The anger is all gone and their is nothing but sadness now.
"Bridgewater State Hospital slow to embrace change; Resisted trend to more humane ways; harsh handling of mentally ill increased" by Michael Rezendes | Globe Staff June 01, 2014
MIDDLETOWN, Conn. — Clinicians treating some of this state’s most dangerous mental health patients faced a crisis in 2002, when a patient cuffed hand and foot to the hospital floor choked on his tongue anddied of a heart attack. His family then sued, and the Justice Department began investigating whether the Whiting Forensic Division was violating patients’ rights by improperly isolating them and strapping them down.
So Whiting clinicians decided to join a growing movement to sharply limit how often agitated mental health patients are placed in seclusion rooms or physically restrained. They began rewarding good behavior so that patients were less likely to become violent in the first place, and trained staff in how to defuse confrontations.
The results were stunning: The use of seclusion and restraints at Whiting, Connecticut’s mental health center for patients involved in the criminal justice system, has dropped by more than 88 percent since 2004, according to data analyzed by the Globe.
But the cultural change that swept Whiting and many other psychiatric facilities never reached Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts, now under intense scrutiny for its practices, after the death of a young mental health patient while he was being strapped to a bed in Bridgewater’s Intensive Treatment Unit.
Even as Whiting and other mental health centers were reducing their use of seclusion and restraints, Bridgewater relied on them even more.
OH!
Over the last decade, use of those harsh methods increased by 16 percent at Bridgewater, and the rate of use continued to rise rapidly even after the 2009 death in restraints of 23-year-old Joshua K. Messier, a Globe analysis shows. The Globe reported in February that none of the guards in Messier’s cell the night he died had been disciplined even though the medical examiner ruled his death was a homicide.
In the wake of the Globe report about Messier’s death, Department of Correction officials say they’ve begun making significant strides in reducing the use of seclusion and restraints, cutting the use of restraints by 98 percent by the end of May, as advocates and outside consultants scrutinized the hospital’s practices....
But the longer view of Bridgewater practices remains grim....
Outside observers say the yawning gap may reflect the corrections mind-set of officials at Bridgewater, one of the very few forensic hospitals nationwide that is run by a department of correction instead of a department of mental health.
It is not a "correction" mindset; it's a PUNISH mindset.
“The prison mentality controls,” said James R. Pingeon, an attorney with the not-for-profit group Prisoners’ Legal Services.
Low staffing levels and funding may also have been to blame, problems that have hobbled Bridgewater’s effectiveness for years....
:-(
Still, advocates fear that once Patrick leaves office the controversy over the use of seclusion and restraints at the medium-security prison will subside without substantive change, just as it has after past reform efforts.
The more you look back on the Deval Patrick administration the more of a disaster it looks like. From Dookhan and the state drug lab; the DCF debacle; the failed websites that cost millions; the killer meningitis compound crisis, wasted tax dollars, and increased costs and taxes. What am I forgetting?
Almost 20 years ago, an outside consultant warned that Bridgewater officials make “treatment a secondary consideration,” something advocates say is still true today....
:-(
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You know, Massachusetts has this reputation as some sort of compassionate and liberal sanctuary when I have found that it is one of the most brutal states in the union.
UPDATE: Many Bridgewater inmates need medical care, not prison
