SECOND RERUN: APRIL 2014.
FIRST RERUN. Dateline April 2013.

The bulk of the following content was originally published in this blog in June, 2012.


"STATE HOSPITAL EMPLOYEES ACCUSED OF PATIENT ABUSE."                        Prescott Courier newspaper (AZ), 1978.

FAST FORWARD TO DECEMBER 2011: "Some State Hospital employees are selling drugs to mentally ill patients... and destroying records that document patient abuse... administered by a monstrous bureaucracy that expends more energy on paperwork than it does on patient care.... patient abuse has escalated in the last year while staff morale has plummeted as the result of the reorganization plan... staff members allege that records documenting patient abuse have been doctored or lost to protect employees from reprisals... employees have sold marijuana and amphetamines to patients…" (staff testimony, posted anonymously to the "crazycorycorner" website in 2011.)

"You Have To Be Kidding." Wherein, an article published 40 years ago rings so true to the current criminality of administrative and clinical authorities at The Arizona State Hospital that the only thing missing is Rod Serlings's voice. June, 2012: I awoke this morning to a tip sent to me from a friend in Arizona:

"There is something you have to see, it's online, very close to your project...." 

She pointed me to the place to look, and when I first saw it, I presumed it to be an Associated Press-Arizona region article about my current work as an advocate for the rights and needs of The Arizona State Hospital's current patient community, as those matters stand today,  (2012). Ergo, I was initially elated.

"STATE HOSPITAL EMPLOYEES ARE ACCUSED OF PATIENT ABUSE."

        The only problem, however, is that article itself was written on April 02, 1978. It is archived in the files of the Prescott Courier, available online. I  then shared this somewhat antiquated news article with of one of my closest associates, who is based in Phoenix, AZ, and these are his exact words: 

 "You have to be kidding."

Here are the headline and the first couple of paragraphs of this 1978 news story. Check it out (it is indeed available online) but as you review it, please remember, we are not in the Twilight Zone. We're still in Arizona, and it's 2012:

        

And there we somewhat have it. Two bodies of clear and irrefutable data, produced over a span of 35+ years, which undeniably establishes the fact that The Arizona State Hospital has been operating in violation of state and federal law since well back into the last century; and the associated fact that, in spite of such data being published in the mass media, those state level health care officials and senior level ASH staff who we know are 100% responsible for the operation of ASH have been functioning in blatant violation of the public trust. I have not fully digested the implications of this 1978 article (but this last sentiment sort of gets me there),  a accounting of highly egregious administrative negligence and criminal abuse of power/authority at The Arizona State Hospital that was well in existence over forty (40) freaking years ago!. The article itself is still today contained as an archived article from a small local newspaper called the Prescott Courier. 

Prescott is bigger today than it was then. I have a friend from Prescott, who is in at ASH at this very time, a really nice girl named Kris. This article was published in the spring of 1978, before Kris was born, and when I was in eleventh grade; my own issues with depression were interfering with my life by then, (albeit it less then a few years earlier for my chronic major depressive disorder emerged when I was around 13), but it was 37 years and four lethally serious attempts at suicide before I ever I ever sought help, which in turn led me into the bowels of ASH. I can only imagine what it would have been like to be an ASH patient in 1978, when my earliest mental health problems were still in emergence; but the fact is, conditions there have only improved at a snail's pace, in effect- if at all. This is, of course, the situation at most any such public mental health facility, as highlighted in societal history in America, and beyond. 

       Strange, the passing of our days. The old school warhorse nurses with the beady eyes and scaly viper shaped heads were already up to their witchcraft at ASH by 1978, and the substandard medical-mental health care practices at ASH were well in effect, proportionately- of course- to mainstream trends and other like features of those times. It was worse then than it is today. In theory. But at some point, somebody back then cut a hole through that particular version of the surreptitious corruption of ASH' administrative officers, got the attention of the press about the horrific treatment of patients at ASH and the directly related cruelty of staff, and this story appeared. 

As I have said more than once, I anticipate that before long a fresh new story about ASH will appear, an examination of its recent history in terms of exposing the truth in consistency with revisionist historians of the highest caliber available in terms of ethics, for they are our best only hope in terms of understanding how and why the rat bastards at places like ASH, state hospitals for the mentally disabled, somehow still exist in the middle of a city as big as Phoenix, and a nation that was founded upon honesty and open minded concern for the full scale diversity of its citizens and all of our respective needs. That's my opinion, of course, but I was raised in a family that is as American as it gets, and that's what I was taught. And as this fast forward reference to ASH circa 2012 proves, any number of ASH's longest employed senior staff have not altered their sickeningly abhorrent misbehavior, in brazen defiance of reasonably progressive improvements over these last 35+ years. 

