Below is a video of a psychiatric patient dying on the floor of a New York City hospital. Over the course of many hours she ignored by two security guards, but what isn't shown here is that she is also kicked by a nurse (apparently to detect if the patient was alive) and neglected by a physician.
The mentally ill are often talked-down to and generally are treated as second-class citizens. During my graduate training I had some experience in psychiatric wards and the patients were often ignored or infantilized by the medical staff. This phenomenon was empirically demonstrated in 1973 by D. L. Rosenhan, whose study had people pretending to be patients in a psychiatric hospital. They approached staff members with questions like "Could you tell me when I will be eligible for grounds privileges?" or "When will my case be presented at Grand Rounds?" 71% of the time the psychiatrists (these are doctors, mind you) simply looked away and walked past. Only 4% of the time did they stop to talk to the people.
35-year-old studies are often not valid to highlight current psychological principles. After watching this video, however, the results seem more relevant than ever. If people want to make the argument that patients can be very demanding and need boundaries and limits, that's all well and good. However, the fact remains that this woman died at the very hospital where she was being treated, and multiple members of the staff watched it and did nothing.
To say that this disgusts me is an understatement. I bash shrinks all the time for being neurotic and weird and elitist and all sorts of other negative shit. I didn't know I should consider some of them to be soulless as well.
It's no secret that many staff workers at psychiatric hospitals are both overworked and underpaid, which often is an underlying cause of poor interpersonal contact and the delivery of therapeutic services. But what occurred in this video is simply inexcusable. And so the staff is fired according to news report. That's it? Does this "doctor" get to keep his license? If so I hope he ends up treating the very people who decided that he can continue to practice medicine.
I don't see a silver lining in this, save for the fact that perhaps people will give some more thought to the idea that the mentally ill are just as significant as the rest of us. But if this is what it takes to make people think, then I'm embarrassed to be part of the mental health community.
Posted by Rob Dobrenski at 10:38 AM