Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Psych Hospitals

Texas Psychiatric Abuses

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iamartsy:
Well I know I am not the only one who witnessed abuse in a psychiatric hospital. I have long felt like the only one on fornits. Awhile back I posted a newsgroup piece by a fellow inmate from the renowned Dallas psychiatric hospital where we both resided. I keep looking for other people who survived the psychiatric hospital abuses that I witnessed in the 1980s and 1990s. If you have witnessed them please post. What I saw I would not wish on anyone. I saw people left in leather 5 point restraints for weeks at a time. Once they were let out, they had lost the muscle tone to walk. Their bathroom had been a bedpan for all those weeks. There was also a form of isolation they called "room therapy". You stared at a wall in your room for 16 hours a day, with bathroom breaks every 2 hours, and dinner in your room staring at the wall. Room therapy would go on for about 9 months at a time or more.

Obviously, I lived in a state of fear. What would the next flashlight beam in my eyes mean? Would I get room therapy due to my insomnia? The reason for these "therapeutic dealings" were never rational. Say you went home on a visit and saw an old friend and came back to group and the told the group. Suddenly you would get "chair therapy" for not asking to speak to friend on the outside as a privilege. With the help of Che, I found some good articles about the abuses of that time:
http://www.psychcrime.org/ (mother of all psych crimes database)
http://www.psychcrime.org/articles/Univ ... ients.html
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qs ... 5001400578
(interesting article from the preview) can't get the rest.
The infamous JCAHO question http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/ ... ation.html
Here is the best book I have found about the abuses of the 1980s and early 1990s: http://www.amazon.com/Bedlam-Profiteeri ... 397&sr=1-6

While I will never know for certain if someone got kickbacks for my multiple hospitalizations, I feel rather certain that at least two people did. It was well known that Bob Meehan's counselors got kickbacks for referring to either Deer Park Hospital and Medical Arts Hospital in Houston. So the kickbacks were a given. No wonder I got a Christmas card from my shrink while away at my long term lock up in Dallas.

Che Gookin:
What is chair therapy?

iamartsy:
Chair therapy is the same as room therapy, but you have to sit on a fiberglass chair staring at a wall or window, while everyone else in the same room watches TV or plays cards, etc. Part of it is about humiliation and part of it was to get you "more in touch with your feelings". I don't know how that worked with the TV in the background. Also one foot had to be on the floor and you had could not do any personal reading. People used to smuggle magazines and leave them by the person in "chair therapy". It was up to the person on chair not to get caught.

iamartsy:
I never knew this whole topic made it all the way to the NY Times: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... gewanted=1

iamartsy:
I forgot this one: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A965958260

It is important because it is a win in our column.

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