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6 May 2008

Chokeholds, Headlocks, Beatings In Texas State Hospitals


Thanks to a reader for passing along this account of reports indicating that 70 employees of Texas's state hospitals have been fired in recent years for openly beating patients. It's a complete outrage that such events were allowed to take place. While I know that state hospitals are very difficult places for employees to work (akin to prisons), there is little justification for such widespread abuse, especially considering that the patients are not dangerous criminals.

What's astonishing is that state employees were using chokeholds on patients. Almost every police department in the US banned the use of chokeholds in the 1980s after a series of deaths from the use of the procedure.

"The psychiatric hospitals, which have about 2,500 patients daily, had 137 confirmed abuse cases in 2007. The state schools for people with disabilities, which have twice as many residents, have an average of 300 confirmed abuse cases per year.

"But some advocates fear the mentally ill patients may face greater risks. Patients of the psychiatric hospitals are largely indigent, transient and not connected to their families, so they have few allies as they bounce through the mental health system.

"'It's a population that's easy to abuse because they're not on the radar in any way,' said Richard Hansen, a Texas mental health advocate who was chemically restrained, shackled and beaten to the point of broken ribs years ago while suffering from bipolar disorder in a New York mental hospital."

The whole thing is disgusting. How come the Treatment Advocacy Center isn't talking about this on its website? Cat got your tongue Fuller Torrey?

Furious Seasons 5/6/08 11:55 AM Philip Dawdy (philip.dawdy@gmail.com) mental illness

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