ALL ARE INVITED!!!
This exhibit will be at 114 South State Street in downtown Chicago from August 13 until August 22.. It got rave reviews in NY City during the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in May. Don't miss it.
Anyone from EMHC who intends to go, let me know when and I'll show up and buy you some Starbucks or something. I'd love to know your impressions of this exhibit.
RK
A recent article by Jonathon Turley seems compelling to me, on the subject of freedom of speech. This is Turley's whole raison d' être, and his entire reference point for any and all political analysis.
In my family, and in my community, there is a clear majority of serious Democrats, who have basically bought the campaign line (or legitimate fear) holding that Donald Trump poses a mortal threat to our democracy. I am more afraid of the scenario Turley writes about, but I certainly am not a Trumper. In exercising my right to vote (which I consider a very important responsibility), I have frequently gone for one or another third-party candidate.
But while out to dinner with friends the other evening, I was so injudicious as to pose a pure hypothetical, which got me into a truly shocking amount of social difficulty. I said that I was so against the Harris-Walz ticket that I would be tempted, if I lived in Michigan or Pennsylvania, to do such a horrible deed as vote for Trump. My point, which I incorrectly believed would be obvious to these people, was not that I am favorable to Trump, but only that I am very unfavorable to the Democratic ticket. In Illinois it hardly matters who you vote for because the Democrat will certainly win. I told my friends I was really glad I live in Illinois, so I can't be tempted to do such a horrible deed as vote for Trump. In Michigan or Pennsylvania, critical electoral votes are realistically up for grabs, so one would have to be more responsible, and even consider the lesser-of-two-evils evaluation.
Somehow, the only thing these people heard me say was that I might vote for Trump. Horror of horrors! I was suddenly a Trumper, a fascist/racist/misogynist/transphobic/homophobic neanderthal, completely unfit for mixed company! People who are family, or as close as family to me, argued they didn't even know who I was, and this single comment had more or less completely changed our relationship. There was a clearly implied demand that I retract what I had said, or what they said I had said, which was not what I had intended to say at all.
I reacted pretty badly in my turn. Maybe that's kind of predictable for any political conversation these days. This dinner table slapdown became a kind of denial of my free speech, or at least I felt that way at the time. When I read that Turley article this morning, it inspired me to go back to the text of the First Amendment, because I recalled that it guarantees four separate freedoms, of which freedom of speech and the press is only one (not even the first-mentioned, which would be freedom of religion).
The truth is, the United States of America was a breakthrough idea, with the Bill of Rights becoming the seed for all our subsequent prosperity, all our spiritual motivation, all our personality as a nation.
Now many people say times have changed: the existential questions are about climate, equity, artificial intelligence, social media, mental health, science... not freedom of speech. Those who say that are wrong. It was the American ideals of freedom and human dignity that enabled the highly improbable abolition of slavery in the 19th Century despite the overwhelming practical fact, that King Cotton financed a system of corruption and greed to continuously deliver riches and unassailable political power to slaveholders.
Abraham Lincoln didn't free the slaves by abolishing Habeas Corpus, instituting a military draft, prosecuting dissenters, and letting Billy-the-Torch Sherman march from Atlanta to the sea (although he is properly remembered by history for all of those questionable acts): Lincoln freed the slaves by hearkening back to Americans' revolutionary sense of fundamental rights which made everyone free in a new way. He called for a new birth of freedom at Gettysburg, but he was still prepared, nearly a year and a half after that elegant sermon, with cannon balls still flying and brothers still killing brothers, to sink all the wealth piled by two hundred and fifty years of toil and repay every drop of blood drawn with the lash by another drawn with the sword.
Times have not changed for freedom of speech. The American people ultimately gave up their peculiar institution of chattel slavery as an arbitrary act of their own will (however fraught), despite its empirical utility and the obvious material value built on the backs of unrequited bondsmen. We made that change because we were firm in the right as God gave us to see the right. Can we remain so firm now? Can we still believe that all men have the inalienable right to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others?
