The Corruption Goes On. The Patients Still Suffer.
Stabbing Renews Questions About Patient Safety, Oversight At Arizona State Hospital.
“Obviously, we want to have a culture of transparency and bringing things forward,” Christ said. “If you don’t know about problems, you can’t fix them.”
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| Dr. Cara "Nice smile" Christ Director, AZ Department of Health Services Named defendant, case #2:18-cv-02845-BSB, District Court for the District of Arizona. |
INTRODUCTION
In the opinion of PJ Reed The Arizona State Hospital and Patient Abuse, widespread allegations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church on a global level, and directly related cover-ups of the issue, are no more horrific then the willingness of highly entrusted state health care officials to cover-up issues that directly pose risk of harm to the most vulnerable adult populations in such systems.
The primary differences lie not in the extent to which this religious institution has harmed its worldwide trusting followers, but rather in the fact that persons affected by serious mental illness today have far less voice than the Church's victims. For the mentally ill, this problem is older than any established religious institution today (as is mental illness itself); while abuses, negligence, and discriminations towards mentally ill persons extend far beyond the membership quotas of any such institution.
As such, when we are looking at any state managed mental hospital today, be it ASH or any other, it should be reasonable to presume that this reality is at the forefront of the standards of care in such places. This in consideration of the fact that attending physicians and the like would hopefully choose to serve at such facilities in order to be at the head of mental health care reform. To see this as an opportunity, that is, to be better then the historic horrors that is so well known the experiences of the mentally ill when hospitalized in such settings.
But, as my own experiences have proven to me, this is simply not the case. Rather, shockingly abusive medical staff work in complicity with graphically dishonest administrators as means to ignore most all elements of "progress" in this context. These are individuals- medical professionals- entrusted by the very citizens who make their jobs possible, who willfully breach that trust as a matter of standard practice and impose harm onto others who are highly vulnerable to such mistreatment. I feel, ergo, that abjectly unethical misconduct internally sanctioned or otherwise furthered by highly entrusted state mental health care providers is just as ugly as what we are learning about with respect for the Catholic Church.
It is that simple. It is that bad.
DISCUSSION
From our October 04, 2018 article, entitled Arizona State Hospital: Dateline October, 2018:
And there it is again, "Center for Psychiatric Excellence". This single phrase is one of the most distorted misrepresentations of reality on the record today. A concept (or whatever) flowing from neither older or far more recent history, but rather from the "minds" of health care officials who dedicate themselves to misleading the public as a matter of standard practice. Conceptualized (or whatever) as a hoped for means to further the substandard conditions and care practices at ASH, instead of actually serving the needs of the patient community. Just more goddamned propagandized baloney to the nth degree, arguably narcissistic in form and clearly designed to present a warped image of truth.
What's so "excellent" about willful refusals to disclose as per the law public information that can ensure ASH patients are being provided safe and humane care?
What's so "excellent" about being nearly stabbed to death as a direct consequence of these failures?
What's so excellent about losing a family member due to a death that, as a consequence of these failures, Hospital staff could have prevented?
What's so "excellent" about allowing a known sexual abuser serve as the Hospital's top doctor?
And what's so excellent about having your constitutionally established civil rights violated by the Hospital's chief executive officer when you (as an actual patient) express concern about this sexual abuser's presence on ASH's medical staff?
The plain fact is that: You have to earn a rating of excellence. You don't just go around calling yourself "excellent" and then expect others to take that for granted. A ten year old knows as much.
In the opinion of PJ Reed The Arizona State Hospital and Patient Abuse, widespread allegations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church on a global level, and directly related cover-ups of the issue, are no more horrific then the willingness of highly entrusted state health care officials to cover-up issues that directly pose risk of harm to the most vulnerable adult populations in such systems.
The primary differences lie not in the extent to which this religious institution has harmed its worldwide trusting followers, but rather in the fact that persons affected by serious mental illness today have far less voice than the Church's victims. For the mentally ill, this problem is older than any established religious institution today (as is mental illness itself); while abuses, negligence, and discriminations towards mentally ill persons extend far beyond the membership quotas of any such institution.
As such, when we are looking at any state managed mental hospital today, be it ASH or any other, it should be reasonable to presume that this reality is at the forefront of the standards of care in such places. This in consideration of the fact that attending physicians and the like would hopefully choose to serve at such facilities in order to be at the head of mental health care reform. To see this as an opportunity, that is, to be better then the historic horrors that is so well known the experiences of the mentally ill when hospitalized in such settings.
