A woman dies in a psychiatric emergency room. Two security guards, a nurse and a doctor see her dead on the floor and do nothing. The nurse even kicks her. A mental health advocate on the verge of tears says, “This is not a bus terminal.” This video is disturbing but essential viewing.
Surveillance video shows woman die
liz | 11:39 AM | Uncategorized
Liz Spikol was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 20th century. She started writing about her experience as a person with mental illness in 1999, while employed at Philadelphia Weekly as the paper’s managing editor. Aside from serving as that paper’s web editor, music editor, staff writer, senior editor, executive editor and a host of other random roles that she couldn’t make up her mind about, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher, as a Certified Peer Specialist during Philly’s system-wide transformation and as a communications specialist for a prison reform organization. Currently, she works at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and writes book reviews for PW. This blog — named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 and 2008 by PsychCentral — is about medications, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, SAD (and many other acronyms), mad pride, Big Pharma, celebrities, hospitals, stigma and the recovery movement. And other stuff.
This is so sad, and as a mental health consumer, this sort of thing terrifies me. Completely terrifies me!
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There used to be comments here. Why are they being deleted?
That hospitals are frequently indifferent to the urgent needs of persons requiring emergency psychiatric care is nothing new. Where ERs are commonly associated with the delivery of timely, comprehensive care, persons needing emergency psychiatric care can find themselves spending days in the ER where care is largely limited to the occasional glance
from a security guard. This irony is not lost on persons seeking psychiatric help and who are doing the very thing they have been told to do, “Reach out,” yet only find that they are marginalized.
The “care” Ms. Green received is governed by New York State’s “Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program.” Tragically, we too often find that words used in the mental health system belie reality. There
seemed to have been nothing “comprehensive” about the care Ms. Green received. In fact, based on the reporting to date it appears that Ms. Green was marginalized to death.
Doubtless groups such as NAMI, MHA and their respective affiliates will express their indignation about this tragic death. But indignation alone
is hardly an appropriate response given the historic failure of both organizations to draw public attention to and advocate for corrective action on behalf of their constituents. The neglect and indifference is
systemic and absent action “indignation” is at best tantamount to mere lamentation. (One can only hope that any failure by these organizations to actively address the conditions at psychiatric hospitals does not stem from their reluctance to promote a message which undermines a core message, i.e. “Reach out.”)
This will not be the last death at a inpatient psychiatric facility as a consequence of neglect and indifference. If it wasn’t for the time lapse
pictures of Ms. Green’s passing this tragedy would not have been widely reported. We are going through just one more example of the death cycle
- death(s) at a psychiatric hospital or psychiatric unit, if press reporting then indignation, promises of monitoring, representations of corrective action, possibly hearings then a safety plan, and absent true
accountability…. the next death. How could we possibly explain this cycle to someone who associates hospitals and hospitalization with an
intensity and quality of care not available in the community? How do we convey that care in its entirety can be “meds, beds, and milieu” rather
then the active, compassionate, comprehensive, evidence based, person centered, recovery & wellness orientated care so frequently represented?
(Ms. Green didn’t even have a bed. She died ignored on the floor. )
For too many who have been in a psychiatric hospital – especially a public psychiatric hospital or the psychiatric unit of a public hospital- the phrase “psychiatric hospital” is but a painful oxymoron.
Consequently, how many individuals who have experienced our nation’s psychiatric hospitals and their ERs no longer have faith in the very
system that is supposed to provide optimal care in time of crisis? And if they loose faith in this very system, what course of action do they
take if another crisis befalls them? Perhaps, no one knows; perhaps, no one cares to know. And “they” could very well be any one of us.
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