Pssst ... Don't Tell Anybody
by Bob Walsh
A couple days ago a federal judge released a report on the psych care of prisoners in the CA DOC and the report says that the state is doing a piss-poor state of providing psych care despite years of federal court mandates. (How can it be secret if the judge released it?)
Dr. Michael Golding, head shrink for the system, asserts that the department has deliberately been fudging its reports to the court. Assuming the news article go it right (not always a safe assumption) it APPEARS that the shrink made the report up thru channels within the DOC and then leaked a copy to Judge Kimberly Mueller, who made it public.
At the moment it seems that Judge Mueller believes that the DOC committed a deliberate fraud on the court and is setting up hearings, at which Dr. Golding will testify.
One of the chief incidents related is a psychotic female prisoner, who allegedly went on screaming jags every 15 minutes or so for about four hours. Nobody contacted the on-call psychiatrist and she received no medication. During this cluster-fuck the prisoner popped out her own eyeball and swallowed it. Gross.
2 comments:
I was amazed at the number of Bat Shit Crazies in the Texas Prisons when I worked there. There was little or no treatment for them. It was almost medieval. I'm sure it's not as bad now because today America simply puts the mentally ill on the streets.
Yesterday, I had to drive to the Houston Medical Center. This is one of the finest medical centers in the world. Yet, I saw a unwashed middle aged man standing by a major intersection talking to himself and pan handling. His blue hospital gown was protruding out from under his jacket. I'll bet the same people that gave him a bottle of pills and pushed him out the door of the hospital are driving by him every day. I predict his future to be arrests and jail or possibly suicide by cop.
Jails and prison are functionally the psych wards of America now days.
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