Conditions for Patients Worse Than Portrayed

Re “County-USC’s Psychiatric ER Called Badly Crowded, Unsafe,” July 2: It is my opinion, echoed by colleagues, that the situation is even worse than it sounds, and not just in the emergency room. For example, on the consult and liaison psychiatry service, I took “care” of a young, suicidal woman whom we strapped to her bed for days, forcing her to use a bedpan, because there was nowhere appropriate to send her and no one to sit with her and make sure she was safe.

Another patient was a very psychotic man who was responding to voices in his head and was so confused that he couldn’t explain how he arrived at the hospital. It was also feared that he had a venous thrombosis, a dangerous blood clot that could kill him at any time without treatment. This patient walked out of the hospital without treatment, not understanding the grave risk he was taking.

In the first case, a young woman was humiliated and grossly mistreated by restraining her, though perhaps her life was saved. In the second case, the man escaped this mistreatment but perhaps died on his way out the door. We are truly between a rock and a hard place and desperately need more resources to take care of our patients.

C. Bruce Abbott MD

Psychiatry Resident, LAC-USC

While The Times’ outrage at deplorable conditions discovered in one psychiatric emergency room deserves support (editorial, July 3), those who have been affixed with psychiatric labels, and many of us with professional credentials, are aware that many more facets of the mental health system require mending. Until scientifically reliable, valid, objective standards for diagnosis and treatment have been established, and until the record is clear that psychiatry’s mood-altering drugs are significantly more beneficial than detrimental, not only psychiatric clients but all other individuals have good reason to be wary of, and must have the right to reject, the coercive authority of “Assertive Community Treatment” teams.

Too many of those you describe as “frightened and fragile” have experienced humiliation and exploitation at the hands of mental health professionals. And too often biologically invasive mental health “treatments” have produced real neurological diseases, socially debilitating side effects and severe memory loss. That is why, for perfectly rational reasons, the organized psychiatric client community and its professional allies have opposed all efforts to legislate “forced” treatment.

Michael H. Weinberg MSW

Pasadena