But, as my own experiences have proven to me, this is simply not the case. Rather, shockingly abusive medical staff work in complicity with graphically dishonest administrators as means to ignore most all elements of "progress" in this context. These are individuals- medical professionals- entrusted by the very citizens who make their jobs possible, who willfully breach that trust as a matter of standard practice and impose harm onto others who are highly vulnerable to such mistreatment. I feel, ergo, that abjectly unethical misconduct internally sanctioned or otherwise furthered by highly entrusted state mental health care providers is just as ugly as what we are learning about with respect for the Catholic Church.
It is that simple. It is that bad.
DISCUSSION
From our October 04, 2018 article, entitled Arizona State Hospital: Dateline October, 2018:
And there it is again, "Center for Psychiatric Excellence". This single phrase is one of the most distorted misrepresentations of reality on the record today. A concept (or whatever) flowing from neither older or far more recent history, but rather from the "minds" of health care officials who dedicate themselves to misleading the public as a matter of standard practice. Conceptualized (or whatever) as a hoped for means to further the substandard conditions and care practices at ASH, instead of actually serving the needs of the patient community. Just more goddamned propagandized baloney to the nth degree, arguably narcissistic in form and clearly designed to present a warped image of truth.
What's so "excellent" about willful refusals to disclose as per the law public information that can ensure ASH patients are being provided safe and humane care?
What's so excellent about losing a family member due to a death that, as a consequence of these failures, Hospital staff could have prevented?
What's so "excellent" about allowing a known sexual abuser serve as the Hospital's top doctor?
And what's so excellent about having your constitutionally established civil rights violated by the Hospital's chief executive officer when you (as an actual patient) express concern about this sexual abuser's presence on ASH's medical staff?
The plain fact is that: You have to earn a rating of excellence. You don't just go around calling yourself "excellent" and then expect others to take that for granted. A ten year old knows as much.
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Will Stone, an investigative journalist with the Phoenix area's NPR station, KJZZ 91.5, has been in communication with the staff of this blog since this past August. His October 10, 2018, article (see title above) about a near fatal stabbing at ASH is one that will directly serve to improve the safety of the ASH patient community. It is Will's second article about ASH in recent weeks, his first published about the 2015 preventable death of ASH patient Barbara West. (See: "Hospital Sued For Withholding Records On Patient Death." By Will Stone, September 13, 2018.)
As always, we wish to extend our deep appreciation for yet another well known journalist's willingness to do the right thing, and take to heart all/any reports of public interest issues deserving of public oversight. Not nearly so severely as public the health care system, the field of journalism is somewhat fraught with shortsighted if not patently unethical practitioners. It is a great thing, indeed, to be able to contribute to Will's work today.
As always, we wish to extend our deep appreciation for yet another well known journalist's willingness to do the right thing, and take to heart all/any reports of public interest issues deserving of public oversight. Not nearly so severely as public the health care system, the field of journalism is somewhat fraught with shortsighted if not patently unethical practitioners. It is a great thing, indeed, to be able to contribute to Will's work today.
"Culture of transparency(?!?)"
Tell Aaron Wallace that, Dr. Christ, or Barbara West, Chris Blackman, Mary Adams, April Mott... Aaron's stabbing one year ago was not even included in ASH's 2017 Annual Report, a document produced under your direct authority, and you know it. That this man actually survived one element of ASH substandard conditions is good for him and all other ASH patients, and quite bad for you and your kind. For unlike these others, Aaron has lived to tell about it. You shall reap what you have sown.
Knowing as the public does (and you too) about the willful denial to disclose months of incident and accident reports to the ASH Independent Oversight Committee, including but far from limited to the near death stabbing of Mr. Wallace; and further, to refuse providing crucially significant patient records to the Arizona Center for Disability Law? This entire range of public record suppression is a direct violation of law and policy. There is nothing "obvious" about your actual intentions, Dr. Christ, and not a hell of a lot of evidence about anything resembling "transparency" at ASH.
Like it has always been, "What happens at ASH stays at ASH." The staff of this publication have received six separate accounts and testimony from current and former staff since 2016. Central to some of this information is the continuing willingness of ASH managers and administrators to retaliate against lower ranking staff who civilly attempt to report issues detrimental to the ASH patients. Retaliation that I was subjected to, as well- As an ASH patient!- on the basis of my openly reporting such issues, via my very real experiences there.
Dr. Steven "Hyper-sexual" Dingle, ASH's longtime chief medical officer, was centrally involved in one core aspect of this willful retaliation against me. His documented and undeniable action(s) put me at heightened risk of bodily harm and exacerbation of my given struggles with serious mental illness. See this blog, April 09, 2012: Fact #3) Willful unlawful retaliation; criminal abuse of administrative authority; abridgments of internal codes of policy and procedure; blatant denial of patients' rights, privileges, and liberties as defined by federal and state law; willful exposure to undue threats to safety; complicity and intent to do harm.
