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FATAL
RESULTS A History of Coercive Restraint
From their origins as no more than punitive prison guards in asylums,
psychiatrists have advanced their brutal methodology little beyond the
addition of electrical and chemical restraints.
Today, there are several methods used �all violent, all potentially lethal�in
which hospital staff physically and brutally restrict a patient�s movement,
usually just before drugging them unconscious.
In a �prone� restraint, the victim is forcibly pinned to the ground face down
through what is called a �basket hold.� A psychiatric worker grabs the patient�s
wrists, crosses both arms over the chest, then grabs the wrists from behind
while knocking out the patient�s legs from under him and pushing him face down
to the floor. Workers then hold each wrist (elbows and arms are crossed underneath
the person being held down) and both legs and a fifth person sits or leans on
the victim�s back.
Another method has the victim thrown face down with his arms outstretched.
Four people hold each limb and another sits on top.
The consequences include bruises, broken bones and breathing difficulties.
Death occurs from suffocation due to positional asphyxiation, caused when the
chest cavity is compressed too much for air to get into the lungs.
Tristan Sovern, 16, screamed, �You�re choking me ... I can�t breathe.� At least
two of the psychiatric assistants restraining him knew he was having trouble
breathing, but they kept up their grip while the teenager cried out for help,
face down, arms crossed under his body. Losing consciousness, Tristan was rushed
to the Greensboro hospital on February 26, 1998. It was too late� he died.
Mechanical restraints include straitjackets, leather belts or straps that cuff
around each ankle and wrist. Sound proof rooms, opened only from the outside,
are used for seclusion. Mind-numbing drugs are administered as a means of chemical
control. As the following brief history shows, contemporary physical measures
bear every resemblance to the earliest torturous restraints.
1700s:
�Wall camisoles� and chains attached to walls or beds were used to restrain
patients, following the theory that the more painful the restraint, the better
the results. Benjamin Rush, the �father of American psychiatry,� whose face
still adorns the American Psychiatric Association seal, developed the �tranquilizer�
chair in the late 1700s. It immobilized an inmate in a state of enormous discomfort
and pain.
1787:
French psychiatrist Phillippe Pinel abolished the use of chains on the �insane�
but replaced them with straitjackets.
1800s:
The �crib bed� was a low, lattice-type bed cage in which the patient was placed
for weeks or months. The use of belts attached to cuffs, leather armlets and
anklets and restraint chairs continued, with psychiatrists arguing that these
had �great healing virtues.�
1855:
The use of �strong rooms� for seclusion became fashionable in some psychiatric
hospitals.
1950s:
Mechanical restraints were used to confine patients to their beds or to �holding
chairs.� In some cases, patients were confined to dark, dungeon-like basements.
1990s:
Troubled by family relationships, 17-year-old Kelly Stafford voluntarily admitted
herself to a U.S. psychiatric facility. She was held for 309 days, many of them
in cruel darkness behind blackened windows. Her arms and legs were strapped
for months at a time.
Katalin Zentai died at a Connecticut Valley psychiatric hospital in December
1996 after being held in a restraint chair for 30 of the last 36 hours of her
life. After being released from the chair, blood clots formed during her restraint
traveled to her lungs and killed her.
2000s:
Current restraint methods include physical, mechanical, electrical and chemical
procedures.
2002:
The European Parliament expressed concern about the continued use of cage beds
in a number of Eastern European countries and called on countries to cease this
degrading and inhuman practice. (A cage bed is surrounded with bars so the captive
cannot get out of the bed, sometimes not even sit up within its confines.) The
Czech Republic only made them illegal in 2004. One survivor noted that, �the
fear of the cage bed will live inside me forever.�
The most accurate depiction of the humiliation and terror of restraints can
be seen through the eyes of a victim: �At random times I hear the key in the
lock. I try to pull myself together. Anything could be coming: a violent injection,
tightening of the belts, releasing them. � Maybe they will let me [get] up to
go to the bathroom on the ward. Maybe they will let me out of restraints altogether.
I need to negotiate my hardest and under the hardest conditions. � I don�t see
what I ever did to justify initiation of seclusion and restraints punishment.
� When I was finally released from the tiny, locked, smelly seclusion room,
where I had spent 3�4 days, I was ready to cooperate in order to avoid a return
trip.�
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