Striking Back

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As a person with a disability, how have you demonstrated the power of self advocacy?

Striking Back

Name: Jody A. Harmon
Email: bluestray@yahoo.com
Date: 03 Sep 2000
Time: 00:12:54
Remote Name: ca04-11.proaxis.net

Story

I am sick and tired of taking abuse and so have taken some powerful steps in the last few weeks to stand up and strike back at an abusive system. I have been in and out of mental hospitals since being talked out of my final year of college and into the system by a school psychiatrist with these words, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." Well, in truth, it was the mental health system itself who wasted my mind. Now I'm getting even. Over the internet I met a group who call themselves psychiatric survivors. And all this time I thought myself alone in the fight for justice against psychiatric irresponsible and negligant behavior. NOT!! This group had met with the director of the Oregon state mental hospital system twice before. This third time, I was going, too. I did. The night before I prepared a seven page letter to the director I intended to read aloud to him. It is a graphic description of the abuse and degradation I suffered in two stays at two state hospitals in 1995 and 1996. I feared no evil as I drove to Salem that morning. The following, minus names, is the letter I read sometimes staring directly into the director's eyes as I read it. Yeah, it was traumatic, recalling all that misery. But by God, it felt good.

Dear *******(state hospitals director): In 1995, I was hospitalized when depakote no longer became an option for treatment of my mood disorder. My psychiatrist who had me under court committment, talked me into electro-convulsive therapy, something he described as the new wave of treatment for bipolars.

The treatment at OSH-Salem, Ward 35C, was in itself shocking. There were sometimes close to 20 women on the ward, but only two toilets and generally at least one of these was plugged or covered in feces. There was only one shower for all those women. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it did not. There was never enough hot water for all of us to shower daily. The food was marginal. The milk we were given was often sour. There was nothing to help pass the endless hours of endless days except for the smoke breaks and pacing. We were never allowed to go outside. The only distractions provided were a few very old magazines, mostly Reader's Digest and National Geographics, a few jigsaw puzzles, and a TV mounted way up high in one corner. The staff controlled what was watched, mostly soaps. Once a month or so, someone organized a dance. Old tapes were played. Everyone stood around staring. There were no therapy groups I knew of. The groups we had were unit meetings, usually a five or ten minute gripe session. Staff would harp about this and that or remove priveleges. A young psychiatrist did bring in her dogs a couple of times during the five months I was there. Those two visits were the only highlight of five months in hell.

Once every six weeks, I was called into a treatment team meeting. I had never seen my psychiatrist in private, nor could I have picked him or her out of the faces in these meetings. I had no clue which person it was. These meetings were short and these strangers would agree everything was going along fine and should continue in this way. They were uninterested in hearing from me. Do you have any idea what this does to a person, being talked about while present as if you do not exist or are completely invisible? I don't suppose you would.

The shock treatments were not as I expected. The machine itself looked pulled from some museum. The headaches afterwards were a nightmare. They offered blinding pain, pain so intense I wanted to yank my eyes from their sockets, tear down walls with my fingers, rip the clothes and skin from my body. They drove me mad in their intensity. OSH staff refused to acknowledge this pain or treat it. Sometimes, they even put me in restraints to control the symptoms of pain. This was cruelty beyond my ability to comprehend.

As time went on, I became unruly, frustrated and angry. The focal point of my rage was that a dump like this and treatment like this was considered therapeutic and for my benefit. It angered me this place was allowed to call itself a hospital. No one was being helped or healed within these walls. To the contrary, much suffering was being inflicted. I began mouthing off at staff.

One night, a male nurse on duty, decided to call a code and take me down. I weighed much more than I do now. Many staff assisted this nurse as they hurled me to the floor and in the process, my right shoulder sustained a painful injury. This nurse then handcuffed me still face down on the floor, with metal handcuffs, behind my back. Then, he hoisted me to a standing position using the chain between the handcuffs to pull me up. Now, this really ripped out my shoulder. I screamed in pain. My protests of pain were completely disregarded as this nurse shoved me down the hall ahead of him to the restraint room where I was hoisted onto the table and tied down. An aide was stationed outside the door in a chair. I was sobbing. I was begging for an aspirin to relieve the pain. I was pleading for that arm to be released. It was swelling. The aide only laughed. He pretended to wipe a tear from his eye and said, "What are you going to do, report us for patient abuse? And who's going to believe you?" I had nightmares for months after my release featuring this nurse.