One force says no with huge authority: psychiatry says we can't allow freedom of thought and freedom of speech anymore in the modern world, we cannot and must not resist the machines, the money, the gaslighting, however they undermine, dishonor and degrade our culture. Psychiatry tells us we are brains, nothing more than brains, just mud. Psychiatry's "experts" insist they know more about us than we know about ourselves. They say we must take their drugs and respect their sacred artifacts (which they call diagnoses).
I have a beautiful, big Airedale terrier named Spensuril Halftail. He barks incessantly every morning at early walkers on the beach, and wakes up the neighbors. Sometimes he gets anxious, and he growls menacingly at guests, even kids, who reach for him in ways he doesn't like. Twice, he bit somebody.
I adore Spensur, he's my friend. But he doesn't have First Amendment rights. I stop him from barking sometimes, and suppress his enthusiasms or protests if I consider them too fierce. I don't think twice about that, he's a step down from a human being, he has no human rights as a dog. I love him, but if he upsets people or makes them afraid or hurts them, I will take his freedom away and I might kill him.
Malis, Corcoran, Hussain, Sharpe and their ilk have (at best) the same relationship with their "patients" as I have with my dog. Even Vik Gill, a decent guy, knows that Gus has to be discouraged from complaining too much. There is no freedom of thought or speech for psychiatric slaves: they are subhuman by at least a couple fifths.
The reason for varying views of how to divide life is not so much politics or avarice, let alone biology. It's willingness and ability to communicate. If you can change another's behavior with a loving glance, or a knowing wink or a smile, or kind encouragement, you will naturally prefer that mode to an angry snarl or an assault, or prison bars. Those with whom you can find agreement, and come to like and understand, without violence, will naturally seem entitled to rights like freedom of thought/speech, that you will grant and respect.
The FDA's disapproval of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy last week is a fascinating study. By most accounts, the problem with the proposal from Lycos Therapeutics was the psychotherapy element of the treatment, not the drug. The FDA has never regulated psychotherapy. They don't understand communication by itself, they only specialize in what they imagine are molecules of the mind, and they know those tiny particles of dead matter can't communicate at all.
The FDA made the right decision for the wrong reason. They expect drugs to work and be safe, but they have no interest or jurisdiction with regard to live communication as a method of healing.
Psychiatrists and the FDA should confine themselves to veterinary professions and leave people alone.
But I should communicate better with friends and Spensuril Halftail.
OK, so Xiaomara didn't want Gus on her caseload any more, and Dr. Gill covered for her by telling Gus it was just his own idea for no reason, so Joseph could take over the case. Right? That's my theory.
But there are at least a couple funny things about that....
"For no reason" is nonsense as any explanation for a new social worker. Gill just lied about that because he didn't want to tell Gus the reason. Gus is continuing to ask why he was assigned a different social worker immediately after he made kind of a big deal about Xiaomara papering over the window to her office so no one could see what she was doing in there (which is against policy). I'm pretty sure, and I hope, that Gus will keep on asking anyone and everyone about this, and nagging EMHC staff and administrators, at least as long as the only answers he ever gets are nonsense. Today Tony, the legal advocate, gave Gus the answer that maybe "they" thought he would do better with a male social worker. This was laughable, and it only incited Gus to keep asking.
Well then, who is the "they" who thought that? Was it just Gill? He did say the whole new social worker idea was his own. If so, why does he think Gus will do better with a male social worker? The thing about Joseph Basso is, he's male... but not actually assigned to the clinical unit Gus is on (N Unit). He's assigned to M Unit, which is a sister unit to N, but separate. I recall that some years ago (December 2016 to be exact) a patient was moved to K Unit from L Unit (these are also sister units), probably to enable his assignment to a different social worker, because the one he had on L Unit was having sex with him.
But in this case with Gus, the patient is apparently remaining on the same unit while the social worker (Joseph) comes over to him from the sister unit. It might all just be completely arbitrary, with no relevant policy or protocol other than Dr. Gill's whim. But I find that unlikely. I was just in a Hartman Unit staffing today, where "protocol" (or "policy" or some such inscrutable excuse) was cited for a clearly unreasonable, obnoxiously punitive assignment of one-to-one observation to James Baker, requiring that the door to his room stand wide open all night for a female staff member to directly observe him constantly while he was in bed sleeping because of a surgery he recently had on his right hand at UIC Hospital. That made no sense in terms of any purpose for medical care or security protection that I can imagine. It was just "protocol," that was all anyone in the staffing could think of. Nonsense.
