As far as severely mentally distressed people go, I wouldn’t know how much communication would be best for them, I am not a doctor. If they are allowed more time on the phone there must be a reason. It must assist with or accelerate their recovery I would imagine.
No, Patient's Rights. Ring a bell?
You can't hold people incommunicado in the 'real' world without proving it's in their best interest.
Communication was tough but we understood that they were trying to keep their world small and focused on themselves.
Doesn't cut the mustard in a mental health facility.
Excerpts:
Massachusetts law defines the rights of mental-health consumers in state facilities with respect to mail, visits, and telephone calls as follows:
Any mentally ill person in the care of the department....... shall be provided with stationery and post-age in reasonable amounts and shall have the right to have his letters forwarded unopened to the governor, to the commissioner, to his personal physician, his attorney, his clergyman, to any court, to any public elected official and to any member of his immediate family. The superintendent may open and restrict the forwarding of any other letters written by said person when in said person's best interest.
A mentally ill person has the right to be visited at all reasonable times by his personal physician, his attorney, and his clergyman, and the right to be visited by other persons unless the superintendent determines that such a visit... would not be in the best interest of the mentally ill person and incorporates a statement of the reasons for any denial of visiting rights in the treatment record of said person. In addition....a mentally ill person in the care of the department shall have....reasonable access to telephones to make and receive confidential calls.....provided, however, that....[this right] may be denied for good cause by the superintendent or his designee and a statement of the reasons for any such denial entered in the treatment record of such a person.2
The DMH Human Rights Handbook makes clear that
restrictions of rights must be based on specific, documented clinical judgments made in the here and now, not blanket presumptions based on diagnostic categories or historical generalizations:
The determination to restrict any of these rights is a clinical decision, made by the head of the facility (or designee) in order to avoid serious harm to the consumer or for other good reason in the consumer's best interest. Unless this explicit determination is made for the particular consumer, there may be no restriction. Restrictions should be as limited as possible and still avoid harm to the consumer, and should not occur if there is an alternative, less restrictive way of avoiding the harm.4
Mental health facilities generally assert a duty to prevent residents from harming others. Advocates counter that
clinicians do not have a duty to protect third parties from emotional harm and that they have a duty to address behavioral issues raised by the exercise of rights through therapy rather than through control mechanisms.