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Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => Facility Question and Answers => Psych Hospitals => Topic started by: iamartsy on November 25, 2008, 12:29:08 AM

Title: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: iamartsy on November 25, 2008, 12:29:08 AM
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/ (http://www.psychcrime.org/) (mother of all psych crimes database)
http://www.psychcrime.org/articles/Univ ... ients.html (http://www.psychcrime.org/articles/Universal_Health_Services_Profits_Over_Patients.html)
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qs ... 5001400578 (http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=Jr2CmjM3WHRXZF9rzbpTJCpknQlb9G1wNhCpP0XdC4hR8hVDgrhM!2097897513?docId=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 (http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/health/hospital_accreditation.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 (http://www.amazon.com/Bedlam-Profiteering-Mental-Health-System/dp/0312104219/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227590397&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.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: Che Gookin on November 25, 2008, 12:37:14 AM
What is chair therapy?
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: iamartsy on November 25, 2008, 12:42:46 AM
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.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: iamartsy on November 25, 2008, 12:44:37 AM
I never knew this whole topic made it all the way to the NY Times: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... gewanted=1 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE6D7163FF937A15752C1A967958260&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=1)
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: iamartsy on November 25, 2008, 04:51:53 AM
I forgot this one: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A965958260 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE2DB173EF932A35752C0A965958260)

It is important because it is a win in our column.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: Che Gookin on November 25, 2008, 06:17:02 PM
Quote from: "iamartsy"
"more in touch with your feelings".

That one sounds familiar.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: iamartsy on November 26, 2008, 04:21:45 PM
Yes, but that was an odd way to get one "in touch with their feelings". I think you usually talk to a therapist for that. That is how I dealt with the aftermath of the hospitalization. A therapist guided me to my feelings because I was very shut down at that point (1988). Suddenly, I was out of college and shut down from my feelings. I had to enter the "real world" and was in no way ready for it. I have always isolated enough on my own. No need to isolate me; yet that is what they were about to do had I not exited at patient's request.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: Guest5432 on April 23, 2009, 09:22:48 PM
Curious if anyone has information concerning Laurel Ridge psychiatric hospitals, especially those in San Antonio and Austin, TX.   This picture (http://http://www.hope4kidz.org/news/images/randy_steele_9.jpg) is one child who died in San Antonio after being restrained.  He was only 9 years old!~

Just because the state of Texas licenses a residential, group, orphanage does not mean the place is fit for human beings to live.  Am curious about Southwest Mental Health Center, where 14 year-old Willie Wright was restrained to death.

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VEhdOOOzZg - Worst Little Hell Holes in Texas
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: iamartsy on April 28, 2009, 12:36:51 PM
It looks like Laurel Ridge has become part of the old Brown Schools network. Please see this for more info on Texas: http://http://www.fornits.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=26214&start=0&hilit=gao+texas

It is not a place you want to go for treatment. I had one friend in West Oaks and basically they hold you long enough to detox you. Then you are sent to outpatient for 6 weeks. Some places won't hold you any longer than your insurance will allow. The GAO report, while old, might give you some understanding of TX.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: try another castle on April 29, 2009, 06:14:38 AM
Quote from: "iamartsy"
It looks like Laurel Ridge has become part of the old Brown Schools network. Please see this for more info on Texas: http://http://www.fornits.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=26214&start=0&hilit=gao+texas

It is not a place you want to go for treatment. I had one friend in West Oaks and basically they hold you long enough to detox you. Then you are sent to outpatient for 6 weeks. Some places won't hold you any longer than your insurance will allow. The GAO report, while old, might give you some understanding of TX.


West Oaks... is that in North Dallas? I think that's where I was almost sent after my suicide attempt. Either that or it was green oaks. Either way it doesnt matter cause I didnt go, but still.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: iamartsy on April 29, 2009, 06:48:28 PM
Green Oaks is in North Dallas. In the old days (1985-1986), I think they used to send people on to Timberlawn if they needed "more" treatment. Green Oaks is part of HCA, http://http://www.greenoakspsych.com/. Back in the 80s there were so many hospitals with lawn and oaks in the name that it was downright ridiculous. Ironically Timberlawn was right next to "Grove Hill Cemetary". Irony, huh? Can you tell I have grown quite cynical?

Castle, you guys had another name for Chair and Room Therapy at CEDU but I cannot remember what it was. Basically no communication with anyone of any kind.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: Anonymous on April 29, 2009, 07:08:57 PM
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. 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/ (http://www.psychcrime.org/) (mother of all psych crimes database)
http://www.psychcrime.org/articles/Univ ... ients.html (http://www.psychcrime.org/articles/Universal_Health_Services_Profits_Over_Patients.html)
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qs ... 5001400578 (http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=Jr2CmjM3WHRXZF9rzbpTJCpknQlb9G1wNhCpP0XdC4hR8hVDgrhM!2097897513?docId=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 (http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/health/hospital_accreditation.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 (http://www.amazon.com/Bedlam-Profiteering-Mental-Health-System/dp/0312104219/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227590397&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.


