Horrific and inexcusable. Involuntary commitment is truly a last resort. Yet it doesn't surprise me in the least to read the story of those 12 patients and what happened to the whistle blower. There is so much suffering and injustice for many in the current mental health care system. My daughter was involuntarily committed to our county mental health center when she was actively suicidal. She refused to go to the hospital and the paramedics, upon interviewing her, myself & reading a suicide note, knew she was a threat to herself. It was a very brief stay and she was released, after further psychiatric evaluation and monitoring and a referral to a new psychiatrist. This crisis and involuntary commitment changed the course of her illness, for the better, and I also believe that it saved her life.

Totally horrifying.

WOW.

But are the prisoners okay? The article doesn't say anything about them.

Thank you for this Liz, I have sent it to the members of my taskforce to illustrate the need to keep protections in place in the commitment system in Virginia.

This is sad but commonplace. In Alabama you are initially committed for 150 days, at the end of this period you have a hearing onsite, in the hospital. The only witnesses are the staff and doctors and family members who want you to stay locked up because they know if you are released you'll be financially destitute, etc. And as the NAMI/TAC woman who described her brother as a subhuman animal explained, if the patient states he wants to get out, this is a sign of mental illness as it indicates that the patient doesn't realize he is subhuman. If the patient realizes he's subhuman and says he wants to stay, of course the hospital keeps him, as long as medicaid, his family, or his insurance will pay, which can be and usually is until transfer to a geriatric psych ward for hospice care until death. In Tuscaloosa in 2004, a geriatric psych hospital got caught accepting medicaid payments for dead clients so you can only imagine the quality of care people get in those places.

Capacity hearings for someone already committed are essentially about accounting. If it's cheaper for some reason for a state hospital to let you go than to keep you, you get let out. They get pretty big money from the government for doping you up, feeding you slop (hell you're on zyprexa, so you'll eat anything), and maybe sitting you in front of a tv, oh yeah, and bingo on Thanksgiving and Christmas with a photo op in which you the patient doped up and locked up for years, look crazy as heck.

This is a sad case. But what bothers me the most is where was the family of these forgotten people?? It just goes to show how bad things are for those suffering with mental illness. Not only does the system forget about them. But their own families turn their backs too.

Not reviewing patient legal status over an 10 years is a travesty, no question about it.
The real question though is whether these patients were receiving the correct level of care-i.e.were they able to be transferred to a less retrictive environment(boarding home, nursing home, family)? The article gives no details about the patient's privilege level at the hospital- were they free to walk around the grounds, go on passes, etc.? Were they chronically psychotic and unable to be managed in a less restrictive environment? Were they asking to leave or were they generally content with their living situation? (When Byberry hospital in NE Philadelphia was close many patients were extremely upset about being discharged to the community.)Long term hospitalization is not in itself a horrible thing if it best meets the individuals needs.

I will be under my desk to avoid the bullets coming my way.

I think my mom would have said the same thing as Helen. I waited until I was off meds for a year before telling my mom I had stopped all my medication. She was really scared and said, "but, why? You were doing so well." Then, I told her I had been off all meds for a year and that's why I was doing so much better.

Even though I was able to leave the psych hospital AMA, they did not make it easy. When I first asked to leave I was told, "You are not going anywhere." (So much for compassionate care, huh?) Then, a nurse said, "If you leave AMA then insurance isn't going to pay and you will be stuck with a big bill." I told her thanks for her concern, but that payment was none of her business. At that point I asked to speak to an attorney and things got really ugly. They finally did let me out, but only after being really, really nasty and threatening me. My hospital stay was not life saving for me nor for many of those I was hospitalized with. While inpatient as long as you do as you're told, then there's no problem. But those who stand up for themselves or others are in for a rude awakening.

And too often families can't even rest assured that hospitalization will insure the safety and care they expect. There is what families want to believe but the reality can quite different.

City to Pay $650,000 to Patient Who Gouged Out His Eyes
The family of a man who gouged out his eyes while he was a patient at Saint Elizabeth's Hospital will receive $650,000 from the D.C. government.

http://www.examiner.com/a-983495~D_C__to_pay__650_000_to_family_of_man_who_gouged_out_his_eyes.html

Hopefully this will be a wakeup call for all psych hospitals to review just how many they have locked up and let them go. Unforunately after ten years, where will these people go?

Once someone is inside one of these institutions, I think it's often incredibly easy to keep them there. The families of these people must have either abandoned them or actively made sure that they stayed incarcarated - presuming they had living family members. I think it's likely none of these prisoners wanted to be there, because if they did their status would've been voluntary instead of involuntary. Once someone is in this situation their true feelings, or their true state of mind for that matter, aren't likely to ever be known, because nothing they say will ever be taken seriously. Everything publicly known about them is always second-hand knowledge - without the due process rights afforded even to accused criminals, they can never express themselves freely without having it interpreted by someone else.

It seems that just being locked up is often seen as de facto proof that the person deserves to be there. That's kind of what happened to me, when I signed into an institution many years ago and then was committed when I wanted to leave. In total I spent 13 months there - and I wasn't a danger to myself or anyone else. I guess the way I felt could've accurately been described as severe depression (or something like that), but I wasn't the least bit suicidal. I just felt hopeless, and the monotonous routine of the institution did nothing to make me feel better.

I don't know precisely what is meant by the phrase "unable to take care of oneself", but I know if I had had an income I would've been able to manage things like paying rent and keeping myself well fed. Basically, the things that landed me in that place and kept me there all stemmed from being unable to earn a living. So I guess the reason I had to stay was pretty much to avoid being destitute. It wasn't as a last resort that I had to stay there - at least not in the sense of all other options having been tried - but mainly because I wasn't really allowed much choice in what kind of treatment I had. Mainly for financial reasons.

There are lots of problems with the involuntary commitment process. Most petitions to have people committed are filed by relatives, relatives who go to court and swear under oath that the person being committed is dangerous and assure the court that person is not welcome in their home. Most of the bogus rehearings required in most states in 90 to 150 days, do not happen. Instead the probate judge calls the hospital and the family and asks if the person should be let out. This is the most that happens in most states. And, as in Kent's case, most people are committed for economic and social reasons, not because they are getting some kind of care they need or because psych hospitals are safe and secure environments.

This is the hospital where my maternal grandmother (with bipolar disorder like me) was frequently an inpatient -- and where one of my great-grandmothers on the same side (with schizophrenia) spent the last dozen or so years of her life.

So this hits home -- literally. Ugh.