Prose. September 2011. The Arizona State Hospital.


            Me.... This...  Is not about me.

            This is about you.
            But it relates to me
            subjectively,
            and to every other one of us,
            we who came to you
            because we felt we could rely
            on you.

            I... This....
            I come from a long family line
            of high achievers,
            but I realize now,  today
            as though for the first time,
            that mental illness runs among them, too.
           
            So be it.

            You... This...
            is about you,
            all of you as dirty
            as a dead hobo's underwear,
            and you know it.

            You... This...
            I will burn you down,
            I will smoke you out, all of you.

           You... This... It is so large, it is...

            You wound up with
            the wrong patient,
            and you picked the wrong century
            to write shit on the wall,
            and you are not going to get away with it.

           (September 2011)
               ---------------------------------

Following my February 21, 2012, discharge from The Arizona State Hospital, I found this piece drafted in essay form in one of the first journals that I began in order to document my experiences as an ASH patient (the piece today has been slightly amended). As such, my notes at that time, 2011-12, stand as an example of the emotions and associated intellectual responses I dealt with in relation to the presence of grossly substandard conditions at Arizona's sole long term public mental health facility, and the associated harms impacting the patients there. I had not intended by any means for my note-taking to be dominantly focused upon staff misbehavior (and related patient abuse/suffering), this is a plain fact; I was only continuing on with the same journaling I have been doing for the virtual entirety of my life, which I also knew could serve as a form of self administered therapy.

But as it turned out, my inability to ignore the overwhelming presence of patient abuse and the role of ASH administrators in condoning such a critical issue(s) transformed my attempt to benefit from this therapeutic effort into what some of my associates today characterize as embedded journalism. First person, fact based accounting and documentation of issues that would otherwise remain unknown to the greater public. I have mentioned before, that as my head cleared and a reemergence of interest in my surroundings arose, I fell back on my professional, academic, and personal strengths in order to do whatever I could in order to serve the interests of the ASH patient community.

Given that I had little resources in this context outside of writing, and other such textural record keeping (including retaining all copies of formal paperwork- e.g. patient grievance documents and other like correspondence with Hospital and state officials that I compiled while hospitalized at ASH), I thus dedicated myself to rigorous note-taking on a virtual 24/7 basis for the entirety of my thirteen long months at ASH, circa January, 2011- February, 2012.  And I will add the fact that doing so was anything but therapeutic (as follows below). I therein put my interests somewhat to the wayside in order to do the right thing.

Because no one else would. And someone had to.

Nobody encouraged me to do this, in other words. I had to initiate the effort to the best of my ability, on my own, and without giving credence to the efforts of ASH clinicians to turn my eyes away from such issues, be it on the basis of me allegedly being out of line, grandiose, and/or antagonistic in my behavior, or not.
 

Indeed, my first primary attending psychiatrist, Dr. Laxman Patel, who bore the direct responsibility to meaningfully respond to my reports (to him) of staff misconduct, willfully attempted to thwart my awareness of these matters by telling me early on: "Focus on your own treatment."

 
But I was unable to accept that. I hardly even tried, because recognizing the reality as I did, I knew that I couldn't. It was mildly confusing at first. I did in fact question for one hot minute my motivation and associated objective(s). But the presence of disturbingly unlawful staff misconduct at ASH was overwhelming, and before long, I realized the very real need as it stood.

For someone to do the right thing. Because no one else would.

And somebody had to.

So when that didn't work, this Rat Bastard  Patel tried to discharge me, on the basis of ASH not being "the right hospital for you." Suggesting, in the first place, that as an ASH patient I had no obligation or right to so much as speak of these issues, much less turn to him as a source of remedial action; and in the second place, that if I was unwilling to ignore these issues, he would do whatever he had to deny me my deserved services (as a client-consumer) in order to maintain the status quo at ASH, by having me removed from the hospital itself. He did this with no regard for my given care needs, and the fact that I was in those earliest months at ASH still mired in major depression and suicidal ideation. This so called "doctor" would have rather seen me exit ASH and kill myself, in essence, rather then do his job.  

It was that simple. It was that bad. And my experiences in this sense as an ASH patient are anything but unique.  

As such, the presence of substandard conditions and care practices at ASH literally inverted my approach to writing itself and my related intent, effectively denying me the chance to benefit from even my own self-directed "healing" in this context. 

Going through that then, while I was seeking to heal, versus be further disturbed with respect for my struggles with major depressive disorder, was nothing short of hell at times. And no single element of the challenge was more debilitating then the willful attempts of ASH doctors and administrators to deter me; they did this via systematic forms of retaliation and fearful coercion, leading me on more then one occasion to seriously consider committing suicide while there at ASH in a manner that could shock the minds and feelings of my so-called caregivers at ASH. An act that I then felt would relieve me from having to be further sickened by the radically incompetent psychiatrists I had to deal with at ASH, and their lower ranking collaborators in technician and nursing staff, while also- in theory- abruptly proving to them how traumatic their misconduct is, in fact.

For the practices of a publically funded mental health care facility to exasperate the suffering of its client-consumers is fundamentally unacceptable. I strongly feel this way, at least with reference to anyone of reasonable conscience.

And while I am typically not one for grudges, my work to date has been well grounded in my core sense of civic duty and associated responsibility as a member of the human family. I feel no need to make this clear, outside of clarifying the fact that it took my willingness to face the threat posed by ASH doctors, technicians, nurses, and even administrators, once I began openly voicing my dissent as an ASH patient. 

In this specific sense, I suggest that  it will take similarly dauntless-and arguably foolhardy- courage for the ones running ASH, or other like officials directly associated with the operation of ASH, to clean up the environment in the facility once and for all.

I herein again call upon:

Dr. Cara Christ, Director, Arizona Department of Health Services.

Dr. Aaron Bowen, Chief Executive Officer, Arizona State Hospital.

                              
Do the right thing. Now.

paoloreed@gmail.com