Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Psych Hospitals
Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Anonymous:
I was on the adolescent girls unit at Timberlawn for 2 years in the late 70's. Been thinking some lately about how I gloss over my past when people talk about attending high school reunions and such--I never talk about it. Anyway, googling Timberlawn survivor led me here.
I was put into Timberlawn for having severe social anxiety disorder which led me to a "school phobia". I was an innocent and naive honor student when I went in, but after 2 years in that place I came out a jaded wild thing who couldn't wait to quit school and try drugs, sex and rock-n-roll (which I did). Even as teens we patients knew full well that for most of us, we would never be pronounced "cured" until our parent's insurance money ran out. I was never put in full restraints (although I saw it happen to many others), but several times I was on "split risk" which meant I had to travel around the campus in a wheelchair with a waist restraint (I ran away 4 times until I was finally discharged AMA), and I also often experienced "chair", "chair in the hall", "chair in the room", and "talking restriction" from specific fellow patients or from everyone. Back in the 70's they didn't use the friendlier term "room therapy" or "chair therapy" it was clearly called a "restriction".
Oh the memories. I spent my late teens and 20's very bitter, my 30's trying to move on, and now in my mid-40's I've finally reached a sort of uneasy peace with this part of my life. I have to go now but have another story about what happened 10 years ago when I tried to go up there and look over my medical records (I wanted to read my "nurses notes"--a journal type thing we were forced to keep). If anyone's interested I'll share that later. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Inculcated:
(I hadn’t “cared to share” anything about Willow Creek before.That's the thing about these places being used as drop off baby sitting services for teens, the damage sure as hell does accrue. It recently became relevant to discussion in another thread. So I’ll just paste it here and consider it catharsis.)
From DAYTOP Did Me Great Harm in the Long Run- a post by Inculcated »
You’re damn right Daytop was intrinsically and insidiously harmful. There’s the rub. No pun intended.
I was not f*ing around when I wrote that Daytop was but one of my abused in treatment experiences. Daytop messed me up particularly badly because their punitive love was being inculcated within a thirteen year old girl. They had no business “treating me”,nor anyone else with such tactics.Not like that.
I found my voice in encounter groups it’s true, but those words I parroted were symptoms of what they were doing to all of us.
As for the tendency of some to compare programs it’s pointlessly divisive. I also suspect it’s more of their programming that needs purging.
Here’s the narrative comparison that I base my point on.Later in my teens, while at a Psych unit (non- affiliated with Daytop) I got in to a petty debate with a counselor. We had been discussing REN and Stimpy. He did not believe me when I informed him that “Yes, discombobulated is a real word.” Eventually he returned to the day room and conceded that “Yes, it is a real word”.
He then stopped with the fun banter and began baiting me. I knew something was up and understood the situation I was in enough to try to avoid being drawn in.
Minutes later as I had to walk past him to head to my room he swept my legs, dropped me to the floor, pinned my forearms with his knees and proceeded to allow a line of what he later laughed off as “frog spit” to emerge then slurp…you get the idea. When he got the hell off of me, I was supposed to be grateful he hadn’t actually spit on me. He tried to laugh it off and told me he had done this because I was “uptight and looked like I could use a good laugh.”
At this same place I was at one point restrained to a “papoose board”. Later,following another staffer's surprise that my being forced to wear a blindfold for a couple of hours (until I was crumpled on the floor "screaming/crying please get it off of me")…didn’t go well. I was given valium to control my outburst and sent to bed in the middle of the day. Never mind that I had fully regressed and had a breakdown from the “Learn to trust and ask for help” exercise that (untrained glorified orderly) of a counselor had administered.
He did this because he’d read in my chart from a previous inpatient stay at a crisis centre that I had refused the trust portion of the ropes course. I had done the web/bell thingy and all of the other stuff very well. None of that mattered, I was going to learn to trust one way or another, they were determined.Even though I won't down play how messed up those moments were, I was at least able to recognize the lunacy.
I was able to recognize these things as abusive and feel outrage. I did not own these cruelties as if I deserved them. I was lucky for not having to absorb those particular harms within me.
Daytop calling me TOXIC and silencing me, that stayed with me. The reverberations of that and all they exacerbated with their punitive love play out to this day.Daytop did me great harm in the long run.Here is my truncated version of their philosophy “There is no refuge.” End of philosophy.
From Willow Creek,I remember Debbie fondly. R.I.P.
Accreditation indicator (Indicates the organization that is responsible for the accreditation of the provider): JCAHO --What the hell are they about?
http://www.hospital-data.com/hospitals/ ... NGTON.html
Inculcated:
--- Quote from: "TimberTeen" ---I've finally reached a sort of uneasy peace with this part of my life. I have to go now but have another story about what happened 10 years ago when I tried to go up there and look over my medical records (I wanted to read my "nurses notes"--a journal type thing we were forced to keep). If anyone's interested I'll share that later. Talk about adding insult to injury.
--- End quote ---
I’m glad you found some sort of peace surviving your experience. What happened when you went for the records?
Inculcated:
--- Quote from: "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.
--- End quote ---
No, you are not alone.
--- Quote from: "iamartsy" --- 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.
--- End quote ---
Willow Creek’s version of room therapy happened on another unit. In order to transport a patient from our cottages"(pretty cutesy name for what were also lock down units) we were strapped to a papoose board. This is similar to a backboard that first responders use to stabilize accident victims. I remember the sensation of being lifted and terror, but not the initiation of that restraint, nor the precipitating event. Mostly we were returned to our adolescent units within a day or two.
One time I returned from class to find my roommate was in 4 point restraints on her bed. I don’t know why they did that instead of hauling her up to the “Main Unit”. Our other roommate and I were told we’d have to sleep in the dayroom that night.
On site within each of our two "cottages"(Why do so many of them like that term? At one Daytop location we were in the "girl's cottage"), we had the quiet room. I actually liked being locked in there.Seriously.With the exception of the closed circuit T.V. to the nurse’s station, it was the only place to get away to. Sometimes, I actually still dream occaisionally of the quiet room experience and they are peaceful dreams. I have no recollection of what events arbitrary or not that earned me my time in the room.
--- Quote from: "iamartsy" ---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.
--- End quote ---
The state of fear is the common theme of these petty tyrants and nurse Ratchets that get heady with the power of their positions in the topsy turvey microcosm they come to rule.
--- Quote from: "iamartsy" ---Suddenly you would get "chair therapy" for not asking to speak to friend on the outside as a privilege.
--- End quote ---
Daytop employed the chair bit without bothering to add therapy to the end of that. It was literally called getting put on chair or simply getting the chair.
--- Quote from: "iamartsy" ---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.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: "iamartsy" ---The infamous JCAHO question http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/ ... ation.html
--- End quote ---
Thank you for this one. I had wondered who these people were in my post without realizing the answer was here at the beginning of this thread. I have a vague memory of some visit by some outside agency, while I was at Willow Creek. The staffers were all in a flurry of anticipatory activity and anxiety and prepared for it. I wonder if that had anything to do with JCAHO.
--- Quote from: "iamartsy" ---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
--- End quote ---
I'll check it out. For the most part the worst of my experience at WC is detailed two posts back.
iamartsy:
I had no idea so many of you had replied to my thread. Thank you! There are those of us out there still trying to recover! Thanks again. IAmArtsy
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