RERUN: This is one of my very first blog posts, originally published April 12, 2012, less than 8 weeks after my actual discharge from the Arizona State Hospital. Food for thought, on my end of it all, and beyond.

Dr. Laxman Patel, March, 2012: "This is the state hospital. What do you expect?" (see below).  

         It took about 4 weeks for Jesus Murietta's defense to even realize that he had issues relating to mental illness, again, this due to AHS' failing to meet their obligations in terms of the public trust (for more information, see "Victim's family questions why man was free", by JJ Hensley, Sept. 29, 2011, AZ Republic newspaper; or this blog "RERUN. One citizen dead, another one wasting away in prison: Of Jesus Rincon Murietta", Dec. 23, 2013). ASH is a public entity, licensed in accordance with regulatory commissions  here in Arizona, as well at the federal level. How is it that ASH' administration could get away with this sort of activity? That is a question that I have had to consider for many many months, the vast majority of it while there in ASH, where patients have a reasonable expectation of feeling safe, ASH being a "hospital", not a corrections facility, and required as such to provide reasonably optimum medical services, no matter the diversity of ASH patients across the board (some having been referred to ASH via the criminal justice system on  the basis of mental incompetence, others- such as myself- who arrived there via cooperative civil court order); and today I am working to explore this mystery through participating in critical inquiry that has arisen over the last 2-3 years via media exposures, including this blog. I have my own notes, too, voluminous in quantity, and reasonably well documented as per my formal education and professional background.

         When I first arrived at ASH, I was personally pretty freaked out by the possibility that I would be surrounded by a bunch of raving lunatics, even some of the hospital staffers in the Tucson hospitals made comments to the effect of ASH being a really scary place. I learned, however, in relatively short time, that the patients are not the problem at ASH, and in terms of any justified fears that I heard from other patients, it was all about abusive staff.

         But before I go much further into detailing my experiences at ASH, I need to state a disclaimer of sorts: There are good people at ASH. Sadly, they are the minority, and power dynamics being what they are, the miscreants (including doctors, nurses, security, and administration) rule the land once anybody enters the grounds of ASH. But I definitely met a handful of basically nice folks working there at ASH, and I feel that I made some good Friends amongst certain of the staff that I had dealings with. And speaking of you folks, I thank you from my heart for your goodness in the face of all the wrongdoing there in ASH. You know who you are, and I would not have gotten through my experiences there if not for the likes of your kind, pearls in a virtual wasteland of utter depravity and inhumanity.

         I did have one problem however, relating to the fact that even the good people at ASH don't take a meaningful step forward and speak out publicly about the shit going on around them day in and day out. Yes, of course it is question of job security, but that is simply not a sound justification, for the state employee contracts obligate employees to report abuse, and so on. What, then, is the problem?  Why won't any of the ASH file reports on behalf of the patients? From what I saw, it is all about an endemic fear that is instilled in the staff with job security in mind. I had the opportunity to briefly interact with more than one good hearted staff person on this question, and it was made clear to me that they were afraid for their jobs. These are employees who fully understood and agreed with my strongest concerns about abuse and so on. For example, with the Jesus Murietta affair in mind, ASH admin. refused to confirm Murietta's very existence to their knowledge when the reporter JJ Hensley asked about the escape, citing HIPPA and basic privacy standards (which of course is a crock of shit, because ASH admin. is not allowed to hide behind HIPPA in order to further unlawful conduct). So Hensley asked me to at least try and find one employee- anybody- willing to drop a dime and anonymously call him from a pay phone or whatever, merely to verify that Murietta was a former patient at ASH. But the two persons who I suggested this to literally cringed at the idea of doing anything like that because they knew that no matter what the circumstances, if they took action in contradiction to ASH obvious flow of practice, they could lose their jobs. Instilling any such fear into the minds of employees is in direct defiance of federal statutes relating to work place safety and related responsibility. Whistle blower statutes, too, apply in contexts such as this, but the state rpr4esentatives responsible for hiring ASH staffers somehow instill in them that they better not speak out about anything, or else they can kiss their jobs goodbye. Therein, I believe it is nothing any more or less glamorous or dastardly than common state government malfeasance, all at the expense of the patients.

        In closing on the day, I will offer a quick peek into what my literal admission to ASH was like, because things took a turn towards the worst that quickly. I had no longer arrived to my new unit (ward) at ASH, than I learned that someone at ASH, most assuredly a member of the security staff, had stolen a bottle of my medication. The staff at ASH didn't put it that way, of course, but I went to the trouble of looking into the disappearance of the meds in question, and much to the chagrin of the rat bastards at ASH, confirmed the truth of the matter. This is how it went down: I arrived at ASH in an ambulance that had transported me from the Tucson hospital that handled my reference and application to ASH. In that ambulance was a sealed plastic bag containing my medications, including a full (unopened) bottle of sixty 10mg Ambien sleeping pills. I know there was an unopened bottle of Ambien in the bag because I had watched a nurse at that Tucson hospital inventory each medication in full as he then placed them into and then sealed the plastic bag. Such processes are standard practice when it comes to medication. Likewise, the ambulance attendants are required to submit written notice confirming the presence of such sealed bags of medications at both ends of the transport, and there are cameras on board the ambulances that come into play with this process in mind. At ASH, however, staff did not inventory my medications when they entered them into the ASH system; and I was not informed of this matter until a later time that the Ambien was missing (approximately 12 hours after my arrival to ASH). On the street, Ambien (which is a sleep medication known to have a range of possible effects) has a markedly high street value. I have heard one 10mg pill can sell for $5.00, or more, and with this in mind, it does not take a detective to recognize the hows and whys specific to the fact that ASH staff were 100% behind this theft, as it occurred upon my arrival to ASH. In fact, this detail of my very earliest experiences as an ASH patient literally compares to the insidious presence at ASH I of illicitly staff-supplied tobacco (etc.), which occurs in clear relation to the fact that ASH staff vend such products for upwards of $1000 per carton (of cigarettes, e.g.), in absolute defiance of state and federal law, to the direct detriment of the entire community of ASH's seriously mentally ill and disabled patients  It's that simple, and when I continued over time to ask for a full explanation about the theft of my propoerty in this instance, from ASH'z administration (and my final assigned social worker, Mr. Robert Washington), all I got was the run around. Plain and simple stonewalling, all for a measly couple of bucks, and so far as ASH admin. is concerned, it's all business as usual.

        As my first primary assigned psychiatrist, Dr. Laxman Patel, put it it at the time: 
"This is the state hospital. What do you expect?"         

       Please help me fight for the rights of the pateints at the Arizona State Hospital. My email address is as follows:

paoloreed@gmail.com.