Related: AmeriKa's Chicago Torture Cell
"US mental patients sometimes isolated; Held in seclusion for years, despite laws forbidding it" by Dena Potter, Associated Press | December 27, 2008
STAUNTON, Va. - Mental patients in many of the nation's psychiatric hospitals are being locked up alone for years despite laws aimed at preventing the practice, because medical workers say they're too dangerous to handle any other way.
Health officials call them outliers - rare, unpredictably violent people who don't respond to medication or other treatment. Advocates call them victims of a system that has lost patience and creativity in caring for those who are most difficult to treat.
I really don't know what to do, readers, but LOCKING THEM UP ALONE CAN'T HELP!
Loopholes in federal and state laws and impotent oversight allow hospitals to lock some patients away for the safety of staff and other patients. Some cases involving seclusion and restraints have resulted in costly lawsuits, yet they are so rare that many advocates had no idea there were similar situations in other states until the Associated Press inquired about it.
No one tracks such cases. However, through interviews and records from advocacy groups and state and federal agencies, the AP found at least a dozen patients who were held in seclusion for months or years at a time....
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In Virginia, one man was locked in a three-room suite for 15 years and another patient was held in a similar setup for five years. Connecticut and Florida have paid millions over allegations that they tethered patients to furniture for years. Federal law requires that seclusion or restraints - including drugs - be used on patients covered by Medicare or Medicaid only in emergencies to protect other patients and staff. Such measures can be used for more than 24 hours only if a physician deems it necessary, and only if a doctor updates that assessment daily.
Moreover, the US Supreme Court has ruled it unconstitutional to restrain or isolate patients for extended periods. The laws and court rulings don't cap the consecutive days a patient can be isolated or restrained, though, so hospitals can hold a patient indefinitely by simply signing off on it every 24 hours.
The Supreme Court also has ruled that hospitals must treat people who are involuntarily committed. So Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist who has studied the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners, and others question whether outliers are being held legally....
Seclusion, he said, can intensify patients' paranoia, agitation, and delusions....
Memory Hole: What Four Years of Torture Will Do to an Innocent Man
Patients have been removed from long-term seclusion in several states, including Massachusetts, Oregon, and Maryland, after advocates stepped in....
There is your COMPASSIONATE LIBERAL LEADERS again!!
I am SO ASHAMED, America!!!!
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For more on the abominable atrocity of U.S. torture, go HERE
