The Failure we all pay for - Western State Hospital and Washington State DSHS

The Failure we all pay for - Western State Hospital and Washington State DSHS

Photo credit to Dan DeLong / P-I

As a caring advocate for those labeled mentally ill, I am astounded by the callous lack of compassion and care being provided by Washington State DSHS and Western State Institution (using the word "hospital" in this particular case would be misleading and disingenuous unfortunately).

It is far past the time for a disjointed, failed, and antiquated mental health system to begin to address patients real needs with humane basic care and human rights. It's time for those whose charge is providing adequate care to some of society's most vulnerable populations to stop making excuses to our society and patents for not doing their publicly funded jobs.

It's time to start treating patients, their families, and friends with the dignity, sensitivity, direct involvement, and with the respect they so rightfully deserve.

It’s time to start questioning and holding a government agency that receives an estimated $450 a day (that's almost 165 thousand dollars a year per patient) to provide treatment to patients with accountability for solid measurable results. It time to provide community based housing and support to patients which shows better results and is much more cost effective.

It's time to tell our elected representatives that all the talk means absolutely nothing without direct substantive action (how long do we have to hear about the need for more community based treatment, services, and housing from politicians until this actually happens in real terms?)

It is time to start treating the patients DSHS serve not only with dignity and as equal valued status citizens. It's far past time for doctors and other civic providers of services to stop treating the suffering as prisoners with a less than humane superior/authoritarian modality and attitudes.

Its past time to provide individually based board based and detailed treatment modalities outside of simply imprisonment and medication. It’s past time for real transparency and accountability within these institutions. No longer will hiding behind locked doors serve the needs/demands of the public and patients.

It's past time that patients are provided independent advocates that can hold institutions and providers accountable for their rights, treatments, and reasonable standards of care.

I have left just a few links below as examples of a broken and inhumane system still being provided to this day in Washington State. It is past time each of us to demand better from those paid to serve us as public servants.

Please make your voice heard

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Federal Report Rips Western State Hospital- Patient Death a “Preventable Failure”

Patient Death a “Preventable Failure”

Women say they were raped as children in state psychiatric hospital

raped-as-children-in-state-psychiatric-hospital

Western State Hospital Discharging Patients to “Unsafe Places”

Patient Dumping

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From the soulful sepulcher blog - an important message and call to action I hope everyone that cares will respond too.

Psychiatrists Among Top Paid State Employees:Austin Jenkins (2009-10-29)

Listen to NPR in the link above:

"On Ward C-7 the day starts with a treatment team meeting.

Nurse: "We're going to start with J.O. this morning. Anxious to go to groups, he is visible on the ward, he's taking his medications "Nurse Vicki Kallahan-Storwick briefs Dr. Daniel Ruiz and the team on the status of the patients.

Ruiz follows up with the diagnosis.Dr. Daniel Ruiz: "This gentleman is new on the ward. He came with significant psychotic symptoms "And a treatment plan for each patient.

Ruiz has been a psychiatrist at Western State for eight years.

He came here straight out of residency at the University of Washington. It's a second career in medicine for him. Before becoming a psychiatrist, Ruiz was a general physician in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

His path to psychiatry began with a personal story.Dr. Daniel Ruiz: "I do have a brother with schizophrenia."

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January 6, 2010

Treatment team meeting results:

1. titrate and remove to zero, the Trileptal.

2. acknowledge and treat the current thyroid that is out of balance.

3. Dr. Ruiz will only meet with mother, weekly after today banning patient advocate from meetings due to demanding outside time.

4.WSH psychologist served court order to reside at western 180 days to patient without representation from legal department.

5. patient shall now not be allowed to have mother visit at lunch time as every day since admit on December 21, 2009 due to staff believing patient will not cooperate with them due to anticipation of mother arriving for lunch one hour visit.

6. mother was told to arrive at 4pm after groups and shift change ends.

7. patient was told to take meds, go to all groups, to earn an outside walk time with mother as a reward.

8. the advocate that was banned from future treatment team meetings today was told to write a letter to the legislator by Dr Ruiz, ( the advocate and support person patient has responded to and began to speak again as a result of hours and months of time spent with patient) if advocate didnt like the lack of funding, and proper ability to care for patient in the washington mental health system.

9. patient medications being changed is 2nd reason given to mother for not allowing outside time.

10. staff assured mother they would remind patient mom will be there at 4pm tomorrow.

11. "you're lucky she's on this ward", said Ruiz.

12. due to questioning patients right to have outside time, Dr. Ruiz deemed advocate a "detriment to patients best interest and will only meet with the mother weekly".

13. "if you take her home she loses ALL services".
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http://www.governor.wa.gov/contact/ * (click this link to email a letter or the one written here, copied and pasted) OR

Write Governor Gregoire a letter:

Governor Chris Gregoire

Office of the Governor
PO Box 40002
Olympia, WA 98504-0002
USA

Give Governor Gregoire's Office a call:

Governor's Office 360-902-4111

For relay operators for the deaf or hard of hearing,
please dial 7-1-1

Fax Governor Gregoire a letter:360-753-4110
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Dear Ms. Gregoire,

I am writing in concern of the care of a patient currently at Western State Hospital. The staff, including the doctor have voiced concern over lack of funding for mental health services in the State of Washington, USA.

It is an outrage, and unacceptable, that any patient be denied access to outside time due to lack of funding for appropriate staff to patient ratio. It is unacceptable, that advocates are not heard in meetings where the patient is top priority, and where team members discriminate toward a patient with PDD and non verbal. The patient who is duel-diagnosed with psychosis and a developmental delay, needs family support.

The base of care is funding, and this is a formal request to review the funding for mental health services in the state that you Govern, and it is a request to listen to all patients, not just 1 of approximately 800 at Western State Hospital.

Lindsay was deemed "not a danger to self, not a danger to others", but "a probable danger from society, a person who could suffer harm and exploitation" from society itself, by a King County Superior Court judge.

Lindsay, deserves more than limited/no outdoor time.
She deserves to have all members of her family and advocates be present in all meetings, she deserves far more than this system has given her to date.

She is 22 years old, and a victim of lack of funding, and proper care offered in Washington state, and it is time for her and others to be acknowledged.

Thank you for your time,

Sincerely,

________________

(YOUR NAME)

Further reference article:

Furious Seasons,Some Thoughts For Western State Hospital, DSHS,Philip Dawdy reporting

FDA corruption - just another rubber stamp about to be given with ECT devices?

FDA corruption - just another rubber stamp about to be given with ECT devices?

It is very possible, if not inevitable that the FDA may exempt manufacturers of
electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) devices from the regulatory requirement to prove their devices safe and effective through the PreMarket Approval (PMA) process.

This is really no surprise after all, the FDA has shown over and over again they are nothing but a corrupt political shell for some very profitable and unsafe industries. The FDA is not about insuring product safety or concerned about the public health.

The Alliance for Human Research Protection has written a well thought out and factual pdf on this subject. So I will just leave the link, and let you the reader come to your own conclusions.

fda ect classification

Big Pharma and Medicine want to own your child from cradle until coffin for profit

Pharma wants your kids from Cradle to Coffin, it's all about the $$$money$$$

Big Pharma and Medicine wants to own your child from cradle until coffin for profit

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From Furious Seasons
antipsychotic_use_doubles_in_americas_toddlers

Antipsychotic Use Doubles In America's Toddlers

Need more evidence that America has lost its soul and that psychiatry has lost its mind? A study published today in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (it's not online yet) asserts that twice as many young toddlers are getting antipsychotics as in the late-1990s. We're talking kids aged 2 to 5, getting drugs which have no approval for their age group.

"In 1999-2001, about one in 1,300 were being treated with antipsychotics. By 2007, that had risen to one in 630, according to Olfson.

"For 5-year-olds, about one in 650 were being treated in 1999-2001. That doubled, to one in 329, in 1997, he noted."

"'It is a worrisome trend, partly because very little is known about the short-term, let alone the long-term, safety of these drugs in this age group,' said study author Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City."

If thought leaders are calling this a problem, then why do doctors continue to prescribe these drugs to tots? How much is pharma making off little kids?

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couple that with Big Pharma and Medicine targeting the poor and foster kids; as I referred to in recent post on this blog that you may find worth reading

• Pharma Targets Foster Kids with anti-psychotics without consent : http://wik.io/D1gP
• Another Tragic Case of Big Pharma Targeting Poor Children : http://wik.io/4WVb
• Los Angeles Times - The Bulls-Eye Target is Our Children - http://tinyurl.com/ycuufn3

We have created and allowed a perfect storm of attacks upon childhood in our nation.

I must ask what we can do at this juncture in our land? Sadly I can see nothing short of an armed revolution will stop these pharma whoring greed mongers @ this point.

The information and crimes are now shining in the light of day, and still no pharma executives are in jail, no doctor have been charged or even had their licenses to practice medicine revoked or suspended, direct to consumer marketing and advertising has not stopped, pay offs and rewards directly to doctors from pharma have not stopped, off labeling market has not curtailed, and with tens of billions upon ten of billions of dollars in profits at stake, no one in our government will step to the plate to save our children.

I challenge every one to stop by your local county mental hospital. You will be astounded at how young the general populations are becoming, and this is only a warning shot fired into ominous night sky. The real carnage hasn't even reared it's true ugly head quite yet with the most fragile and defenseless populations, which are the Toddlers.

These children are being hooked, disabled, labeled, and damaged for life. This is just what pharma and medicine has campaigned for over decades; generation upon generation of infant cash cows to be milked of their very life essence continuously from cradle until coffin.

For all doctors out there that may read this; when an estimated 90% of MD's are on the take "accepting gifts, cash, or both" from pharma, there is no more questions about guilt or causation.

We, as in every citizen are going to pay for these crimes in both monetary cost and devastating human suffering for many decades to come. We can also rest assured the vast majority of our corrupted government representatives know exactly what's happening and have turned their backs upon the citizens of this great land, and will let these horrible crimes against our children, elderly, and poor continue out of their unquenchable lust for greed, money, and power.

I must believe that Thomas Jefferson and like Founding Fathers would have had some fairly choice and ear turning words for every one of us about now. It may very well be far to late for thousands upon thousands of children unfortunately; but you can still make your voice heard and take some form of action.

I am but one lone voice in this internet wilderness, but as more voices unite, as this call grows louder, we all must pray that anything is possible, and we can force a change in the course of our nation.

also a good article @ portfolio.com drugging-kids-for-profit

The Big Pharma Drug Cartel - America Hooked on Drugs

I found this interesting article @ "In These Times" web site that is worth a read. The keys and theme you can focus on in this piece are nothing new; a greedy and out of control Big Pharma, Corrupt Government that does nothing, 90% of doctor's profiteering off patents, and one bought FDA that is completely worthless.


It maybe in fact a new year; but the same evil corporate forces we have faced for decades are still captaining the ship, and driving us all perilously closer to an inevitable sinking of our society.


"Read and Weep" as they say


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inthesetimes.com/article/5316/this_is_your_country_on_drugs

This Is Your Country on Drugs

Melody Petersen talks about how we’re hooked on Big Pharma.

by George Kenney

“I think some of the top pharmaceutical executives should face criminal charges,” says Melody Petersen, author of;">Our Daily Meds<"

Melody Petersen has been writing about the pharmaceutical industry for more than 10 years, including as a staff reporter for the "New York Times. Her recent book,"Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), should be required reading for anyone who’s serious about healthcare reform.

What is the most outrageous thing you have seen while covering the drug industry?

"I went to a conference where the title of one talk that jumped out at me was “Creating a Disease.” A drug company executive got up on stage with a PowerPoint presentation and explained how his company had created a disease—overactive bladder.

The company owned a pill for incontinence, but the market for incontinence is very low because mostly elderly people suffer from it, and doctors try to manage this in a non-pharmaceutical way. Even though this drug works on your bladder, it is very hard on your brain. It can cause severe memory problems. But the company wanted to expand the market so it created this disease called “overactive bladder” or “OAB,” which it defined as needing to go to the bathroom more than nine times a day. And now you see ads for this drug, Detrol, for overactive bladders. It became a blockbuster.

As you say in the title of your book, it’s all a huge marketing machine.

"In Europe and Canada they pay less for drugs and take fewer. Two-thirds of men, women and children in the United States take at least one prescription drug. And children in the United States are three times more likely to take anti-depressants and psychiatric drugs as children in Europe. We spend at least $300 billion a year on prescription drugs. That is about twice than what we spend on higher education.

The United States ranks 50th in life expectancy, according to the CIA. Today a 65-year-old Mexican man will live longer than a 65-year-old American man.

How important are those international comparisons?

We are paying more in healthcare per person than any other country. In our economy, almost one out of every five dollars is spent on healthcare, and it continues to rise at a rate greater than inflation. You would think that with us spending so much, we would be at the top of the life expectancy ranking. The implicit argument is that in addition to all the other problems, we are suffering from an excess dosage of drugs. This goes back to the marketing.

What does the bulk of the marketing go into?

Most of the marketing dollars are spent on physicians. When the drug ads on television say, “Ask your doctor about this drug,” the drug companies have already been to your physician and made sure he or she was ready to prescribe it.

A survey of physicians a couple years ago found that more than nine out of ten had recently taken some sort of gift or cash from the drug companies. And many doctors are taking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from these drug companies, working as consultants and advisers.

You write that these drug companies are not developing drugs that could be more useful in the world, but drugs that could be more profitable here at home.

That is one of the tragedies about this situation. The drug companies focus on maladies like depression and high cholesterol and anxiety—things that impact large portions of the American public.

They are not interested in cures, because if you cure somebody of the disease they don’t take the drug for long periods of time. And they are not interested in tropical diseases like malaria. People in Africa desperately need medicine, but the drug companies know Africans are too poor to pay for the medicines.

They want to sell drugs to Americans. There is no incentive to discover truly great medicines. To get a drug through the FDA you don’t have to prove the drug is better than a drug already on the market. All you have to prove is the drug is better than a placebo.

In 1992, the law changed to allow the drug companies to pay large fees to the FDA so their drugs can be approved faster. Before 1992, the FDA had one customer and that was the public.

Now the FDA has two customers: the public and the drug executives.

Is the system corrupt?

Some of these cases are incredibly outrageous. Like Vioxx, a pain reliever that 20 million Americas took before Merck took it off the market because it increased the risk of a heart attack and stroke. The FDA estimated that as many as 50,000 Americans may have died from that drug.

Are there lawyers out there fighting the big pharmaceutical companies?

Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against the drug companies. The federal government has collected billions of dollars from the industry to settle charges of illegal marketing. But the drug companies just raise their prices, so they can pay out half a billion dollars on lawsuits, and continue doing exactly what they have been doing. It’s an endless cycle.

I think some of the top pharmaceutical executives should face criminal charges, so they would think twice about allowing these fraudulent practices. There is the suggestion of simply banning the pharmaceutical companies from paying off doctors.

The rule now is that the FDA will approve a drug for a certain condition. A drug can be approved for depression, for instance. And, the drug companies are not supposed to market that drug for anything other than depression. But the doctor can prescribe the drug for whatever they want.

That is the loophole the drug companies have tried to exploit. For example, executives at Warner-Lambert, which is now part of Pfizer, decided they wanted the doctors to prescribe the epilepsy drug Neurontin for attention deficit disorder, restless leg disorder, bipolar disorder. Just about anything that is related to the brain.

So what Pfizer did was invite doctors to dinner. The doctors were paid $500 to come to the dinners and listen to a speech by another physician who would talk about how, even though Neurontin was approved for epilepsy, they could also prescribe it for bipolar disorder. Neurontin was soon a billion-dollar drug, and 90 percent of the prescriptions were written for things other than epilepsy.

Do you know of another industrial country that does not negotiate with drug companies for better prices?

No, the United States is the only country in the world that allows the drug companies to charge whatever they want.

You write that there are two pharmaceutical lobbyists for every member of Congress. What are they doing on Capitol Hill?

The pharmaceutical industry fights against any measure that threatens its profits. Present law gives the drug companies a 20-year patent on each drug. During that time, they have a monopoly in the market. They can charge whatever they want for that drug. They have fought against any measure to allow more reasonable drug prices.

There was this deal reported, and denied, that they met with Mr. Obama and he agreed to help them. Yes, the industry said they met with the president this past summer and that in this meeting the companies agreed to put $80 billion on the table.

But the drug companies have been increasing prices like mad this year, so nobody is quite sure what this “$80 billion” really amounts to. In exchange for this $80 billion, the drug executives say that the president agreed not to change the law to allow Medicare to use its purchasing power to negotiate drug prices and also agreed not to allow drugs to come from Canada, which are much lower priced.

Just for comparison, the Veterans Administration does negotiate prices. And it gets a better deal than Medicare.

Yes, a much, much better deal. But with that off the table, the drug companies are set up once again. If this healthcare legislation passes they are going to get millions of new patients and continue to charge whatever they wish.

Where do you think healthcare reform is headed?

We need everyone to have access to healthcare. But there is nothing in these bills that would control costs. It’s not just the cost of drugs that is the problem, it is the cost of everything. There have been studies that show one-third to as much as one-half of the costs in our healthcare system are unwarranted.