Wow. I have to say, between Cedu, Straight and this...you' really, really were horribly victimized. Unbelievable.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: try another castle on April 29, 2009, 08:35:31 PM
Quote from: "iamartsy"
Green Oaks is in North Dallas. In the old days (1985-1986), I think they used to send people on to Timberlawn if they needed "more" treatment. Green Oaks is part of HCA, http://http://www.greenoakspsych.com/. Back in the 80s there were so many hospitals with lawn and oaks in the name that it was downright ridiculous. Ironically Timberlawn was right next to "Grove Hill Cemetary". Irony, huh? Can you tell I have grown quite cynical?

Castle, you guys had another name for Chair and Room Therapy at CEDU but I cannot remember what it was. Basically no communication with anyone of any kind.


We had several variants. One was bans, which prevented us from communicating with specific students or specific groups of students. Then there were things such as booths and living rooms, and the most severe was the full-time.

Not sure what the details are regarding chair and room therapy, but room therapy also sounds similar (in name at least) to quiet rooms, which are used in many lock-up and psychiatric facilities. (Similar to a "time out") Patients who were "going off" were locked in such rooms to quiet down.

Dallas in general had a lot of oak and lawn things. Green Oaks facility, West Oaks facility, Timberlawn, Oak Lawn (gay neighborhood), South Oak Cliff (da hood. spent quite a lot of time there. ;))

And other tree related things. I heard, much to my disappointment, that forest lane no longer has a forest. sad.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: iamartsy on April 29, 2009, 08:56:53 PM
Quote
We had several variants. One was bans, which prevented us from communicating with specific students or specific groups of students. Then there were things such as booths and living rooms, and the most severe was the full-time.

Not sure what the details are regarding chair and room therapy, but room therapy also sounds similar (in name at least) to quiet rooms, which are used in many lock-up and psychiatric facilities. (Similar to a "time out") Patients who were "going off" were locked in such rooms to quiet down.

Dallas in general had a lot of oak and lawn things. Green Oaks facility, West Oaks facility, Timberlawn, Oak Lawn (gay neighborhood), South Oak Cliff (da hood. spent quite a lot of time there. ;))

And other tree related things. I heard, much to my disappointment, that forest lane no longer has a forest. sad.

"Fulltimes" is what I was trying to remember. The only difference was that Chair and Room could last anywhere from 3 mos. - 2 years. It definitely was not to calm anyone down.

I loved Oak Cliff. Great everything. Also liked the Dallas bar scene when I went back for my brother's wedding later. I sneaked off to the bars one night. Since I was supposed to be cured, I had to sneak off. I also liked the the Stork Club!  Is Forest Lane now Mc Mansions? I never go back to Dallas. Actually, I avoid it at all costs. It brings back too many bad memories. As it is, I dislike TX, but am here for now. I hope to get to Denver or back to the NYC at some point.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: Anonymous on June 07, 2009, 02:25:05 AM
Quote from: "iamartsy"
Green Oaks is in North Dallas. In the old days (1985-1986), I think they used to send people on to Timberlawn if they needed "more" treatment. Green Oaks is part of HCA, http://http://www.greenoakspsych.com/. Back in the 80s there were so many hospitals with lawn and oaks in the name that it was downright ridiculous. Ironically Timberlawn was right next to "Grove Hill Cemetary". Irony, huh? Can you tell I have grown quite cynical?

Castle, you guys had another name for Chair and Room Therapy at CEDU but I cannot remember what it was. Basically no communication with anyone of any kind.
Green Oaks is part of HCA, http://http://www.greenoakspsych.com/
If any of you ever wondered of your captors," Were they were always like that ?(even when they left work)... were they always that evil?"
Yes.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: Anonymous on June 20, 2009, 12:21:12 PM
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.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: Inculcated on July 09, 2009, 04:10:25 AM
(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 (http://www.hospital-data.com/hospitals/WILLOW-CREEK-HOSP-ARLINGTON.html)
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: Inculcated on July 09, 2009, 10:18:40 PM
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.
I’m glad you found some sort of peace surviving your experience. What happened when you went for the records?
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: Inculcated on July 10, 2009, 02:55:47 AM
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/ (http://www.psychcrime.org/) (mother of all psych crimes database)
http://www.psychcrime.org/articles/Univ ... ients.html (http://www.psychcrime.org/articles/Universal_Health_Services_Profits_Over_Patients.html)
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qs ... 5001400578 (http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=Jr2CmjM3WHRXZF9rzbpTJCpknQlb9G1wNhCpP0XdC4hR8hVDgrhM!2097897513?docId=5001400578)
(interesting article from the preview) can't get the rest.

