I came across this article and how my heart ached. I have been a patient at a psychiatric hospital, though it was certainly not near this bad. But I understand all of these feelings. Though I've never been in the positions these teens were in, I am over empathetic to the point of basically knowing what every feeling is like, as if it were happening to me. I have learned to control this, though I have occasions where I am very upset from my own feelings and this wall I've put up falls miserably. If I did not have the awesome mother I do I don't know how I would get through these times, though most of them start with myself getting in an argument with her! (Okay, over mature teens do get in fights with their moms sometimes, believe it or not). Summary: I know the need for loving, caring people in these facilities.
Oh, and by the way, I am not crazy, don't worry (okay, some may call me that, but only in good fun =p). Last October I was in vast amounts of pain and as a result became very depressed. I am fortunately no longer suffering the pain nor depression I did at that time, but will most likely forever be damaged and changed by what I experienced. But that is another story for another time!
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THE CHILDREN AT METROPOLITAN STATE HOSPITAL
by Ted Chabasinski, Support Coalition International board member
This is a very personal account, because I myself spent most of my
childhood in a state hospital in New York. Forty-three years ago, I
was released from Rockland State Hospital at the age of seventeen. I
had spent ten years there.
I went on with my life, struggling with the effects of what had been
done to me. I worked my way through college, got married, became an
attorney. I never forgot what happened to me at Rockland State
Hospital, but I never had to look this experience in the face again.
Until now.
A few months ago, as an advocate for the Office of Patients' Rights,
I was asked to go down to Los Angeles and assist the regular advocate
at Metropolitan State Hospital. Early in June, many children had been
transferred to Metro from Camarillo State Hospital, where most of
the kids in the state hospital system had been. Camarillo, a prime
piece of real estate in a beautiful setting, is being closed. The
facility is being sold to developers.
Half of the children shipped to Metro are black, about a third white,
about 15% Hispanic. Virtually all of them, as one would expect, are
from poor or broken families. The overwhelming majority are sent by
Los Angeles County, which has purchased many beds from the state for
the children in its charge who "need long-term care." One third are
girls, two thirds are boys. The program is described by the hospital
as designed for kids ages seven to seventeen. At present I believe
the youngest child is eleven, although younger ones are expected to
arrive soon. Bed space is available for 120 children. About 75 are
there now. This number will increase, as more children, some of them
disabled, are expected to be shipped down from Napa State Hospital in
the next few months. The plan of the State Department of Mental
Health is to concentrate all of the children in the state hospital
system at Metropolitan.
The only outdoor space the children at Metropolitan have is tiny
patios with barbed wire fences. The hospital has interpreted state
law to require that the children not be given grounds passes, because
this would put them into contact with adult patients. So the children
are locked down for most of the time. Over the last few months, under
some pressure, the hospital now has the kids, at least those who have
reached certain "levels", taken for escorted walks. These walks, like
most of what is done there, are called "therapeutic." As you can
imagine, there is much anger and pent-up energy.
The regular advocate had heard of an incident where a
fourteen-year-old girl, L., had experienced a life-threatening
situation in restraints. ("Restraints" means that the child is tied
spread-eagled to a bed with leather straps and left there for several
hours.) We went to one of the two girls' units to investigate. L.
told us she had been put in five-point restraints (tied down at the
wrists, ankles, and waist) after getting into a fight with another
girl. When she continued to struggle and tried to sit up, staff came
in and tied a sixth strap as tightly against her chest as they could,
and left her there. L. has asthma, which was very obvious. She was
wheezing as she spoke with us. Soon after having the chest strap tied
down, she started choking and gasping for breath. Staff were nowhere
in sight. Some of the other girls ran for help, but staff took their
time about getting there. L. reported she was put in restraints
frequently. When I looked at her chart later, it confirmed that she
was tied to the bed several times a week. There was little explanation
of why, and of course no note that her life had been endangered.
The first thing that struck me as I spoke with L. and the other kids
who were witnesses was how little they would fit the stereotype of
"mental patients". They were some of the most appealing kids I had
ever met. I told them about my own experience, very briefly, and this
seemed to make a strong impression.
I spoke with T., a very articulate seventeen-year-old who I noticed
was an excellent witness. She was able to tell me very clearly what
had been done to L. in a way that few people I have interviewed as an
attorney can do. One of the first things T. said to me is that she
expected, when she reaches her eighteenth birthday in a few months,
that she will be sent to one of the adult units, and that she will
spend the rest of her life there. It was very hard for me not to
burst into tears, because this is exactly what I myself faced at age
sixteen in Rockland. I looked at the despair in the face of this
appealing young girl and felt more anger at the system that had done
this than I've felt in many years. T. has spent a year and a half in
state hospitals. I believe this is shorter than the average stay.
Shortly after I spoke with T., I saw a figure walking down the
hallway, stumbling around like an eighty-year-old who had had a
stroke, and I wondered what an old woman was doing on the children's
wards. As she came closer, I saw that it was T., so drugged that she
had trouble walking properly. She is being given five kinds of
psychiatric drugs. Her body is bloated and her hands shake. If she is
ever allowed to leave the hospital, she will be sent out into the
world with tardive dyskinesia, at age eighteen. (Tardive dyskinesia
is a very common kind of brain damage caused by psychiatric drugs.
