"Hidden America" : Abuse of Mental Patients by Hospitals

Today, Diane Sawyer did a report in her series, "Hidden America" on the plight of mental patients in America. The newest trend in patient abuse is "patient dumping" where the hospital buys a one-way ticket to another state, drives the patient to the Greyhound bus terminal, and sends them to an unknown place so that the hospital and the state won't have to pay for the patients' treatment. If that sounds totally outlandish and fictitious, please click on the link below to watch the video. The reporters did an excellent job of finding documentation that proved at least one hospital repeatedly "patient dumped."

I am a paranoid schizo-affective so I am prone to paranoia and persecution delusions. Yet, sadly, sometimes people really do persecute the mentally ill. We are not chattel. We should not be dehumanized this way. If someone put 80 year old elderly people on a one-way trip to nowhere because they all need dozens of heart, blood pressure, arthritis, kidney, liver, and diabetes medicine, everybody would be in an UPROAR. This would be a major issue, not a tiny side-story whose title says it all "Hidden America."

The abuse of mental patients has a long and gory history in the United States. Lobotomies, barbiturate poisoning, repeated and prolonged restraint use, cases of sexual assault, violent assault, and other negligent treatment leading to death (i.e. heart attacks after prolonged periods of being forced to lie prone in restraints), are all examples of the history of the culturally accepted and widespread abuse of mental patients.

This is sickening. Perfectly innocent victims of a degenerative illness are now victimized by people who appear to be spurred on by some modern day version of the eugenics movement. We are categorically abused because of our brain chemistry, labeled wastes of life, and treated as cockroaches.


If you take this widespread abuse and apply it to another group, like Latinos, Asians, gays, or cancer patients, you would have riots, rebellions, and general anarchy. Nobody deserves to have be treated this way, certainly not mental invalids who are already in a state of fear and panic.

The System has greatly injured my brethren. If you think for one moment that high-functioning mental patients, the families of mental patients, and ethical mental health employees will continue to ignore the abuse and neglect of the poorest, most vulnerable adults among us, you are fooling yourself. The pain of one mental patient is my pain as well. I am high-functioning and I have a long memory. I will not forget. I vow to volunteer for mental health rights organizations, to donate money to the cause, to vote for supportive legislation, and to promote civil rights for mental patients.

For those of you with a mental illness ::: remember, the U.S constitution applies to us! We have civil rights and those who violate our civil rights are traitors to the U.S. constitution.

Here is the link, please watch!

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/accusations-patient-dumping-19096538