Quote from: "iamartsy"
The infamous JCAHO question http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/ ... ation.html (http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/health/hospital_accreditation.html)
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 (http://www.amazon.com/Bedlam-Profiteering-Mental-Health-System/dp/0312104219/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227590397&sr=1-6)
I'll check it out. For the most part the worst of my experience at WC is detailed two posts back.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: iamartsy on August 07, 2009, 05:22:01 PM
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
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: iamartsy on August 10, 2009, 02:43:27 AM
TimberTeen,
That is what I am talking about. I went in when I was 21 and turned 22 there. I was rarely allowed visits with my parents or family. I was also not allowed near my own money. I did call there recently to obtain my nurse's notes and was told they had been destroyed by now. Is that true?

I really do want them. I know they thought the turned me from gay to straight (ha ha). I also know my prognosis was not good. I remain traumatized. I was discharged almost 23 years ago exactly. I still have not forgiven my parents or the the staff there. My parent's essentially forced me into T-lawn. My family still has the family picture that we took from when we had our family day hanging in their house. It makes me ill to look at it. I am in this sweater and a skirt. I was also sick as a dog when they came up to Dallas. The hospital had been refusing to give me antibiotics for respiratory infection I had gotten on a camping trip in wet cold weather. I was running over 100 degrees of fever up until the day before they came up. The hospital staff was trying to teach me "mind over matter". Unfortunately, my lungs were not cooperating with that care plan!

I do consider myself lucky that avoided restraints and room therapy. I was mortified of both. I did sign a 3 day letter one time, and they put me back on suicide watch even though I was not suicidal. My mom happened to call up there and found out what was going on. She was able to get them to let me into that center courtyard thing to walk around. She told them if they really wanted to drive me batshit then to keep me indoors. If you ever wan to meet a severely claustrophobic person it is me.

Thanks to others that have shared their stories here. If you know how I can obtain my records please let me know. My therapist in NYC had them but I think she dumped them in the Hudson after I left. That was our agreement anyway. No joke, I gave her permission. She said that there was nothing there I wanted to read and that it would only upset me further. Now I do want to know what the Nurse's notes said. I do know that much of the staff was very illiterate, so I can only imagine.

Sorry for the lengthy post. This is the first time I am telling my own story here, I think. It has been awhile and I don't remember my other posts.
Title: Re: Texas Psychiatric Abuses
Post by: Anonymous on August 23, 2009, 11:04:44 AM
iamArtsy,
Sometime around the year 2000 I decided I wanted to view my records from Timberlawn in an effort to find closure, put it behind me (this was 20+ years after discharge). On the Adolescent Unit, we were forced to keep a journal of sorts. They were held in a manila folder that was kept in the Nurses Station. The form we had to write on was lined and had a title at the top called "Nurses Notes". We were allowed to draw on/decorate the manila folder--one kind of pathetic thing I remember was that most every folder had little "john + mary =love4ever" stuff like teenagers write on things. After all we were teens locked up for years at the height of hormonal rage so there were always little romances going on with the boys on the other side of the unit...also some gay romances as well, of course. Since physical contact was extremely limited...it was very frustrating. Anyway...I digress. So each evening we had to get our Nurses Notes folder from the nurses station and write something about our day. We could write anything we wanted (such as "Timberlawn Sucks!"), but the nurses, aides, Docs all looked them over so we eventually learned not to write anything that could be used against us. If we did NOT write in our Nurses Notes we got punished with some time on chair (maybe an hour or so).
20 plus years later the grownup me wanted to read these to connect with the teen me of then--know what I mean?
I made several calls to Timberlawn and was told this was possible, but I needed to hurry as they would soon be destroying the records from my era. I had to make an appointment for a certain day, bring my ID. My car was old and high-mileage, so I spent $75.00 to rent a car and hightailed it to Dallas (I live elsewhere in Texas now). I was so excited and creeped out at the same time! I got there, went into the Whitehouse (shudder), showed my ID, and was taken to some big officey/warehousey kind of room. I was seated at a table, the office worker came toward me with a pile of records, set it in front of me, and IT WASN'T MINE! The first name started with the same letter, the last name was the same, but these were records for an older woman who was there at a different time than I was. I pointed this out & demanded MY records. There were phone calls made, hushed conversations held across the room with sidelong glances at me. Eventually I was told that MY records had been destroyed THE DAY BEFORE! I felt so screwed over and wounded by Timberlawn...again! After I got home I called up there and demanded I at least be re-imbursed for the car rental. After several calls were never returned I wrote a lengthy letter to the Doctor in Charge/Medical director whatever. I eventually recieved a check for $75.00 along with a terse note from this Doc that said "while I do not feel Timberlawn can be held responsible for your lack of adequate transportation"...blah blah. What a jerk!
So, Artsy, don't bother trying. :-(