Shocking story of neglect

State mental institutions have always had a bad reputation, but people generally believe the era of grave mismanagement—the snakepit days—are long behind us. And while it’s true patients are no longer confined to rooms with bare concrete floors, there is enough serious abuse to cause a wholesale reassessment of treatment protocols in many states.

Georgia, apparently, is one of those states, as a new investigative report by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reveals. Today’s article, by Alan Judd and Andy Miller, is a superb illustration of why this kind of reporting is so vital—and no amount of Internet dominance is going to change that. (I’m a print journalist, so I had to get that in there.)

Any good editor knows that in order to anchor a story with lots of disturbing facts and figures, you need a sympathetic protagonist to establish a throughline, and Judd and Miller have chosen well: Fourteen-year-old Sarah Crider’s story is both tragic and instructive.

A troubled girl diagnosed variously with autism and schizophrenia, Crider was a patient at Georgia Regional/Atlanta (pictured) when she died. She’d been ill all day and night, but received incomplete medical care, despite notes in her file that she was found, several times, in a pool of her own vomit—an “extra large amount,” wrote one staffer. She apparently was left lying in that vomit until 6:15 a.m. the following morning, when serious medical attention was finally summoned.

From the article:

A nurse who raced to Sarah’s room from another unit noted that her abdomen was enlarged, rounded and firm to the touch, and that a thick brown substance was coming out of her mouth. Her skin was so discolored that staff members who hadn’t seen Sarah before assumed she was black.

The doctor on call watched as nurses and staffers tried to resucitate the girl. The doctor was being paid hourly, and had no particular investment in the institution. Still, it’s shocking that her profession wouldn’t dictate more energetic involvement. She’d also neglected to examine Sarah for hours before her death. (She still works at Georgia Regional.)

I won’t get into any more because the article is compelling and I’d like everyone to read it. Needless to say, Sarah could’ve been saved—well before that day. Part 2 of the series, about suicide in institutions, is equally sad, and equally urgent.

So many preventable deaths. How can it happen? Thanks, Susan R., for letting me know about this story.

A HIDDEN SHAME: DEATH IN GEORGIA’S MENTAL HOSPITALS

liz | 3:36 PM | Uncategorized