Tag:

Psychiatric Hospitals

RIP, Thomas Szasz, Pioneering Psychiatry Critic

by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. 5/4/2024

RIP, Thomas Szasz, Pioneering Psychiatry Critic Thomas Szasz, M.D. died on September 8, 2012 at the ripe old age of 92. He was a pioneer in the field of making us rethink what we mean when we say someone is “mentally ill.” Is it really a purely physical disease, or is it part physical, part social construct?

And if it’s partly a social construct (and, to be honest, it is), it must be subjective. We’ve all simply agreed that this set of symptoms = mental illness. Keep in mind that his theories were based with our knowledge of mental illness in the 1950s and 1960s — a time when our understanding of mental illness was truly in its infancy. At that time, mental disorders truly were quite arbitrarily defined.

While many associate Szasz with the anti-psychiatry movement, that’s a label he never was comfortable with. It also over-simplifies his complex and nuanced views about mental illness as one of the most vocal critics of psychiatry.

5/4/2024 5 comments

Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism, 2011-2012

by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. 10/2/2023

By John M. Grohol, Psy.D.

Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism, 2011-2012 The Carter Center Mental Health Program announced today their annual call for applications for fellowships in mental health journalism. Their announcement follows.

Applications from U.S. residents are now being accepted for six one-year journalism fellowships with the Carter Center’s Mental Health Program. These fellowships aim to enhance public understanding of mental health issues and reduce stigma and discrimination against people with mental illnesses through balanced and accurate reporting. The postmark deadline for applications is April 18, 2011, and the fellowship recipients will be announced July 15, 2011, on the Center’s website, www.cartercenter.org. The 2011-2012 fellowship year begins in September 2011.

“Informed journalists can have a significant impact on public understanding of mental health issues, as they shape debate and trends with the words and pictures they convey,” says former First Lady and Carter Center Mental Health Program Founder Rosalynn Carter.

10/2/2023 0 comment

NJ Improves Mental Health Care – In Five Years

by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. 12/13/2022

By John M. Grohol, Psy.D.

Why put off until tomorrow what you can do five years from now?

That’s the question posed by the settlement of a lawsuit in the great state of New Jersey. Imagine being cleared to be discharged out of an inpatient psychiatric hospital, only you have no place to go. New Jersey, like many states, didn’t really care — you can stay at the hospital for as long as you want. But as anyone who has spent any amount of time in such a facility, you know it’s not really a conducive place for, um, “self-growth” and certainly not for someone trying to get their life and independence back.

So four years ago, a group representing 300 patients at inpatient state psychiatric hospitals filed suit to get the state to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead ruling, which requires states to help people with disabilities live in the least restrictive setting possible. Four years ago. Yes, the state knew full well they would have to comply with the Supreme Court ruling four years ago.

But instead of simply acknowledging this fact, state officials put off doing anything during those four years as the lawsuit winded its way through the court system. The outcome, though, was never in doubt:

Nearly 300 patients stranded inside the state’s psychiatric hospitals for more than a year because of a lack of housing and outpatient treatment services will be discharged over the next five years, under a lawsuit settlement announced today by a disability advocacy group and the state Department of Human Services.

You got that? Now residents of the hospitals have to wait up to another five years to be released! That means they can release 5 residents a month (wow, a whole 5 people a month, in a state with a population of 8.7 million residents) over the next 5 years to clear those who are waiting. But you know what, it’s okay, because “philosophically” the state was wanting to comply with the Supreme Court ruling made a decade ago, they just didn’t have the money to do so:

“Philosophically, we were on the same page but there are the practical realities we face in state government, and that is what took time,” Martone said.

The true “practical reality” is that the state likely faced far stiffer financial penalties if they didn’t comply. It costs an estimated $5 million a year to offer the low-cost housing needed for these residents. I guess their money was tied up elsewhere.

Of course, you don’t have to look too hard to find millions of dollars in earmarks made by the state’s congressional contingent that might be better funneled to helping these New Jersey residents. I enjoy reading through the appropriations requested by the NJ congressional delegates that send big chunks of free federal government spending to New Jersey companies for one-off projects. Tasty pork, that.