There must be some similar (even if equally ridiculous) "protocol" excuse for Gus getting a new social worker absent any agreement, consultation or explanation. Joseph isn't even assigned to work on N Unit. All the social workers assigned to N are female, although all the patients there are male, so that might relate to Tony's theory. But what do you know, all the M Unit social workers are male and all the patients there are female! Somebody at EMHC or in IDHS has apparently neglected to consider, up until now, the possibility that some patients on M and N Units might do better with same-sex social workers. So what exactly could this "protocol" be?
Maybe only Dr. Gill is smart enough as a psychiatrist to think of the same-sex/opposite-sex point, and maybe Gus is the only patient this contingency has ever applied to. Maybe Gus will suddenly be no problem because he now has a male social worker; maybe there's nothing at all wrong with Xiaomara and she'll never have any boundary problems like that other social worker did, years ago
If that's what proves out going forward, then top EMHC administrators like Michelle Evans and Ryma Jacobson will be off the hook (for not predicting the same-sex/opposite-sex contingency in treatment); maybe they'll be credited with stellar executive insight into the unique dynamics of personnel in state nuthouses (for keeping the great psychiatrist Dr. Gill around)!
But if I had to bet, I'd say Gus won't change much. He'll keep complaining and causing trouble, because he's right and he has a strong sense of duty to truth. Meanwhile, Xiaomara will be trouble in one way or another, and she'll leave this bad job, as will Joe Basso. Dr. Gill will resign (I'm told he's actually said he intends to). EMHC will continue getting worse and worse: more like a psychiatric slave plantation, less like a real hospital.
The title to this article could be sung to the tune of a 1973 song about the Watergate flap, Haldeman Erlichman, Mitchell and Dean.
These guys have no idea what they're doing. They make it all up.
Gus' psychiatrist, Vik Gill, introduced Gus to his new social worker today. His name is Joseph Basso. SW-II Basso has only worked at EMHC since September, 2022. On LinkedIn, he describes himself as an "Agent of Change who seeks to positively impact the disenfranchised." I can't tell how old he is, but I'd say not very, he looks about 25.
Basso's causes are "civil rights and social action, education, environment, human rights, politics, poverty alleviation, social services." Sounds about right. People always go into mental health with the idea that maybe they can help others. Then they discover, slowly or quickly, that's not what the field is about. The state nuthouses teach a lesson very soon: forensic mental health is a mafia culture of control; the nuthouses are plantations where "patients" are merely used and abused for whatever advantage can be extracted. It's a bad career, Mr. Basso. You'll either become corrupt or too stupid to notice corruption.
Gus asked why he has a new social worker, and Dr. Gill responded that this had been his decision alone, but there was "no reason" for it. I don't think that's true, even though I kind of admire Gill's insouciance in saying it. I think Xiaomara Ramirez refused to work with Gus, and she probably went over Gill's head.
In theory, since Xiaomara is a SW-III, she is more experienced and should be better at dealing with the more complex cases than SW-II Basso is. She's certainly getting paid more. Maybe she made some kind of a deal wherein she agreed to turn over 10% of her $174,000 annual salary to whomever is willing and able to take Gus off her caseload. That would only be fair, right? I think both these social workers are outside agency contracted staff, so they may have more leeway to make deals like that, than the regular union employees would have.
But I'm only speculating.
(As always... if I get any information wrong, about any individual I ever name on this blog, I hope somebody will correct me. Especially if I say something negative which isn't true, I promise to retract it as soon as I am credibly informed. You don't even have to call me yourself; just tell Gus, he'll let me know.)
