October 24, 2005

What to do About the Old Folks' Prisons

A reader commented earlier that the fate of geriatric psych patients is very discouraging. Often, they end up in state mental hospitals. Some have mental illness--and have been ravaged by it for most of their life. Others have dementia and are simply too out of it for most nursing homes to deal with. There are 54,000 patients in state hospitals in America. I don't have a breakdown of how many of those are geriatric cases. Based upon my limited experience looking at state hospital statistics, I'd put their number at 10 to 20 percent, or about 5,000 to 10,000.

I once spent about 20 minutes in the geriatric ward at Western State Hospital here in Washington State. (I was the first reporter allowed to tour the wards in over a decade, the staff told me.) There were all these sweet-looking old people steering about the large day room in specialized wheelchairs. Out the windows, they could see cyclone fencing topped with barbed wire. Some kind heart had attached a few pots of daisies to the fence.

What bothered me deeply about the fact that were there and I was able to walk out the door whenever I pleased was that the business seemed horribly mean. The best we can do for these people is a soft prison? They can be combative, sure. But there's no reason properly equipped nursing homes cannot handle them and offer them a more humane environment. It could also be done at about half the present cost of keeping them in a state hospital. The trouble in Washington State is that nursing homes are almost all privately-owned and the state cannot compel them--at least that's what the state says!--to accept these patients. I'm not so sure that the state is right on that point, but if it is, then perhaps the state ought to build some of these specialized nursing homes and give these poor souls a measure of dignity in the final years of their lives. Other states should do the same thing.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at October 24, 2005 01:08 AM
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I have so many nightmares about hospitals.

Most of the nightmares are about Children's Hospital, where, in all, I was hospitlized for nearly a year. In those dreams, just how it really happened, I am screaming and screaming, running and running, trying so desperatley to get out of hell, but then all these staff members come, hold me down, and give me injections. No!!! You don't understand!!! No one understands!!! Just get me out of here!!! Get me the hell out of here!!! No!!! And then, when the restraint if finally through, I, exhausted, crash on my bed, begging G-d to simply let me die. But then, the next day, it begins all over again: Screaming and screaming, running and running...never, ever to end.

Then I have other dreams about UCLA Medical Center, where I was treated for about three months. Those dreams are tamer...but not by much. For in those, instead of running, I'm locked up. And not just locked up a little bit, but locked in prison. Just how it really happened, I am kept in a solitary room, all by myself for days and days, weeks and weeks, never ever to join the others. And I'm just locked up, and I can't get out, and I want so badly to get out, and I can't get out, and I will never get out.

And then I have dreams about hosptials I've never been a pateint at such as Harborview and Western State. I don't quite remember them so well, but it's also the same thing -- screaming, running, locked up. It's bad man.

I'm never going back to the hosptial as long as I live.

Posted by: Gwen Davis at October 24, 2005 05:37 PM

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