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IMPORTANT
FACTS
1. Patients are often
provoked to justify placing them in restraints, resulting in higher insurance
reimbursements� at least $1,000 a day.
2. Thousands of patients
each year are subjected to �four-point restraints� after being subjected to
known violence-inducing drugs.
3. Patients can become
so exhausted fighting against restraint, they can suffer cardiac and respiratory
collapse. Many have died, some as young as six.
4. Heart-wrenching tragedy
is regularly repeated under psychiatric �care� in spite of government efforts
to prevent it and reflects the viciousness of individual psychiatrists.
CHAPTER
ONE Brutal Treatment for Profit
With billions in government appropriations allocated for mental health treatment
to provide the �best possible care,� why is it that psychiatrists rely on violence
to enforce their will and, as is frequently the case, risk killing their patients?
In a 2002 California Senate Research Office report, expert testimony stated,
�The attempt to impose �treatment� by force is always counterproductive�creating
humiliation, resentment and resistance to further treatment that might be more
helpful.� The Pennsylvania Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services
reported that seclusion and restraint �do not alleviate human suffering or psychiatric
symptoms, do not alter behavior and have frequently resulted in patient and
staff injury, emotional trauma and patient death.�
�I can�t breathe,� pleaded 16-year-old Roshelle Clayborne, while being restrained
at the Laurel Ridge psychiatric center in Texas. Her pleas were ignored. As
the Hartford Courant reported, �Slammed face-down on the floor, Roshelle�s arms
were yanked across her chest, her wrists gripped from behind by a mental health
aide.� She was forcibly drugged, became suddenly still, blood trickled from
the corner of her mouth as she lost control of her bodily functions. Her limp
body was rolled into a blanket and dumped in a seclusion room. No one watched
her die.
In New Zealand, 29-year-old Mansel Watene�s death, following a restraint procedure
at Carrington State Psychiatric Institution, was determined by a government
inquiry to have been preceded by Watene�s airways becoming blocked during his
struggle with staff as they forcibly restrained him. Ten nurses held him down,
tied his ankles with his pajamas, and carried him down a corridor to a seclusion
room, where he died. A tranquilizer was even administered to him after he was
dead.
From the patient�s perspective, if they don�t die, they certainly never forget
a restraint experience. In a statement for a 2002 California court case related
to restraints, Ron Morrison, a registered psychiatric nurse, said, �� an individual
who is restrained feels vulnerable, inadequate, humiliated and unprotected.
This may result in mental deterioration and exaggerated resentment or contempt
for those responsible for the restraint procedure, and may actually aggravate
a potentially violent situation, or create the potential for continued violence
in the future.� Morrison also reported that patients can become so exhausted
fighting against restraint, they risk cardiac and respiratory collapse.
In response to the overwhelming evidence of life-threatening dangers and degradation
associated with restraints, psychiatrists simply tell bald-faced lies or devalue
death. For example, Donald Milliken, chief of the Department of Psychiatry in
the Capital Health Region in Canada, declared, �[R]estraint is not itself harmless;
some proportion of those who are restrained may die. We do not know what this
proportion is or how many others will come near death and will need to be revived.
As clinicians we need to accept that restraint procedures are potentially lethal
and to be judicious with their use.�
Restraint use is not motivated by concern for the patient. A lawsuit in Denmark
revealed that hospitals received additional funding for treating violent patients.
Harvard psychiatrist Kenneth Clark reported that in America patients are often
provoked to justify placing them in restraints, also resulting in higher insurance
reimbursements � at least $1,000 a day. The more violent a patient becomes�or
is made�the more money the psychiatrist makes.
There is no real mystery here. Unbelievable as it may be, and as Kenneth Clark
admits, psychiatrists intend to worsen their patients� behavior for the sake
of greater profit. The money is why thousands of patients each year are subjected
to �four-point restraints� after being subjected to known violence- inducing
drugs � drugs that are the favored treatment of psychiatrists. While knowing
nothing about the causes or cures for mental difficulties, they are experts
at treacherously destabilizing and debasing human behavior for pay, very good
pay.
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