seriously mentally ill and disabled adults, for it functions 100% out of the public' mind and eye. Out of mind and out of sight, a condition that virtually eliminates any reasonable guarantee that ASH's patients be provided with the optimum care that they deserve; and much further, one that grants the administrative staff and senior clinicians the opportunity to maintain a literal shroud over the realities specific to the patient experience at ASH, as a whole. It is by way of the Hospital property's profound isolation that these highly paid state employees can go about ignoring the ground level episodes of emotional, psychological, and physical abuse that ASH patients are subjected to day in and day out, while simultaneously practicing grossly substandard medical-mental health care, and engaging in willful dereliction of public duty at the administrative level.
It is important to note that if and when a meaningful investigation into the substandard conditions at ASH comes about, there simply has to be
discourse specific to reforming the manner in which ASH operates, including an immediate allowance for direct public participation in all imaginable ways. Transparency at a level never seen in Arizona's sole long term public mental health care facility is critically necessary at this time, because the patients at ASH are in crisis, and the only way this can assuredly come into fruition is thorough the establishment of an independent oversight committee, unaffiliated with state government, and derived of public welfare advocates who have a proven dedication to the furthering of human rights specific to the mental heath community.
A structure comprised as such, so that the administrators at ASH are held accountable and available for direct public inquiry; and no more of this carte blanche acceptance of one or two high ranking state officials' statements to the effect that everything is fine; an abolishment, as such, of the condition whereby state agency officials such as ADHS director WILL HUMBLE maintain the expectation(s) that their verbal claims about things along the lines of improvement, oversight, restructuring, and so on, are going to suffice in terms of the public's right to know precisely what the truth is in this context. For never have we seen so glaring an expose' of the shortsighted and unlawfully substandard flow of behavioral-mental health care in Arizona is, as we have seen in these recent newspaper articles.
In a nutshell: These people cannot be trusted to do their jobs as we might expect them to. They have failed to abide by the public trust, and the time is upon us all to bring transparency and public oversight into the realm of public mental health care. It is, indeed, all about us, the greater public, and it always has been.
To the extent that I have dedicated myself to bringing boatloads of testimony, documented evidence, and other like data to light in this blog, I could have saved us all a lot of trouble if simply making that very statement about my experiences at ASH could have possibly sufficed.
THESE PEOPLE CANNOT BE TRUSTED!
For that is the sum of my experiences at ASH, and as such, has direct applicability to all of the professional misconduct and depraved misbehavior that I witnessed and was subjected to firsthand during my time at ASH. Keeping in mind the specific roles that ASH staff are obligated to serve, from the roles of the highest ranking executive officers and senior primary care providers (psychiatric doctors), to that of the nursing staff, and the behavioral health technicians (who by far spend the most time in direct contact with ASH's patients), I attest to having encountered staff whose most basic and obvious behavioral characteristics revealed nothing short of utterly fraudulent and arguably psychopathic traits.
IT IS THAT BAD, AND I ATTEST TO IT AS SUCH.
I again will encourage all of you to take a good long look at the details of this past week's Arizona Republic articles. You can read all of them in full at azcentral.com. Simply go to that site and google/search via the phrase troubled teens, and the articles should be readily accessible. The articles are displayed as Day One through Day Six (M-Sat. of this past week, Feb. 18-23, 2013).
In reviewing these articles, take note of data illustrating the fact that ADHS officials have failed to respond to extensive good faith reports about horrifically criminal acts, including sexual abuse of Arizona's mentally and behaviorally juveniles, and consider the implications therein as they relate to the rights and needs of the seriously mentally ill and disabled patients at The Arizona State Hospital. Out of sight, out of mind. A profoundly isolated environment where such good faith reporting is virtually impossible and all but nonexistent. The patients at ASH are 100% cut off from the public eye, and they cannot do a thing about it. It does not matter how severe the mistreatment is. Nobody of objective character from "the outside world" has reasonable access to the interior of ASH, which means that for the bulk of any given 24 hour period, patients are effectively defenseless against the effects of grossly substandard conditions and related patient abuse. In terms of ASH staff, in combination with the willingness of ASH administration to put ASH workers at fear of their given job security, nobody seems to have the balls or ethical foundation to do anything about it, and the attendant "What happens at ASH, stays at ASH" mentality prevails over all.
This is what the patients experience, day in and day out, as they also struggle to bear the pain and related complications of serious mental illness, and even their doctors have little compassion for them (for the psychiatric doctors at ASH are the worst of the worst- I attest to this, as well).
IN CLOSING: Patients at The Arizona State Hospital have no means by which to directly communicate with outside resources- most to the time, that is. I humbly express that I was a rather unusual patient-client at ASH. My given education, professional background, and overall life experiences, in relation to my relative lucidity as a seriously mentally ill person, amount to a mindset and voice that the rat bastards at ASH would never have granted access to, had they known more about me. This fact become clear early on in my treatment when my first primary care physician, Dr. Laxman P. Patel, advised me that based on my attitude about the state of affairs there, "ASH is not the right hospital for you". Subsequently (throughout my 13 months at ASH), I engaged in a concerted good faith effort to report and address each and every aspect of the substandard conditions that I witnessed and was subjected to firsthand, and my efforts came to naught. I directed these reports to every state authority imaginable (beginning with the in-Hospital system), but most critically, I adhered to the specific protocol of Arizona's public health care system in the context of exercising my right to engage in such reporting by completing dozens upon dozens of official formwork and directing those materials to the one's in the health department who are 100% responsible for overseeing the emergence of such reports. And for this, I was granted nothing in terms of response, redress, and so on. I was ignored. The details of the AZ republic recent articles illustrates how this can be. I cried "Foul!" time and time again, and they heard me, there at ASH, and in the offices of the Arizona Department of Health Services. They heard me but they refused to respond. These issues are precisely what the AZ Republic has exposed over this past week specific to the ADHS/BHS juvenile system, and in terms of my ability to prove my experiential data:
I have copies of everything.
mmmm
No comments:
Post a Comment
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.