I was almost thinking I had been too negative about this new Social Worker III at EMHC, or even that maybe I had unfairly accused her of things I shouldn't have accused her of. Then what do you know! She did something that kind of proved the opposite. I gave Xiaomara too much benefit of doubt, I was too easy on her, even as I am probably too easy on her fellow plantation overseers as a general habit.
To be clear, I did not accuse Xiaomara of sexual boundary violations with patients, and I do not accuse her of anything like that now. Comments I made were entirely about the potential appearance of such impropriety, caused by her violation of policy about obscuring the window in the door to her office. I had been told some time earlier by one of her patients (Gus, of course) that she was doing that. Gus had to remind me a couple of times before I wrote the first blog article about Xiaomara.
Then I added her name to a list of staff who could be accused of having sex with patients, in the next article I published. I made it clear that this was mere suspicion about Xiaomara, nothing documented. I even offered to publicly retract any accusation that was unfair or careless, e.g., if Xiaomaara would simply call or otherwise contact me to protest.
She never protested. In fact, she reacted as though she was guilty. In my experience, people get hostile or critical toward anyone whom they think might know that they've done something wrong.
Xiaomara flashed back big-time against Gus this morning. She's Gus' social worker, responsible to coordinate details and logistics of his treatment among the various team members. This morning, Gus saw her in a hallway on the clinical unit, and called out to her about a routine question regarding complaint forms. She responded with an unexpected, very hostile snarl, "Gus I don't want to talk to you right now!" Then she darted into her office and slammed the door hard enough to be heard and noticed all across the unit. Gus asked one staff (Tim, a nurse I think) to please note the event he had just seen and heard. Another witness was Cara Wueste (who coincidentally has her own history of connection to staff who violated boundaries with patients). Tim very quickly spoke with the psychiatrist Dr. Gill, in his office, and Gill quickly then went into Xiaomara's office to speak to her.
As it happened, Gus had a staffing immediately after this incident. I had looked forward to meeting Xiaomara at the staffing, and puzzled to myself over how I might apologize in the event that she would protest my blog articles mentioning her. But she didn't come to the staffing, only all the other social workers on the unit did. (This was slightly odd because those other social workers are not part of Gus' treatment team.) Gus now reports that Xiaomara hasn't emerged from her office today since slamming the door in his face.
I would have been inclined to believe that Xiaomara, as a relatively new EMHC employee, only papered over the window to her office door because she didn't know it was against policy, and she was unaware of certain sordid history of a social worker who sexually abused her patient in her office at EMHC for years. I think Gus made some comment to Tim or Cara or both of them at the time of this morning's incident like,"Gee, if she's going to get that upset over a little criticism, maybe she shouldn't work here!" He's absolutely right. Snarling and slamming a door on a patient is counter-therapeutic and unprofessional.
Gus was probably thinking that Xiaomara had been told about my two blog articles, and she was blaming those on him. The articles have been read more than 300 times by Xiaomara's peers in only 5 days, so she's probably embarrassed. The theory that my blog articles were what made Xiaomara so crazy was also supported by a comment from Dr. Gill shortly after today's staffing. He was advising Gus about how to better demonstrate his readiness for conditional release, when he mentioned something like, "...just don't accuse people of sex all the time." But that's not something Gus does.
Gus did not accuse Xiaomara of sex (in fact neither did I). Gus merely reported to me (accurately) that Xiaomara covered the window in her office door so people couldn't see in. I was the one who then made the point that it's against policy and she might even be suspected of having sex with patients. Sexual abuse of a patient by the patient's social worker did actually happen before, which is the only reason I even know that covering the window of an office door is against facility policy. At the time I casually mentioned that unfortunate experience in a conversation with Gus, I didn't even know Xiaomara was a new employee just this year. I don't think Gus knew either.
Well in any event, Xiaomara has as of today, removed all of the paper with which she had previously covered the window in her office door to prevent people from seeing in. Maybe Gill told her to do that, maybe after she whined to him that Gus accused her of sex. But she's complying with policy now and it doesn't appear as though she's trying to hide things she's doing in her office, so she can't be so easily suspected of having sex with patients.
She has Gus and me to thank for that improved environment of trust!