For the entirety of her time as the Director of Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS, 2015-present), Dr. Cara "Nice smile" Christ has touted about how far more improved the care practices and conditions are since her being appointed to this position by AZ Governor Doug Ducey. Christ did, in fact, directly contact me via email in the first few months of her taking ASH over and made such a statement, although I found it difficult to understand how this could be true. Any number of actions needed to assuredly improve upon the known history of ASH (a state managed health care facility that has been repeatedly subjected to federal intervention over the last 20 years on the basis of substandard practices and conditions) were not in fact put into motion.
No ASH psychiatrists, for example, were directly held accountable to their role in the proven substandard medical practices at that time, individuals who I knew to be no less directly responsible for this scandal than the ASH CEO(s), etc., who taken out in early 2015 (including Dr. Steven "Hyper-sexual" Dingle, a known sexual abuser of women working under his direct authority. See this blog September 29, 2018: "Hypersexual" Dr. Steven Dingle).
But it goes much farther than that, this pattern of negligence in relation to the evidence found via federal investigation and oversight and the consequent requirements of the fed in context. Shortsighted if not outright unlawful incompetence negatively impacting ASH patients reaches well into the broader construct of ADHS, including in the Department's Office of Grievances and Appeals, where senior ranking ADHS officials required by established state law to ensure that patient generated reports about staff misconduct routinely fail to abide by the terms of said state law. (See the blog Wednesday, May 30, 2012: "RERUN: As to Margery Ault and Kara Burke, longtime senior staff in ADHS Office of Grievances and Appeals.")
We have provided myriad documented evidence in this publication about how deeply the issues most at stake extend into the state's greater system of public mental health care, and have also discussed the plain fact that state agency bureaucracy is what most contributes to granting incompetent or otherwise unqualified individuals safe haven in ADHS.
But regardless of this, ADHS officials and their underlings at ASH have utterly refused of the opportunity to take good faith advantage of our varied articles, while continuously rejecting all other such resources, including but not limited to concerns provided by the ASH Independent Oversight Committee, and actual patient reports to that Committee; Indeed, this abject obstinance stretches back to my actual time as an ASH patient (where I at one point directly encouraged former-since fired ASH CEO Cory Nelson to simply "Do the right thing." Nelson's verbatim response? "You have your prerogatives, Patrick, and I have mine."), and into the very first months following my February 21, 2012, discharge from ASH (wherein the first 120 or so articles were published online in this blog, with no effect whatsoever, outside of threats posed to the comments section of some of those article).
Dr. Aaron Bowen, ASH's current CEO (2015-present), meanwhile, has willfully failed to conduct himself in accordance with state law, by refusing to disclose crucially needed data specific to the conditions at ASH. Public information that is required to be disclosed as one means to ensure that ASH patient's be provided with safe and humane treatment. This misconduct poses undeniable risk of harm to the welfare and interests of ASH patient community. He has further refused to provide required patient medical records to a public resource that exists under state and federal law. As such, Bowen has proved and is still proving today that he is no more able or willing to meet his overall responsibilities as the ASH CEO then former-since fired Cory Nelson and Donna Noriega were.
No ASH psychiatrists, for example, were directly held accountable to their role in the proven substandard medical practices at that time, individuals who I knew to be no less directly responsible for this scandal than the ASH CEO(s), etc., who taken out in early 2015 (including Dr. Steven "Hyper-sexual" Dingle, a known sexual abuser of women working under his direct authority. See this blog September 29, 2018: "Hypersexual" Dr. Steven Dingle).
But it goes much farther than that, this pattern of negligence in relation to the evidence found via federal investigation and oversight and the consequent requirements of the fed in context. Shortsighted if not outright unlawful incompetence negatively impacting ASH patients reaches well into the broader construct of ADHS, including in the Department's Office of Grievances and Appeals, where senior ranking ADHS officials required by established state law to ensure that patient generated reports about staff misconduct routinely fail to abide by the terms of said state law. (See the blog Wednesday, May 30, 2012: "RERUN: As to Margery Ault and Kara Burke, longtime senior staff in ADHS Office of Grievances and Appeals.")
We have provided myriad documented evidence in this publication about how deeply the issues most at stake extend into the state's greater system of public mental health care, and have also discussed the plain fact that state agency bureaucracy is what most contributes to granting incompetent or otherwise unqualified individuals safe haven in ADHS.
