From Becca: Which Rights Need Protection?

The Associated Press posted an update this week on the status of “mental patient” isolation in psychiatric hospitals.

STAUNTON, Va. – Mental patients sprinkled throughout the nation’s psychiatric hospitals are being locked up alone for years despite laws aimed at preventing the practice, because medical workers say they’re too dangerous to handle any other way.

Health officials call them outliers — rare, unpredictably violent people who don’t respond to medication or other treatment. Advocates call them victims of a system that has lost patience and creativity in caring for those who are most difficult to treat.

AP reports that roughly a dozen patients around the country have been isolated or restrained for years at a time, resulting in state lawsuits of up to

In Virginia, one man was locked in a three-room suite for 15 years and another patient was held in a similar setup for five years. Connecticut and Florida have paid millions over allegations that they tethered patients to furniture for years.

At first, this seems like an open-and-shut case of human rights violations. Clearly, no human being deserves to live in isolation: the very definition of humanity implies social living. On the other hand, what further injustice can be done to those mentally ill patients who must live in hospitals than to further destabilize their environments by introducing the constant possibility of physical harm?

The controversy parallels the question of whether or not repeatedly violent mental health patients among the general population should be confined. Which rights need to be protected at what cost? Ideally, our fundamental human rights values would answer these questions in a clear-cut manner that favors the freedom of the individual. However, among a national population of over 300 million people, it seems possible that a mere 0.00000004% (a dozen psychiatric patients across the US) might be at least temporarily unfit to live with others, especially among those who are themselves in need of serious help.

Look at the case of Cesar Chumil:

At Western State Hospital in Staunton, Va., the state stepped in after staff placed Cesar Chumil in a three-room “limited containment suite” in 1993, where he has remained since. Chumil averaged 300 assaults against staff and another 100 against patients over seven years before he was placed in the suite, according to records from a closed administrative hearing obtained by the AP.

Hospital officials claim the 58-year-old has more freedom than before, when records show he spent thousands of hours in a small seclusion cell or restrained to a bed or chair.

“It’s a big step to put somebody in a room like this and say, ‘You can’t come out,’ but we had so many people getting injured and so many staff were out of work,” said Stephen Johnson, the psychologist on Chumil’s ward. “It just got to the point where it was just untenable … so we had this one solution.”

One hundred patients were assaulted by one man over the course of seven years? I think that after the first five assaults, some actions should have been taken. Advocates assert that with intensive treatment, individuals like Chumil can reach the point where they are not a serious threat to those around them. But until that point is reached, the first goal of any mental hospital should be to ensure the basic safety of its patients.

Chumil is now being treated more humanely after a state oversight committee saw that he was given his own ward where he can interact with staff members who wear helmets and padded gear. We can only hope that the same sensitivities are being given to him at the mental/emotional level so that one day he can prove the advocates right.

liz | 10:09 AM | Uncategorized