Systemic abuse reported at Texas psychiatric hospitals
May 4th, 2008An analysis by the Dallas Morning News of state personnel records finds that 72 employees from Texas’ 10 state mental hospitals have been fired in the last three years over allegations of physical abuse, including brutal beatings and sexual abuse. Hundreds more were terminated for other violations, from sleeping on the job to over-medicating mentally ill patients.
State officials say there will always be some reports of abuse and neglect in an institutional setting. And they say they take any allegations of mistreatment seriously. But the records show that as in other state-run facilities, abuse and neglect are systemic.
The state’s juvenile prisons, group homes for the disabled, and state schools for people with mental disabilities all came under fire last year for reports of widespread physical and sexual abuse. The state psychiatric hospitals, like other systems for vulnerable Texans, are chronically starved for cash, advocates of more state funding say, and services at the local level can’t keep up.
“You get what you pay for,” said Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, who has bipolar disorder. “When you financially dumb something down, you make services cheap, something’s got to give. Unfortunately, it usually ends up being a mentally ill or disabled Texan.”
See earlier posts here and here.
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on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 at 10:52 am and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, abuse, hospitals, institutionalization, violence.
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