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Mood Tracking: My System for Reducing Psychiatric Hospitalizations

Mad in America

D uring my first psychiatric hospitalization in 1998, I was strapped down, placed in 4-point restraints, and administered a painful catheter—apparently because I had peed on the floor during the course of my psychotic episode. Captivity By my count (with an assist from my mother) I’ve had 12 psychiatric hospitalizations in my life.

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A Bicultural Māori/European Vision for a Truly Healing Hospital

Mad in America

How can we build a truly healing hospital that would love, nourish and heal all within, including the professionals who work there? The existing mental health hospitals are radically failing our communities despite the dedication and hard work of those working within them. What do we mean by healing?

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Psychiatric Patients Restrained at Sky-High Rates at This L.A. Hospital

Mad in America

From the Los Angeles Times : “When he came home from the hospital, Marcelus Laidler began to wet the bed. ‘That hospital is like one bad dream after another.’ ’ Hospitals are forbidden under federal law from restraining psychiatric patients except to prevent them from harming themselves or others. .

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Suit Blasts 4 NJ State Psych Hospitals for Violent Conditions, ‘Unconstitutional’ Policies

Mad in America

From NJ Spotlight News : “A stay in a New Jersey state psychiatric hospital ‘is more akin to psychiatric incarceration,’ including violence and difficulty just getting just a drink of water. The suit contends that some people are forced to wait months, if not years, for release.

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Fighting Forced Treatment in Court: A Victory is to Be Celebrated

Mad in America

As a hospital-based psychiatrist, every day I saw how peoples lives had been ruined by psychiatric drugs. In the course of my work, I had seen him at two different hospitals where I worked and I was familiar with his history, he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. More and more, I realized how damaging the medications are.

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A School Promised Not to Send Kids to the ER for Misbehavior – But Hospital Trips Only Increased

Mad in America

A student is brought out, handcuffed and placed inside for transport to a hospital emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation. It’s the first step toward getting someone involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital. Over the past eight years, the process has been used at least 750 times on students.

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Call for Intervention in Case of Boy Left in Windowless Irish Hospital Room for 56 Days

Mad in America

From RTÉ : “[Irish] Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has been urged to intervene in the case of a 14-year-old boy who has been left in a windowless room off a hospital emergency department in Co Kerry for the last 56 days. He has been existing for 56 days in a windowless room off the emergency department in a hospital in Kerry.