Psychiatric Hospital Abuse Case Study

789 Words4 Pages
Abuse in Psychiatric Hospitals Abuse in psychiatric hospitals is very common across the world. Patients are subject to cruelty, neglect, and abuse. The staff is responsible for the majority of abuse. The government is trying to cut down on the abuse by inspecting the hospitals and replacing the staff. Psychiatric hospitals should be a safe haven for the patients but in this case, they are far from it. There are many types of abuse in psychiatric hospitals such as mental, sexual, drug, and physical. The U.S. Justice Department held an investigation in psychiatric hospitals in 2007. They found many violations of standard medical care. Patients died for mysterious reasons and some were being abused by workers. Many mental wards are like a “Guantanamo…show more content…
Patients talk about the abuser to their family members. The abusers give them gifts and the patients have posters, love letters, and sexually suggestive drawings plastered all over their walls. Their family members often tell the hospital staff of their concerns. In one case, a young girl told her foster mother that the abuser took her to the “canteen’ which is where he took her to sexually abuse her. Which she said happened every day for more than three months. The abuser could take the women on outings and it would also happen then (Sex 2013). Investigators found out that at one hospital they operated like a prison. Instead of meaningful treatment and diagnosis, the patients got frequent visual checks by staff, even then, violence and attempted suicides occurred. Also, an October brawl including six patients left one needing surgery, an autistic patient being forced to perform oral sex in November, a woman was raped, and a 14-year-old was forced to engage in oral sex by a 16-year-old (Hartocollis 2009). A rapist told one victim that this was her only way out. Which made her believe that she shouldn’t tell anyone and that it was okay for him to do this to her. She told the press, “You latch onto that hope because you don’t have much hope in anything else. He would come into my room every night and rape me. But who is going to believe a mental patient over a highly respected member of staff?”…show more content…
At one location, in June, a woman collapsed on the floor of the emergency room after waiting twenty-four hours to be seen, and was left laying on the ground for an hour. Two guards walked past her and thought that she wasn’t their priority so they didn’t bother, and another guard prodded her with his foot as she laid dead on the emergency waiting room floor. At the same location, patients weren’t treated for suicidal behavior, instead they were subdued with physical restraints and drugs instead of getting individualized treatment, they were also abused by other patients. Patients were frequently left in restraints for the two-hour limit that they had, even though they changed their behavior, suggesting that it was punishment instead of therapy. It was also common to give injections of more than one antipsychotic medication at the same time, despite the risk of side effects and overdosing (Hartocollis 2009). At a prayer camp in early 2012, about 120 of the 135 patients were chained to trees or walls with two yard chains in cell-like rooms for twenty-four hours a day, sometimes for months at a time. They were denied of water sometimes, and had to bathe, defecate, urinate, change sanitary towels, eat, and sleep on the spot where they were chained (Burke

More about Psychiatric Hospital Abuse Case Study

Open Document