All states do this, of course, but not all states leave their own residents to languish in their state hospitals due to a lack of planning and resources.

In the end, it’ll be nearly 10 years from when the residents filed their lawsuit against the state, and the last resident is released. My heart goes out to these folks, who certainly deserve better than New Jersey has given them.

Read the full article: N.J. psychiatric hospitals to release 300 patients under lawsuit settlement

Hat tip to Furious Seasons.

12/13/2022 2 comments

People with Mental Illness: Week in Review

by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. 10/12/2022

By John M. Grohol, Psy.D.

This past week has been a sad one for understanding how we, as a society, treat our less fortunate fellow human beings. Human beings who are homeless. Human beings who have a mental illness. Human beings who may be our friends, our family members, even ourselves.

First up is College Hospital. College Hospital Costa Mesa is a “JCAHO accredited, 122 bed facility that provides high quality medical, surgical and psychiatric care,” according to their website. I assume that after this incident, they will lose their JCAHO accreditation (another sign that such accreditation is meaningless in actually finding serious institutional problems in the facilities they accredit). The hospital is accused of patient dumping — discharging patients after treatment to homeless shelters and providing little or no followup care:

In a settlement announced Wednesday, the L.A. city attorney’s office said that College Hospital had dumped more than 150 mentally ill patients on skid row — long a magnet for the region’s most vulnerable citizens — in 2007 and 2008.

As part of the settlement, the hospital will pay $1.6 million in penalties and charitable contributions to a host of psychiatric and social-service agencies. The hospital also agreed to a first-of-its-kind injunction that prohibits it from transporting any homeless psychiatric patient discharged from their facilities to the streets or any shelter within an established “Patient Safety Zone,” a swath of downtown and South Los Angeles where most of the region’s homeless shelters and missions are concentrated.

Did the hospital apologize for its appalling behavior? Nope, and it still pretends it did nothing wrong releasing people with mental illness onto the streets as homeless. Until the College Hospital system in the Los Angeles area apologizes for this behavior and have a protocol in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future, I recommend boycotting this organization. A set of psychiatric hospitals like College Hospital won’t get the message loud and clear until people stop using their services.

Next in line for “I can’t believe people act like that still!” is the wonderful Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services, which had to let go 11 of its employees recently for encouraging fights among mentally and developmentally disabled residents at the troubled Corpus Christi State School. The employees had little work experience beyond fast-food jobs, according to The Dallas Morning News’s review of personnel records. You can tell that school has great supervisors and managers on staff.

Were any of the employees the managers responsible for these pitiful hiring decisions? Nope, not a one. This despite the fact that apparently no one bothered to check the employees’ backgrounds: “Officials with the Human Development Center said no one from the state called to check Dixon’s references before hiring him at the school.” Great job there, Texas. Way to look out for some of your most vulnerable and in-need citizens.

But it’s not all bad news. Illinois should be proud of this pilot program that helps people with mental illness find appropriate housing — housing that gets them out of nursing homes, long a stop-gap solution for tens of thousands of people throughout the country:

Rockford’s Janet Wattles Center, primed with state and federal money, was the first in the state to be selected for the new program, called Rapid Reintegration.

“Many of these folks could benefit significantly from community placement if they had the housing support or subsidies and supportive services to help them live,” said Executive Director Frank Ware, who has been involved with the state’s long-term planning for nursing home issues for several years.

How did nursing homes take the place for psychiatric hospitals in the U.S.? Well, blame the movement to close down state hospitals while not putting an equal amount of money into providing the appropriate care and treatment many of those patients still needed:

The mentally ill often must give up their housing and stay with friends or family. The other option is homelessness and, sometimes, the criminal justice system.

That’s when a nursing home becomes the most appealing option. Nursing homes have empty beds because seniors today are healthier and delaying their moves, and there is a shortage of hospital psychiatric beds.

In Illinois, about 14,000 people with mental illnesses live in nursing homes for seniors, according to the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.

I hope more cities and towns across the U.S. find money for programs like this, because all people really want and need is a little personalized attention and care when their illness gets the better of them. In the end, treating people with a little dignity and respect goes a long, long way in helping a person in their own recovery. Programs like this housing program in Illinois help pave the way.

10/12/2022 9 comments