Why Haven’t I Made This Joke Before?
I’m always complaining about writing yet another post on Ancora, but what’s funny about its name is that it means “again” in Italian. Dovrei dire, “Ancora parlo di Ancora? E ridicolo.”
Of course, it’s not funny at all for people who are trapped there. The most recent news comes in a report on the psych hospital’s operations in 2008, and of course, it’s nothing we didn’t know already. It’s just depressing. From the Courier-Post Online:
Ancora Psychiatric Hospital remained a dangerous place in 2008, with patients there subject to “serious, frequent and recurrent harm,” according to details of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation released on Monday.
A letter to Gov. Jon S. Corzine from acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King was sharply critical of practices at Ancora, the Winslow Township hospital that is the state’s largest psychiatric facility.
Staff at Ancora frequently used excessive restraint to control patients, failed to appropriately monitor patients who were engaged in aggressive or self-destructive behavior, and did not provide adequate mental health treatment for those hospitalized there, the letter states.
Click here for more. But not while you’re eating.
liz | 2:37 PM | hospitals / hospitalization
Corzime and Christie should tell the voting population here in the Garden State what they propose to do about Ancora, Greystone, Trenton, etc. At least with Codey, you knew where he was on this issue.
Of course, the Department of Justice’s report on Ancora is totally wrong given that New Jersey has always had the correct “words” in place:
1. New Jersey Statutes Annotated 30:4-27.1(c) includes, “It is the policy of this State that persons in the public mental health system receive inpatient treatment and rehabilitation services in accordance with the highest professional standards and which will enable those hospitalized persons to return to their community as soon as it is clinically appropriate.”
2. New Jersey’s Governor established a mental health task force in 2004 which issued its final report in March 2005, New Jersey’s Long and Winding Road To Treatment, Wellness and Recovery
3. New Jersey’s Division of Mental Health “ensured” in its February 2006 Wellness & Recovery Transformation Statement that “…it is the Division’s policy to ensure that consumers and families receive a system of recovery-oriented services and resources that promote wellness, an improved quality of life and true community inclusion.”
4. The New Jersey Division of Mental Health subsequently issued with considerable fanfare its Home to Recovery CEPP [Continued Extension Pending Placement] Plan to deal with the nearly 1,000 patients who could not be discharged from state psychiatric hospitals for want of supports and services in the community.
It is therefore impossible for the Department of Justice to assert in its report, “From our review of Ancora discharge records, we saw no indication that Ancora has established these committees, referred any of its difficult cases to these committees, and implemented any other aspect of the CEPP Plan, or implemented wellness and recovery-oriented programming.”
Tragically words too often stray far from reality. We can only hope but should not expect that the DOJ’s report will foster long overdue improvements at Ancora. The only thing we can be sure of is that New Jersey will represent the necessary changes in word as it has done in the past.
Reply: