The mental health industry watchdog, which helped obtain restraint use reforms two decades ago, relentlessly continues to demand a ban on lethal restraint procedures. It…
A New Brunswick teen who asphyxiated in an Ontario prison cell while guards watched was restrained and forcibly injected with unnecessary tranquilizers and antipsychotic drugs at another institution three months earlier. Julian Falconer, the Smith family’s lawyer, filed Beaudry’s report with a coroner’s court in Toronto on Monday in an effort to expand the scope of an upcoming inquest into Smith’s death. “A psychiatrist prescribed medication without ever seeing her,” Falconer said. “Another health professional force administered, through forced injections, chemical restraints on Ashley.”
Department of Children and Family Services Director Erwin McEwen reacted to the findings by angrily criticizing Streamwood Behavioral Health Center owner Psychiatric Solutions Inc., the nation’s largest for-profit behavioral health firm. “Profiteering at the expense of the mental health of vulnerable children will not be tolerated in Illinois.”
Standards of care at Greek mental hospitals are still so atrocious that the European Union has threatened to cut funding for social projects if the country does not clean up its act. “The system is in a state of reform, but I have to say that if patients are attached to their beds for hours or days, that’s totally unacceptable,” said Vladimir Spidla, the European Commissioner for Social Affairs. “For me it’s sad that this exists in the European Union.”