The only time I breathed fresh air in those five months was when I was transported to Oregon Health Sciences University for a med appointment. I was taken by van sporting both leg and wrist restraints like some monstrous murderer. This was humiliating, horrorifying, embarrassing. I was taken like this from the van into a busy waiting room full of people including children who huddled near their mothers, whispering and staring at me. I was mortified. After the appointment was over, I was in such a hurry to get out of there and out of sight that when opening the glass door by pushing on the crossbar, my little finger hit the glass straight on. It quickly swelled and turned purple. Back at OSH, it was not X-rayed, nor was it splinted, and, within two months, that finger and the one next to it had curled over, swollen and painful. I was unable after time, to even straighten them. It was a year and a half later that I regained their use through the help of an OSU student hoping to go into physical therapy. I owe her the use of those fingers.

I left OSH with injuries and trauma it would take months and years to deal with. Most of the belongings I had brought had been stolen or broken while I was there. Nightmares of this "treatment" haunted my dreams. I was much worse for having been there. I did not recuperate from the experience and was hospitalized again the following spring.

This time, my psychiatrist intimidated me into electro-shock, telling me I could do it his way or he would send me off to OSH-Salem for perhaps years. His way was to send me to Portland OSH (POSH), where he claimed I would be transported down for each treatment, then back up. He promised this time there would for certain be pain treatment following shock therapy. He promised this, even claimed to have secured the same promise from OSH-Salem doctors who would be delivering the shock treatments. He said when the treatments were finished, I would immediately be brought back to Corvallis. It was all just more bullshit.

At OSH Portland, I entered Ward 1B. We came to call it Ward One Bottom of the Barrel. There, on that small ward, everyone was in everyone else's face just because it was so small and overcrowded. The one nice thing about POSH is the big yard with a basketball hoop. I often foresook smoking during outdoor breaks to shoot hoops. The TV there was not cable connected and the reception was often so bad, no channels came in. Sometimes staff would play the radio. There were three couches in a horseshoe arrangement in front of the TV. This was the only place to sit outside of the chair in the dining area. One of these couches had been peed on many times.

These couches in this arrangement ensured conflicts. Arguments, then fights often broke out among the bored, crowded populous. We were frightened often of other patients. I remember this one guy admitted, we called him "Rotten Randy." He was huge, over 6'4" and muscular. Staff knew if he became violent, they could not control him. Randy knew they knew this and so he ran the show. One night he told us this night would be the night. He was going to kill us all, rape us women first, however. We were pretty sure he might do just that.

The food at POSH--very bad. They were shipping it up from Salem on trays then putting the trays in these warmers. But, on many, many occasions, what was supposed to be cold was heated, and frozen things supposed to be cooked, were left frozen solid. I lost tons of weight in the four months there, but it was not because I was eating decent food. It was because you could not eat the food.

My roommate's name was Shawn. Shawn was nice, but she stole everything in sight, and, even worse, peed all over the place even in my shoes. There were pools of urine all over the room most of the time. The stench was so bad my brother brought me a pollen mask so that I could stand to sleep in there. Sometimes the janitor refused to enter to clean. It was that bad. I became increasingly uneasy, afraid I would catch some disease from having to live in that filth. Again here, nothing I arrived with I left with. All was stolen, right down to socks and underwear.

Although here I saw a doctor more often and often privately, not in large, impersonal groups as in Salem OSH, I could not understand his heavy foreign accent well. I was injured a few times at POSH. One time, a chair I was sitting in while out in the yard collapsed. It had a bad leg. Another time, a partially blind patient came right at me out in the yard, unzipping his pants and pulling out his penis as he came. I dove out of the way, injuring something.

The other injury came when going in from the yard. A patient by the name of Tom just ahead of me, suddenly turned point blank around in his tracks, slamming me back into the door and its bar and to the ground. He did not do this on purpose, but I had some intense pain from that accident. I had told them I had reacted badly to ibuprofen before. It had caused liver swelling. They did not believe me, I guess, because after the accident with Tom, that is what they insisted I take. The doctor said it was highly unlikely I would react to it that way again. I did, however, and lay in bed three days, my liver swollen and very painful. Their reaction to my reaction? "Well, seems she was correct."

I was taken down to OSH-Salem for e.c.t. (electro-shock). I told the transport people taking me I sure hoped I didn't run into that male nurse down there and told them why. But who should be right there on duty when I arrived--the same nurse. I commented under my breath that this time he better stay clear of me or I would retaliate. He heard me, walked off, and yelled over his shoulder, "Throw her in restraints." The transport people objected violently, so instead, I was put into isolation but not restraints. They, the transport people, said they would file a complaint on my behalf, that if I was not listened to before, maybe they would be now. I still hate that nurse. I was promised again I would receive pain relief following shock treatment if I would sign the release for the e.c.t. They lied. I did not get pain treatment for the horrible headache afterward. And so, I refused more treatments. These people had no character, were using me as a lab rat. I could believe nothing they said.

