Kings County Psychiatric Hospital in New York has history of patient abuse

I have worked as a Psychiatric Social Worker in New York State for over 40 years. I began my career in the late 60s and 70s in two State Hospitals. I have worked in hospital based Community Mental Health Centers for another 20 years working at all levels of care, inpatient, outpatient, emergency, partial hospitalization. I have never encountered anything as bad as this and makes me wonder what the New York State Office of Mental Health has been doing in terms of oversight of the services at Kings County.

This kind of care is atrocious and calls for some significant changes in management. This kind of care is morally reprehensible and a source of major embarassment to our State.

From the New York Times, 02/06/09:

The federal government has documented a pattern of sexual and other violent assaults among patients at the psychiatric unit of a city-run Brooklyn hospital where a woman died in June on the floor of the emergency waiting room while staff members ignored her.

After a yearlong investigation, the Department of Justice portrayed the unit at Kings County Hospital Center as a nightmarish place where patients were not treated for suicidal behavior, were routinely subdued with physical restraints and drugs instead of receiving individualized psychiatric treatment, and were frequently abused by other patients.

The details are laid out in a 58-page report to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that was made public on Thursday.

The investigators found that the psychiatric service operated like a prison. The report said that instead of meaningful treatment and diagnosis, the patients received frequent visual checks by the staff, and that even when patients were supposedly under watch, violence and attempted suicides occurred.

Among the most serious incidents the report documented were an October brawl among six patients that left one needing surgery, and an autistic patient being forced to perform oral sex in November. The report also included allegations that a woman was raped and that a 14-year-old was forced to engage in oral sex by a 16-year-old.

All four incidents occurred after the highly publicized death of Esmin Green, a Jamaican immigrant with a history of depression, who collapsed on the floor of the emergency waiting room after waiting nearly 24 hours to be seen. A surveillance video showed Ms. Green, 49, lying on the floor for nearly an hour; during that time, a guard came in to check on her by wheeling his chair along, and another staff member prodded her with a foot.

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