Alaska needs independent oversight of psychiatric care

Approximately 10,000 acute care psychiatric patients in Alaska face a higher-than-necessary risk of being mistreated. They will continue to be mistreated as long as private psychiatric facilities and units, with the aid of the Department of Health and Social Services, are able to keep secrets. Compounding the problem, disabled psychiatric patients do not have independent assistance in filing a grievance or an appeal.

On Jan. 3, the Department of Health and Social Services in an email stated not only do they not know the number and type of patient complaints in private psychiatric facilities or units, the number of patients injured, the number of patients facing unnecessary trauma, etc., they have no interest in knowing. The state has reached the point of willful ignorance concerning the ongoing mistreatment of psychiatric patients.

The state is underestimating the level of help that disabled psychiatric patients need. In real-life experience, a person with schizophrenia ends up in a psychiatric unit for the weekend and is given large amounts of psychotropic drugs, then is released with a prescription and a vague set of instructions on how to receive future help — been there, done it. The state has to be more involved in helping patients receive the help they need. The same rule would apply to the homeless experiencing a mental illness. Just passing out a slip of paper and a vague set of directions does not help.

A number of years ago, I conducted an informal exit poll of individuals who had been locked in acute care psychiatric facilities in Alaska. What I found was typical of a South Carolina exit poll in 2005 conducted by Karen J. Cusack and others, where 47% of the individuals described their experience of being locked in a psychiatric institution as “fear, helplessness or horror.” Alaska should not want to put individuals back on the street with that kind of trauma, especially when it is not necessary.

In Alaska, it can take anywhere from 1 to 8 weeks for an independent review of an acute care psychiatric patient’s complaint, a length of time that is basically a get-out-of-jail-free card for managers of all psychiatric units. Only the most serious patient injuries or mistreatment are investigated. More than 95% of psychiatric patient complaints are never investigated or reviewed in a timely way by an independent agency, complaints such as physical mistreatment, sexual abuse allegations, intimidation, coercion, medical errors, etc.

Disabled psychiatric patients should be given adequate protection. There has to be an independent agency established by the Legislature that investigates or reviews all complaints by psychiatric patients, provides assistance to disabled patients and advocates for improved rights. Once a year, the agency would produce a report on the number and type of complaints made by psychiatric patients during transportation and treatment in each facility.

After spending time in locked psychiatric facilities and units in Nevada, Washington and Alaska, Faith Myers has volunteered as a mental health advocate for over a decade and has written or assisted in writing numerous articles from firsthand experience on proper psychiatric care.

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