But regardless of this, ADHS officials and their underlings at ASH have utterly refused of the opportunity to take good faith advantage of our varied articles, while continuously rejecting all other such resources, including but not limited to concerns provided by the ASH Independent Oversight Committee, and actual patient reports to that Committee; Indeed, this abject obstinance stretches back to my actual time as an ASH patient (where I at one point directly encouraged former-since fired ASH CEO Cory Nelson to simply "Do the right thing." Nelson's verbatim response? "You have your prerogatives, Patrick, and I have mine."), and into the very first months following my February 21, 2012, discharge from ASH (wherein the first 120 or so articles were published online in this blog, with no effect whatsoever, outside of threats posed to the comments section of some of those article).
Christ again: “If you don’t know about problems, you can’t fix them.” No kidding! It sure ain't rocket science...
So, then. How is it, Dr. Christ, given your statement to the effect that lack of transparency has (and is still) contributed to apparently unknown problems at ASH, that you have so willingly trumpeted your belief of these alleged improvements over these last three plus years, if you yourself have no legitimate flow of information from ASH's current administrators? Are you merely blabbing so called facts as a matter of propaganda? Or is it actually the case that you, too, have willfully contributed to denying knowledge about such issues as a means to suppress the realities at ASH, to the detriment of the patients?
So, then. How is it, Dr. Christ, given your statement to the effect that lack of transparency has (and is still) contributed to apparently unknown problems at ASH, that you have so willingly trumpeted your belief of these alleged improvements over these last three plus years, if you yourself have no legitimate flow of information from ASH's current administrators? Are you merely blabbing so called facts as a matter of propaganda? Or is it actually the case that you, too, have willfully contributed to denying knowledge about such issues as a means to suppress the realities at ASH, to the detriment of the patients?
Whatever the actual case, it is- all of it- shameful to the Nth degree. For while I was willing not so terribly long ago to presume you may be generally ethical and up to the task of improving the conditions and practices at ASH, it's now obvious to me, my staff, and a host of others dedicated protecting the rights and interests of ASH patients, that you do, in fact, possess such attributes.
I think you may well be cooked, Dr. Christ. And it is your own damn fault. Word speak and a nice smile won't get you out of this.
I think you may well be cooked, Dr. Christ. And it is your own damn fault. Word speak and a nice smile won't get you out of this.
And don't say you were not advised, as in warned. Because you were, more than once, in both diplomatic terms, or not. Since the day you replaced the last dimwit to run ADHS. And he- Will "Yea team!" Humble- wasn't even a doctor!
IN CLOSING:
IN CLOSING:
As stated at the beginning of this article, when we are looking at any state managed mental hospital today, be it ASH or any other, it is reasonable to presume that the longstanding realities negatively affecting the mentally ill are at at the forefront of the standards of care in such places. I feel, ergo, that abjectly unethical misconduct internally sanctioned by highly entrusted state mental health care providers is just as ugly as what we are learning about with respect for the Catholic Church.
Arizona State Hospital is still one of the most incompetently managed mental health care facilities in the nation. This is plain as day to the staff of this blog publication. We have formerly researched the contemporary histories of such facilities, and the founding author himself has had to spend time in several such places in direct relation to his struggles with mental illness.
That said, while all state mental hospitals need to improve, often to a marked degree, the number of preventable patient deaths at ASH stand as evidence to this effect (and as does the tragic death of April Mott in 2011, which only occurred in the greater community as a direct consequence of corruption at ASH; cover-ups specifically speaking).
ASH is horrible in far, far too many ways. And there is no excuse or justification on earth for persons such as Cara Christ, Aaron Bowen, or Steven Dingle (and on the list can go) to allow for this reality.
Point in fact: In defiance of public sentiment and very standards by which they are entrusted and licensed to practice, by engaging in issues once again in the limelight, the administrators of ASH are furthering the presence of discrimination against and abuse of mentally ill persons across the board, including and yet beyond the actual patient-clientele at ASH. And they do it with overt intent and impunity.
Just like the Catholic Church: ASH and the bureaucratic construct of ADHS' Behavioral Health division are in dire need of a thorough overhaul in the interest of the disabled patient-consumers who are lawfully subject to treatment at ASH- it cannot be in the interest of the bureaucracy.
This action must include clearing out all of the Rat Bastards and incompetents who have long been behind ASH's substandard care practices and conditions, beginning with ASH psychiatrists such as Dingle and company, and extending to any/all state offices directly associated with the operation of ASH.
This action must not be limited to holding just the most obvious wrongdoers "accountable" (for lack of a better word), as we saw in spring, 2015, but an action that reaches far deeper into this bureaucratic monstrosity, ADHS.
It is that simple. It is that bad.
paoloreed@gmail.com
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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.