Alaska needs greater psychiatric patient protections

The stories of patient mistreatment in locked private psychiatric facilities have gained national attention in the past 12 months. Celebrity Paris Hilton testified Feb. 9 to a Utah Senate Committee concerning her traumatic experience in private facilities.

In Alaska, more than 90% of the acute care psychiatric patients receive their treatment in locked private psychiatric facilities or units outside of state-run Alaska Psychiatric Institute. In API, the state has control over the standard of patient care, but current laws and regulations do not allow the state to have control in helping to set the standard of patient care in private facilities.

On Jan. 26, 2015, the Legislative Legal Office put forth the opinion that the Department of Health and Social Services is delegating the general powers and duties of DHSS to private psychiatric facilities with an insufficient state standard of care.

Approximately 3,000 people each year in Alaska undergo a forced psychiatric evaluation or treatment due to a court order. Additionally, more than 7,000 Alaskans wind up in a locked psychiatric facility or unit in or out of state through other means.

The psychiatric patient grievance law, AS 47.30.847, was passed to protect patients in the grievance process. The 11 rights given to psychiatric patients in AS 47.30.840 were put in place to protect patients in locked facilities. The gender choice of staff for intimate care law AS 18.20.095 was passed in part because psychiatric patients were being traumatized while undergoing intimate care. These three laws have no state enforcement mechanism and they do little or nothing to protect psychiatric patients.

The state of Alaska is turning disabled psychiatric patients over to private facilities with insufficient state oversight. Private psychiatric facilities are not required to provide statistics of the number and type of psychiatric patient complaints or injuries, or traumatic events experienced by patients.

House Bill 172 and Senate Bill 124, currently in the Alaska Legislature, would expand the number of locations that can detain, evaluate and treat a person in crisis and expand the amount of time patients are held. Patient rights must be added to these bills and a requirement for private psychiatric facilities to provide the state and the Legislature with patient statistics and outcomes.

Faith J. Myers is the author of the book, “Going Crazy in Alaska: A History of Alaska’s Treatment of Psychiatric Patients.”

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.