Staff told me Dr. *******(state hospitals director) had come to see me. I did not know if it was him or not, only that a man came and squatted down at my bedside, asking me to sign the release he had to allow another shock treatment to be given to me. He swore this time there would be relief made available afterwards for the electrifying headaches. I refused. I told him I had not a reason in the world to believe him.

So, I was shipped back to POSH. I believe because my Corvallis psychiatrist, known locally as the e.c.t pusher, was angry that I refused more treatments; he abandoned his promise to get me out as soon as treatments were over. He also dropped me as a patient after I finally got back to Corvallis. And so I rotted in the hellhole of Ward 1B in Portland. It served me no purpose, was in no way beneficial.

I did learn more of the despicable nature of our species. A person labeled as crazy behind locked doors, out of sight of any protections or outside observation is just too much temptation for some who seem drawn to work in such places. They will more than likely face no responsibility, no consequences for abuse or crimes against such a voiceless, powerless, loathsome population. No one believes the outcries of abuse from the mentally ill. No one cares either if we are abused. Supervisors lack the guts to report or discipline abusive employees. Administrators do not pursue abuse investigations for fear of negative publicity or liability. So here, in our wonderful "treatment" facilities, lies fertile ground for abusers of all sorts. The joke is ultimately on taxpayers and family members.

However, I believe family members often do not care that their relative is in a hellhole and receiving nothing useful or beneficial in treatment. It is enough to have them out of sight and out of their lives. This is probably true of society also. "Get these people off our streets!" I am an angry person. The mental health system I was siphoned off into when barely out of my teens is a monster that sucked my blood. Treatment has been brutal, demeaning, demoralizing.

I wish with all my heart I had never ever sought the advice of a school counselor who sent me off to a school psychiatrist and began the ball rolling that ruined my chance at life. I will take no more abuse from this system. I will not tolerate hearing of mental health abuse. It is despicable. It is disgusting. What happened to me here, in this hospital, flavored my life in bitterness, fear, and fury. I was virtually abandoned to jackals and vultures. Well, now I dine on jackals and vultures whenever I encounter them. At the least, I will not tolerate them in my territory. That is something you can count on, Dr. ******(director of Oregon state hospitals), when you are building policy, disciplining employees who have abused patients. I cannot think of this place as anything but a concentration camp. What can you say to me to make me believe things are different now? What can you say to me after what this "hospital" put me through on top of my other problems? Remember, the problems I came to receive treatment for?

This felt good, reading this account of life at his "hospital" and the audicity of terming this beneficial in any way. Another survivor present had read another account at another meeting, her personal horror story of a stay there. She was adamant that the sign out front of the OSH campus reading "People Helping People" come down. I agree. It must be removed in respect for us, those who endured so much there and those who still do. Want to help? E-mail Oregon state legislators and demand it be removed until humane treatment becomes reality.

petr

Name: petr
Email: omega@gagmail.com
Date: 02 Apr 2008
Time: 18:07:56
Remote Name: 195.225.178.21

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ivan

Name: ivan
Email: beta@gagmail.com
Date: 05 Apr 2008
Time: 17:06:44
Remote Name: 195.225.178.21

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slava

Name: slava
Email: sigma@gagmail.com
Date: 06 Apr 2008
Time: 00:53:34
Remote Name: 195.225.178.21

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egor

Name: egor
Email: sigma@gagmail.com
Date: 07 Apr 2008
Time: 14:13:42
Remote Name: 195.225.178.21

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petr

Name: petr
Email: sigma@gagmail.com
Date: 08 Apr 2008
Time: 06:16:29
Remote Name: 195.225.178.21

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slava

Name: slava
Email: pinta@gagmail.com
Date: 09 Apr 2008
Time: 04:21:15
Remote Name: 195.225.178.21

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vasya

Name: vasya
Email: pinta@gagmail.com
Date: 09 Apr 2008
Time: 22:46:59
Remote Name: 195.225.178.21

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Re: Blind No More, As I See It!

Name:
Email:
Date: 16 Feb 2008
Time: 01:41:45
Remote Name: 198.54.202.82

Striking Back

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ivan

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slava

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egor

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slava

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vasya

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Last changed: April 09, 2008

Re: Blind No More, As I See It!

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