Wednesday, October 26, 2022

More on how & why it doesn't work

 A couple examples.

At a staffing for James yesterday, the "treatment" team was strangely silent. Nobody wanted to say anything about this "patient" -- a black man in his 80's who has been locked in the Elgin nuthouse since 1987. Tom Zubik once confided in me that they really don't want him to die there, it wouldn't look good....

But it's looking more and more like James probably will die a slave. He hasn't taken any psych drugs for decades, and he never gets in trouble, never fights or even argues much any more. The last time he had a roommate with whom he wasn't getting along, everybody blamed the roommate, not James. I know because I represented the roommate, too. Needless to say, James is psychiatrically stable. There's absolutely no good reason why Illinois taxpayers should be footing the bill (about $1000/day) to feed and house James in a secure "hospital" because of his "mental illness".

Nevertheless, a couple people worry (or pretend they do) that James might still believe he's the king of Egypt. Dr. Malis and one or two other M.D. psychiatric honchos are just itching to see whether they can change somebody's personality and beliefs with meds. That's a wasted agenda, but after all James did kill somebody back in 1985, so the masters can probably continue to own him in the hope of experimenting on him until he dies. 

I had to get a court order a couple years ago just for James to be allowed to go to an outside medical clinic without being chained, when he could barely walk. Dr. Malis, perhaps channeling Dr. Mengele, insisted that chains were necessary and appropriate. I was all set to hire a photographer to get a picture of James being stuffed into the EMHC van in chains, the ultimate image of a slave, and blow it all over the media and the internet. I think I told Administration i would do it, too.

________________

Mother S, a "patient" housed on the notorious White Cottage clinical unit, who not long ago was told by her psychiatrist that she had better terminate her pregnancy (which had begun on the clinical unit, while Mother S was an involuntary patient), was very angry this morning. They've had her on 15-minute checks for most of the past year. That means she can't go to the library or the gym, and she has to be physically observed by staff four times every hour, around the clock.

It is the furthest possible departure from a "least restrictive environment," intended to prevent disasters like a patient suicide, in the short term. The medical records state, several times every day, that 15-minute checks are continued "to protect Mother S from sexual harassment by male peers." Anyone reading the chart immediately thinks, wow, how can sexual harassment of this one female patient continuing for so long? Who or what is out of control here?

Today, Laurie, the nurse manager on White Cottage, along with the psychiatrist Dr. Singh, met with Mother S and told the truth: the EMHC Administration (i.e., not the treatment team) says Mother S must remain indefinitely on 15-minute checks, as punishment for the fact that she embarrassed the facility by getting pregnant on the unit. They have this woman checked every fifteen minutes, around the clock, to make sure she isn't getting pregnant again! 

Mother S had her baby girl, by the way, in late May, 2022. She was just never allowed to hold her. The facility was severely embarrassed by this blessed event of a new life coming into the world, because they are supposed to prevent "patients" from having sex, with each other or with staff. Everybody thinks the father in this case is another "patient" who was also supposed to be prevented from having sex; but it's not a sure thing, it might have been a male staff. The results of a long-delayed paternity test are not yet in. 

The rotten psychiatrist who tried to force Mother S to have an abortion was fired, so at least there is some temporary justice in that. (They'll hire him back as soon as the flap blows over though, just like they hired Erica Ware back at Chicago Read.) But meanwhile the Administration is thinking, "Well we can sure prove Mother S is not being allowed to have sex anymore... permanent 15-minute checks!" 

It was probably Michelle Evans' idea. More than any other individual, the embarrassment comes to Michelle, as the titular master of this particular slave plantation. She probably implemented the cruel strategy through somebody like Jennifer Matthews. Jennifer is a white, well spoken, long-experienced social worker, who can be relied on to maintain public relations for a "hospital" even as an overseer of slaves.

But one other suspect in addition to Michelle Evans is worth mentioning.... Jai Kaul is now the Nurse Manager on K & L Unit (of course! see recent article). She was Nurse Manager on White Cottage during the time when Mother S conceived a child. Her potential liability is obvious.

In any event, there is no reasonable "treatment plan" for Mother S. The clinical team and the Administration can only try to make her, and her incriminating history of getting pregnant and giving birth while involuntarily locked up in a supposedly secure, state-operated psychiatric "hospital" (sarcastic quotation marks), disappear. "Disappearing" her mostly means punishing her until she just can't resist anything anymore. Give her enough drugs, enough insults, enough restrictions, she'll lie down and die as a person. 

The next thing they'll do is transfer her to a more (not less) restrictive clinical unit at EMHC, like one of the UST units, M or H, with the most violent female slaves who hate Mother S and will be prone to physically attack her. But that's all part of "treatment", right?

And that's the only kind of "plan" they have. We Illinois taxpayers are on the hook for this quackery, or this crime against humanity, or whatever the hell it is.

James and Mother S are wonderful examples of how and why this doesn't work.

Psychiatria delenda est!

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