       "Some State Hospital employees are selling drugs to mentally ill patients... and destroying records that document patient abuse... administered by a monstrous bureaucracy that expends more energy on paperwork than it does on patient care.... patient abuse has escalated in the last year while staff morale has plummeted as the result of the reorganization plan... staff members allege that records documenting patient abuse have been doctored or lost to protect employees from reprisals... employees have sold marijuana and amphetamines to patients…" (staff testimony, posted to the "crazycorycorner" website in 2011).

It is surreal, and yet, perfectly consistent with my still creeping suspicion that things at The Arizona State Hospital are far worse than I to date have been able to comprehend. This article confirms so bloody, bloody, much. Next up, given the depravity of Arizona Department of Health Services Office of Grievances and Appeals officials, I am willing to believe that the strategists- who are variously represented by the executive staff at ASH, along with their legal counselors, and gosh knows who exactly else that works for the the department of health (please don't let Will Humble turn out to be involved in this)- will claim something along the lines of me having read this article before today, at which time I planned some sort of conspiratorial attack on the state hospital in Arizona (which is not even my home state). Nothing can be put past the bottom feeding willingness of these people to do whatever the hell the have to in order to avoid accountability, primarily in order to grant them further opportunity to continue abusing the ASH patients as a matter of standard practice. It would be relatively simple for a tale of deception to be woven in order to defer the truth of my good faith dedication to this matter and rechracterize it as devilish and of ill intent. Basic stuff when it comes to shutting down the voice(s) of the oppressed, and the administrative staff at ASH are as basic as it comes; they are thick skinned, greedy, power hungry, and that's about it. Trailer trash, the whole pack of 'em, spittin' tobacco juice into beer cans and pissin' in the sink while grandma sleeps under the truck.

IN CLOSING: Let's do this thing already. Forty years of the same bullshit. The substandard conditions at The Arizona State Hospital and the rat bastards preserving those conditions are stuck in the mud. I have never believed that history repeats itself, and the situation at The Arizona State Hospital clears up that bit of haze for me. The substandard practices at ASH haven't improved because of the ineptitude of the one's responsible for overseeing the state department of health and behavioral health services. In this sense- because of this- history never changed, and the criminal activities of ASH staff must have just been swept under the rug when the heat came on (in the past), only to reemerge unscathed as soon as the smoke cleared. I am not willing to point my finger directly at people like Will Humble, not yet, anyway; but I will demand at this time that anybody who's paid attention to the facts that I have thus far exposed meet their full obligations to the people that they are required under law to serve, including Will Humble.  Let's get together on this mess. Anything. I am open minded to anything, if it will comprehensively address the problems and lead to ending the rampant patent abuse at ASH. I have remained civil, I have always asked for mediation rather than conflict, and I have always been the first one to come to the table in this context. All you people have to do, all of you as one, is quit lying. Etc. It's going to come to head at some point. Why not do this the easy way?

UPDATE: November, 2013. ADHS Director Will Humble is no longer outside of my scope of advocacy, as it were. For, over the last 12-18 months, he has actively participated in the grossly inaccurate flow of public information about ASH, in defiance of the public trust, his assigned role, and his related obligations to Arizona's citizens as a whole.

SECOND UPDATE: APRIL 2014. It is not quite two years since I originally published the bulk of the above information, and well before the current (2013-14) body of evidence that has irrefutably confirmed the legitimacy of my testimony began appearing in Phoenix area media outlets, such as ABC Ch. 15, and so on. Evidence which by now has amassed to such  point that, yes indeed, all persons directly responsible for these issues  are far more than ripe for direct accountability as per the letter of law. This is precisely on point with my contentions since I initiated my work in this context, knowing as I always have that individuals such Dr. Laxman Patel, Dr. Pervaiz Akhter, Arizona asst. Attorney General Joel Rudd, ADHS/BHS Deputy Director Cory Nelson, ADHS Director Will Humble, ASH CEO Donna Noriega- and literally dozens of lower ranking staff at The Arizona State Hospital, such as the war horse nurses at ASH whose formal training occurred in the dark ages - are guilty of engaging in highly illegal forms of misconduct, at the full expense of AZ taxpayers, and to the direct detriment of ASH's seriously mentally ill and disabled patients as whole. Grossly substandard medical health care that has been carried on for almost half a century, and they- all of them- are still getting away with it.

paoloreed@gmail