Frequent Obs

In a couple hours, I will attend a virtual staffing for a “patient” (AKA psychiatric slave) at Illinois’ most renowned psychiatric “hospital” (AKA plantation), Elgin Mental Health Center. This particular client does not take psychotropic drugs. He can be a tedious person to deal with, because he has an eye for detail and a habit of insisting that everyone else should be as avidly interested as he is, in the huge volume of details that he points out at random moments.

This guy is not delusional or psychotic. He’s quite bright, and the clinicians who run the unit he’s enslaved on admit knowing that he’s “high functioning”. In fact they apparently see him as so high functioning that he ought to take over some of their responsibilities.... There’s a “low functioning” slave on the same unit who constantly insults and threatens my client, and others. The staff (AKA overseers) do not often bother to control this behavior. My client was recently told he should be able to deal with it without help.

The problem is, of course, that the ways he could deal with it all get him in trouble. E.g., when the other patient says he is going to slit my client’s throat, my client could: 1) return the threat and end up in a fight, 2) retreat to his room, or 3) incessantly complain to staff. 

Option 1) would make my client “dangerous to self or others” and justify further, more severe enslavement. Option 2) would make him anti-social or “depressed” and justify further, more severe enslavement. Option 3) would make him “paranoid” or “delusional” or “anxious” and justify further, more severe enslavement.

The further, more severe enslavement that the overseers would like to justify consists first and foremost of psychiatric drugs. 

Secondarily, there’s something called “frequent obs” (meaning frequent observation). Clinicians on the unit are told to keep a very close eye on a particular slave and document their observations at fifteen-minute intervals. The slave is concurrently also denied certain property and privileges. This is all arranged to provide “safety”.

It’s nonsense in this case, a mere cover for provocation and retribution. This client has been on “frequent obs” or the even more severe “one-to-one” restriction for at least two months. The overseers don’t like it when he points out that they are failing to control the behavior of the “low functioning patient”. And the masters certainly don’t like it when any slave recovers from mental illness without agreeing to take their drugs for life.

The purpose of “frequent obs” here is to test my client, to see how long they can punish him for his undrugged recovery and his advocacy for his own and others’ rights. They hope his patience and steadfastness will fail, so they can say, “See, mental illness!”

It’s an ugly, cynical business.