RERUN

This article was originally published in May of 2012, approximately three months after my summarary discharge from the Arizona State Hospital (ASH), Phoenix, Arizona. ASH is the sole long term public mental health care facility in the entire state, managed under the auspices of the Arizona Department of Health/Behavioral Health Services, and the direct authority of Arizona's state government system. As such, ASH and all associated authoritative agencies, including those identified above, as well as the Office of the Arizona Attorney General, are required by federal mandate to abide by constitutional protocol designed to serve the interests of the American people in general, including each and every citizen of Arizona, which does necessarily extend to the entire patient community at ASH. If any state based agency/authority fails to meet these requirements, it is in violation of said federal mandate, and does in fact deserve direct oversight via federal intervention.

The following data establishes the fact the Arizona legal system is unable to serve the interests of persons affected by serious mental illness, at least to the extent that bright standards of legal protocol are patently ignored by the legal officials who are entrusted by the citizens of Arizona in terms of jurisprudence and civil procedural law.

TIMELINE MAY 2012: Delays, Delays, and More Delays Wherein I learn something, but not really anything of substance, about the ongoing delay(s) in my yet to be scheduled court sessions in the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings. 

      I received to email advisory shown below today, which was sent to me from the Arizona Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) in response to the May 25, 2012, motion (see my article, May 25, 2012: "Identifying Key Factors #One) that I submitted to them concerning the ongoing delay in the scheduling of at least three OAH judicial reviews of my most serious grievance issues (as submitted at this time).

FROM: Office of Administrative Hearings, Webmaster OAH.Webmaster@azoah.com
Mr. Pickens,

I have confirmed with DBHS/Office of Grievance and Appeals at the Department of Health Services that the three cases that you are referencing are still pending matters and they have not yet been sent to our office, The Office of Administrative Hearings, to be scheduled for a hearing date and time. Once the requests are made to our office by the Department of Health Services then they will be promptly scheduled in the normal course of business. Again, these matters are still pending at the Department of Health Services and have not yet been filed with the Office of Administrative Hearings.

Thank you

-Webmaster

      As this advisory shows, staff at the Arizona Department of Health Services Office of Grievances and Appeals are clearly up to something ( or, as they put it, "pending matters"), and given my past experiences with this office, I highly doubt that its anything I will happy to learn about when the time comes. Meanwhile, my most basic rights to prompt and equitable service in the context of these very critical matters are still being ignored. It is as though these people love nothing more than an opportunity to flaunt their given disregard for patient-client rights, with just as much impunity (in there minds) as the staff at The Arizona State Hospital do. Herein, my declaration that the Arizona behavioral health care system is so deeply broken that even the most fundamentally established dictations of applicable law and policy seemingly have no bearing on the day to day functions of its affiliate agencies. From the very point at which physical and verbal assault is allowed to occur in the patient units at the Arizona State Hospital, and all the way up into the highest offices of authority over these affairs, these rat bastards refuse to follow their own rules, and they do so in graphic defiance of numerous federal and state laws. 

IN CLOSING: Patients at The Arizona State Hospital are living in an environment where the United States Constitution is simply not a fact of life. To the staff and administrators of that facility, the very fence lines of the place seem to represent a departure from contemporary American life, and a virtual arrival in a third world country. I sensed this each and every day during my thirteen long moths of hospitalization at ASH, and I saw it in the day to day behavior of various staff there at every applicable level. In time, I came to realize that at ASH, I was a member of a persecuted class, and that the majority of the staff there are incapable of understanding there own deep set flaws as self described caregivers and professionals working in Arizona's only long term public mental hospital. It was as terrifyingly sickening an experience as I can imagine a modern human being being subjected to, particularly when one considers that this is the United States, and that this is the year 2012. 

       Come on, people! Get involved in some way, in some capacity, in some form or fashion! Do what you can to say in as loud as voice as you can muster: THE ABUSE OF MENTALLY ILL PATIENTS AT THE ARIZONA STATE HOSPITAL IS INHUMANE AND NEEDS TO STOP TODAY!!! 

       I need your help. The patients at ASH need your help. 

UPDATE MAY 2014: As I have already stated, ASH is the sole long term public mental health care facility in the entire state, managed under the auspices of the Arizona Department of Health/Behavioral Health Services, and the direct authority of Arizona's system of state government. As such, ASH is a public entity under federal law and the Americans With Disabilities Act, and given the established evidence (to date) in a context of gross violations of a wide range of state and federal law, is thus due direct oversight by both the Department of Justice, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services.

paoloreed@gmail.com