I do wish it was Sunday, that's my fun day....
"Suit targets isolation at Bridgewater hospital; Man’s condition alleged to decline with long seclusion, use of restraints" by Michael Rezendes | Globe Staff March 31, 2014
The mother of a 31-year-old mentally ill Brookline man who has been held at Bridgewater State Hospital for more than a year is set to file a lawsuit Monday accusing prison officials of illegally keeping her son in seclusion or strapped to a bed for days and even weeks on end, according to the mother’s lawyer.
In the lawsuit, a copy of which was reviewed by the Globe, Joanne Minich says that her son Peter’s mental health is rapidly declining because prison administrators and clinicians have kept him alone in a small cell for 6,300 hours over the last 14 months and in four-point restraints with his wrists and ankles fastened to a small bed for 815 hours — or, in total, about 70 percent of the time he has been held at Bridgewater.
If it looks like it, smells like it, and walks like it, it is TORTURE!
“Mr. Minich’s psychological condition has substantially deteriorated as a result of his prolonged isolation and placement in a correction facility,” according to the lawsuit, expected to be filed in Norfolk Superior Court. Because of this, Minich, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, experienced “increasing levels of auditory hallucinations as well as paranoid thinking,” the suit alleges.
Neither Governor Deval Patrick’s office nor the Department of Correction, which received copies of the lawsuit on Friday, would comment on the Minich complaint.
The lawsuit comes in the aftermath of an uproar over the death of Bridgewater inmate Joshua K. Messier, 23, a patient who died in 2009 while guards were placing him in four-point restraints. After the Globe published a detailed account of Messier’s death....
Related: A Me$$(ier) of a Front Page
Patrick spoke out against the use of seclusion and restraints with mentally ill inmates, saying that solitary confinement “should be reserved for the most exceptional situations.”
Like Justina Pelletier's?
Happened on your watch! Another legacy!
Minich says that her son has been repeatedly confined to seclusion in a small cell behind a steel door, or placed in restraints, for minor incidents such as licking the floor, standing on a sink, putting his head in a toilet, and touching another inmate on his leg.
Her lawsuit also says that until recently, when her attorney met with Bridgewater officials, her son was deprived of sufficient reading materials, adequate clothing, and regular outdoor exercise, except for trips to a nearby hospital where he received electric shock treatment....
Peter Minich was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia more than a decade ago after graduating from Wellesley High School. Like other mentally ill men held at Bridgewater, he has never been convicted of a crime.
They mean even charged, right?
Otherwise, my Globe misled me!
He was sent to Bridgewater for a psychiatric evaluation after assaulting a staff member in another facility — in his case, the psychiatric unit at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital — and has been held at Bridgewater for about 14 months.
In an interview with the Globe, Joanne Minich said she is filing the lawsuit to get her son released from Bridgewater — the state’s only prison for mentally ill inmates — and transferred to another facility. “I want to get him out,” she said. “He needs care, but not this kind of care.”
Peter’s father, Jan Minich, added, “We want to make sure other people aren’t treated like this.”
Joanne Minich’s attorney, Roderick MacLeish Jr., said the conditions he has found at Bridgewater while visiting Peter Minich resemble those he encountered during the 1980s, when he filed a landmark lawsuit over conditions there. After suing state officials over those conditions, MacLeish negotiated a settlement agreement to stop transferring to Bridgewater mental health patients who were not facing criminal charges. In addition to the agreement, the suit led to a Supreme Judicial Court decision that affirmed additional reforms, such as the required monitoring of inmates held in seclusion and restraints.
“Nothing’s changed,” said MacLeish, an attorney with the firm Clark, Hunt, Ahern & Embry. “In a civilized society we should not be putting people with an organic brain disease in prison, and we certainly shouldn’t be locking them up behind solid steel doors and depriving them of virtually all human contact.”
How isolating.
Related: The State of Massachusetts is Mentally Ill
Maybe it is the benevolent state leaders that should have their heads checked!
Noting that Minich’s parents are often required to visit Peter while he is standing in a cage smaller than a typical clerical work station, at times when he is wearing handcuffs and shackles, MacLeish also said the conditions at Bridgewater are “like something out of a Dickens novel.”
In 21st-century, liberal Democrat Massachusetts?
Related: Mass. bill would ban shackling of pregnant inmates in labor
Beyond Dickens!
Stuart Grassian, a Newton psychiatrist contacted by the Globe, said he could not comment on the specific accusations in the lawsuit but said that prolonged seclusion can be especially dangerous for someone diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia because it can make it more difficult for the person to tell the difference between reality and the interior voices or visions he sometimes experiences.
“Often, [the patient] is going to deteriorate to the point that he will almost inevitably become more psychotic,” said Grassian.
And that is when the pharmaceuticals get involved.
The Minich lawsuit is being filed against Department of Correction Commissioner Luis S. Spencer, Bridgewater Superintendent Robert Murphy, and MHM Services, a Virginia-based company that provides medical and mental heath services at Bridgewater....
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Related: DCF Do Over
Feels like a deja vu.
