Mental health worker dies after restraining patient
The Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services says a mental health worker at Connecticut Valley Hospital in Middletown died after being involved in restraining an unruly psychiatric patient who was being held to forcibly administer drugs.
We have previously discussed psychiatric restraints and the harm this does to patients, but we have not addressed the harm it can do to psychiatric workers.
Is it any wonder that a patient fought back when five of his “caretakers†held him down to give him psychiatric drugs?
Thousands of people of all ages continue to die from such callous, physical assault in psychiatric facilities across the globe; and now, regrettably, we can add mental health workers to this list.
“Assault†is by definition an attempt or apparent attempt to inflict injury upon another by using unlawful force, along with the ability to injure that person. “Battery†is defined as any unlawful beating or other wrongful physical violence or constraint inflicted on a human being without his consent. Psychiatric restraint procedures, and all other psychiatric procedures for that matter, qualify as “assault and battery†in every respect except one — they are lawful.
Download and read the CCHR report, Deadly Restraints — Psychiatry’s “Therapeutic†Assault — Report and recommendations on the violent and dangerous use of restraints in mental health facilities, and draw your own conclusions about the danger psychiatry poses, not only to our mental health, but to our very lives.