Not only are many of those drugs not needed, they have side effects that can make people sicker—but nothing in the proposed legislation makes our healthcare system less expensive or safer.

Our whole healthcare system is just driven by this profiteering, and it’s not just the drug companies. If we could get some members in Congress to stand up and say, “We have had enough,” and if the public would get up and say, “We have had enough,” maybe, Washington would listen. ______________________________________

Adding to this post is a comment left by soulful sepulcher, that could really be an entire post within itself.

Thank you for thoughtful and insightful response. I gather you have now been elevated to "official guest blogger" status.

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Just like they created "Early Adolescent Childhood Bipolar", via Joseph Biederman and Janet Wozniak, et al. This description, theory, was Biederman's doing a decade ago, based on his thoughts, not backed up by medical evidence, and the drug companies Lilly and Johnson and Johnson backed him with his studies of Zyprexa and Risperdal in 5 year olds in 1999.

By 2009 the "illness" had increased 4000% and the use of antipsychotics in children skyrocketed, all based on no scientific data or medical reasoning or proof, that these drugs were needed at all for any reason other than drug company profit.

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Neurontin internal files

manuscript-neurontin-treatment-of-pain

documents

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Manuscript-Neurontin Treatment of Pain Internal Documents:marketing and data mining of patient information

Manuscript-Neurontin Treatment of Pain Internal Documents-1996

"In 2003, pharmaceutical companies spent $5.7 billion marketing to physicians through in-office promotion, hospital promotion, and journal advertising. The documents below were selected in an effort to illustrate both the breadth of pharmaceutical industry marketing activities and the breadth of this collection."

The above link includes drug industry documents archives.

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Until citizens seriously STOP, and take a look at why Pfizer had 1 million$$ seats at the Democratic National Convention (Hello Obama!), and wonder why Phrma (Pharmaceutical Manufacturers of America) had such an enormous stake in HEALTH REFORM; or until they ASK why they receive free drug samples at doctors offices, or until they ASK medical-based intelligent questions to their doctors--(psychiatrists for example, who then will NOT be able to tell you why any drug "works" for bipolar, and therefore the "mystery" of the old "what works for one patient might not another" and "drug cocktail" will be proven to be catch phrases from profit slogans created by drug companies)--then YOU America, have been officially duped, scammed and used by an industry.

When you purchased your car did the dealer tell you only one brand of gasoline should be used? When you bought your bread for a sandwich, were you told only one company was better to buy from?

Do you know you are directly influenced by Pfizer's little blue pill campaign whether you used/use Viagra or not? You are, you know the ad, you know the color of the pill---that's called DTC, Direct to Consumer advertising, and it's everywhere.

It IS about:

Creating a disease.

The power-point given by such an executive or thought leader was used to influence you, trickled down to your doctors. Neurontin lost to placebo in bipolar treatment, do you wonder why?

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neurontin-vsplacebo-for-bipolar

beat Neurontin for Bipolar

Sunday, April 20, 2008
Neurontin vs.Placebo for Bipolar Disorder :Placebo wins

Neurontin fails bipolar med review-Fierce Pharma.

"Review the research on epilepsy meds, and what do you find? Neurontin (gabapentin), is no better than placebo for bipolar disorder, according to the Prescribing for Better Outcomes center at the University of North Carolina.

A bunch of "very poor quality articles," however, seemed to support a positive effect--and those articles were cited and re-cited in the scientific literature, creating an "echo chamber effect." Hearing it over and over, doctors were led to believe that Neurontin worked for bipolar patients, and prescribed it to lots and lots of them.

Ironically, the epilepsy-med review came courtesy of the 2004 Neurontin marketing settlement, under which Pfizer paid $430 million to settle off-label allegations. Some 94 percent of the drug's sales in 2002 were off-label, the government said at the time."

Next time you reach for one of those medications you are not quite sure is working for you, keep that thought, because you are right to question all of this, you are entitled to ask questions, and be given the transparent truth in return.

Americans are living in poverty, lack health insurance, and the answer is not to bring in a self-serving industry for profit to monitor that care.--------------------------------------

And for further reading on this topic is a link to a good article - 2009-in-review-a-year-of-fda-censorship-big-pharma-crimes

From Pharmalot swine-flu-a-false-pandemic

Happy New Year 2010

2010

Thought I would take a deep breath break, while researching some materials for an up coming post.

Let me wish everyone a Very Happy New Year 2010