The most obvious outward sign of it is that the victim's mouth and
tongue twitch uncontrollably.)
I skimmed T's chart. Among other nonsense, it said that she is
"resistant to therapy" because she sleeps much of the day. I
remembered how I too had slept as much as I could at Rockland State
Hospital, to block out the horror of my surroundings. But I never
had to deal with the horror of having my brain burned out by
psychiatric drugs.
As I went around the units, trying to speak to as many children as
possible, I noticed many kids passed out on the sofas and benches in
the middle of the day. Virtually all the children are drugged, though
few have diagnoses that would really justify it. Restraints are used
liberally for the slightest infraction.
But what is the worst abuse, and I know because I have experienced
it, is to spend years of your childhood locked in a total
institution, with the constant message that you're worthless, you're
nothing, that nobody cares about you, that you're important to no
one. And because you are so young, and you have no other picture of
the world, you have no way to resist this indoctrination in
self-hatred. And then, after years of this, you're sent out into the
world, if you're lucky...
Several weeks later, I came back to Metro, and at about six in the
evening attempted to read T's chart, to get a more detailed picture
of how she was being drugged. The ward psychiatrist was there, and
realizing I must be checking up on her, tried to keep the chart from
me, saying it was "confidential." I told her that the state Welfare
and Institutions Code gave me the authority to read it but she
ignored me. Soon the charge nurse and then the supervisor of nurses
appeared, demanding that I stop reading the chart and turn over my
notes. And then about eight or ten large male staff appeared,
standing massed in the middle of the nurses' station as if in some
kind of military formation, looking as menacing as they could. It was
time to leave (with my notes). I had to unlock and relock many
doors to get out.
I realized after I reached the outside that my life had been in
danger. If one of the goon squad summoned by the psychiatrist had
lost control, I could have been beaten unconscious, and there would
have been a dozen "witnesses" to make up any story that was needed.
My knees trembled and my cardiac arrhythmia kicked in something
fierce. My heart was jumping around in my chest for days afterwards.
Of course, terrorizing me was exactly the point. I was being treated
as if I were an inmate there.
I spoke to other advocates, who told me they had similar experiences
in state hospitals when they were looking into things staff there
didn't want to be seen. And the next day I learned that the
hospital's official story was that I had come into the nurses'
station yelling and screaming, that I had refused to identify myself,
and that I had threatened the ward psychiatrist. Yes, I'm sure she
felt threatened by the idea that someone was concerned about her
abuse of these kids.
I was told that the hospital police (who are just untrained staff designated by the hospital director)
were about to be called just before I left.
How endangered I had been became clear when I found out that in
mid-August, there had been what the hospital described as a "riot" on
one of the boys' wards. Desperate, several kids had attacked staff
members, and one staff person was hospitalized. The hospital police
had been called in, and when one boy, clearly freaked out by the
events, was threatening to cut his wrists, hospital police moved in
and sprayed him at close range with pepper spray. He had a seizure,
fell to the floor unconscious, and was hospitalized. If he had
asthma, as L. did, or cardiac arrhythmia, as I do, he might well have died.
A few days later, I received still another report of a staff member
being attacked and seriously injured. She was rescued by still
another child, because her fellow workers were nowhere in sight.
Clearly, the situation there is out of control, when the hospital
administration can't protect even their staff. And I fear for the
safety of the children, in an institution where even the legally
mandated advocates are kept from knowing what is going on.
California's state hospitals are being used more and more to lock up
people committed by the criminal justice system. As the population
changes, these institutions, never humane in the first place, are
rapidly becoming places of unspeakable cruelty. Patients languish
for years, heavily drugged and treated like subhumans, transformed
into burned-out shells of human beings whose only function is to
consume powerful (and profitable) psychiatric drugs.
Into this death camp of the spirit, Los Angeles County and the State
Department of Mental Health have placed scores of children. These
kids need love and nurturing, but all the mental health system can
offer them is drugs and despair. And this publicly funded child abuse
costs the taxpayers of California approximately $125,000 every yearfor every child.
I have left my job with the Office of Patients' Rights because, since
its funding comes entirely from the State Department of Mental
Health, it can do very little about this situation. Working with the
Coalition for Alternatives in Mental Health, which was organized in
1984 by myself and Sally Zinman, another psychiatric survivor, I will
be starting a campaign in Los Angeles to bring the abuse of children
at Metropolitan State Hospital to public attention.
Even the most dedicated advocates become numb after a while to the
abuses of the mental health system. We come to accept these terrible
institutions as a given, because we think there's nothing we can do
about it. But it doesn't have to be this way. Just a few months ago,
East Bay Hospital, one of the most abusive facilities in the state,
was closed down after a campaign involving many people that began
when articles in the homeless newspaper "Street Spirit" exposed what
was going on. Stopping this terrible mistreatment of psychiatric
patients can be done, and we have to do it.
I urge everyone who reads this to join with me and others who care
about children to stop this cruelty. No human being should have to
endure life in such institutions, but especially not children. The
children's wards at Metropolitan State Hospital must be closed.
Butterfly's and Rainbows
Love Through Action
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