Below is a compiled list of staff at EMHC who supposedly have had (or are having) sexual relationships with patients. As I indicated recently, this is a felony. All of these people could be prosecuted, sentenced to prison if found guilty, and required to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.
Anyone who believes or would argue that their name is wrongfully on this list should contact me. If I am convinced that I have falsely accused you, or even that I accused you carelessly, I promise that I will retract my accusation on this page, and defend you against it whenever it comes up going forward. If I name somebody here and I don't get any protest, I'll probably take that as an admission. In the fifteen years I've been writing this blog, only one person ever asked me to retract anything. That was part of settling a legal case. (N.B., I was not the defendant or the defendant's counsel.)
The list:
(First, a handful of people who have been implicated by individuals, generally patients, with whom I've spoken personally, and by evidence with which I am familiar to some degree.)
Michelle Bogle, Simech Bun, Gabby Garcia; Mark Roberson, Dave Hagerman, Cletus Stewart, an Activity Therapist on K Unit named Susie; Xioamara Ramirez (social worker on N Unit only suspected because she papers over the window so patients can't see into her office, contrary to policy);
(And some partial or redacted names merely reported to me by other EMHC/IDHS staff, specifically for purposes of this article--a couple of these may duplicate names from patients in the list above.)
STA's Lula C., Ramona S., Shannon D., Sam M., Mark R., Hillary B., Tiffany J., Willie Q., Aurora D., Michelle B., LaSonya, David (the librarian); social workers Cassandra, Christy, Judy; activity therapists Becky, Barry, Shannon W.; nurses Kathy (from M/N), that Bun girl.
I am told that a couple more names will be forthcoming shortly. I'll try to keep the list current.
My point is, sexual abuse of patients by staff is endemic, and nobody really cares because this (EMHC) is a plantation. The staff consider on some level that the patients are their property to be used and controlled for whatever benefits are possible. Patients are not thought of as fellow human beings who need and are worthy of help. It's the plantation attitude, slavery. This is less an accusation against individuals whom I should report to the state police, and more a general indictment of the whole sorry mess that is so-called "forensic mental health."
A recently hired social worker (SW-III, a very highly-paid position a with a $175,000+ annual salary) on N Unit at EMHC is papering over the window of her office door so no one can see into her office to know what she's doing. As far as I have understood for some years, this is against policy.
It is well known that on occasion, social workers and/or other staff at EMHC have seduced patients into romantic and sexual relationships. It starts with "boundary problems" like special favors, home cooked food, computer and phone use. It proceeds to oral sex in the office, or in a mop closet on the unit. By the time the patient earns a conditional release he may be convinced that the staff member is the love of his life and will become his life partner. Then he is invariably abandoned.
This causes criminal convictions, suicide attempts, civil liability and other unpleasantness that is quite contrary to any purpose of improved mental health. It also discredits the institution and makes taxpayers and their elected representatives in the Illinois General Assembly think maybe the state nuthouses should just be closed.
I am not alleging that Xiaomara Ramirez papers over the window in the door to her office on N Unit so that she can have sex with her patients. But I have taken deposition testimony stating that no one is allowed to block the window into their office that way, and I know of various instances of staff seducing patients. In fact, there was a case where a patient was getting several blowjobs a week from his social worker for several years, in her office, only a few steps from the unit nurses' station and directly across a narrow hall from a janitorial closet that is a point of high foot traffic.
Supposedly nobody ever knew what was going on in that case. But the patient told me everybody knew. As a matter of fact, several patients at EMHC have told me that everybody knows about some staff-patient sexual relationship. These things are always known about by patients.
Another SW-III at EMHC, now retired, testified that he got all his "intel" from patients. And I attended a seminar in New York City at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, just a couple months ago, which was all about sexual violence on psychiatric inpatient units. It was unanimously agreed by all four presenting experts in that seminar that patients know everything that's happening on a clinical unit much better than staff do.
There aren't very many SW-III's at EMHC. People who qualify for that position usually want a more honest job and qualify for one better than "Overseer" on the psychiatric slave plantation.
Xiaomara should not block the window to her office. It's suspicious.
