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Psychiatric Hospital Patients Are At Risk During the Pandemic

Statewide closures complicate the plight of some people with mental illness


Restrictions implemented in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic are largely intended to protect the public from the spread of the disease. Maryland’s statewide closure of schools, child care programs, and nonessential businesses, for example, was enacted to support limitations on large gatherings and social distancing to prevent exposures and transmissions, and reduce the threat to vulnerable populations. However, many don’t realize the unintended consequences these restrictions have in jeopardizing the lives of involuntarily-committed patients in Maryland’s psychiatric hospitals.

Emily Datnoff, a staff attorney in Disability Rights Maryland’s mental health unit, discusses the challenges patients face to effectuate their discharge and how those challenges can be addressed during the pandemic in a recent Baltimore Sun editorial.

Discharge from state hospitals and residential centers becomes virtually impossible when facilities stop evaluating patients, courts no longer conduct proceedings necessary to effectuate discharge, and community providers stop accepting patients. This is the dilemma many patients at state hospitals currently face. These problems are urgent and need to be addressed to protect patients from the inevitable spread of the virus.” – Emily Datnoff, the Baltimore Sun

Disability Rights Maryland is working to have efforts made to discharge patients to maintain their health and safety. If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We are available to provide information, referrals, technical assistance, and limited representation during the pandemic.

For legal assistance, our intake line is open at 410-727-6352 or MD relay. Please leave a message and we will return your call as soon as possible. Please note that return calls may be made from blocked numbers since staff is working remotely.

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DRM Reports: “Segregation & Suicide at MCIW”

12/14/2018

Disability Rights Maryland hosted a Press Conference at our offices today to announce the release of our report, “Segregation and Suicide: Confinement at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women (PDF). The report was completed by DRM and Munib Lohrasbi, a community fellow with the Open Society Institute of Baltimore (OSI). 

The report discloses the extreme isolation and harm, or risk of harm, to numerous women with significant disabilities housed in the segregation, infirmary, and mental health units at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women (MCIW). Conditions in the units varied, but DRM observed problems with access to outdoor and indoor recreation; natural light; mattresses or bedding; insufficient treatment plans; and a lack of confidentiality for health  care services. The harm caused by segregation practices is pointedly evidenced by the suicide of a young woman with mental health issues who was incarcerated for a non-violent offense and who took her life while in segregation. 

DRM’s investigation, set forth in the Report, finds that MCIW failed to exercise reasonable standards of care during the time period surrounding her suicide. The Report offers recommendations for less harmful and safer correctional practices that conform to professional standards and comply with federal and Constitutional requirements.

DRM’s Director of Litigation, Lauren Young remarked, “The use of segregation in prison – the extreme isolation, the lack of physical and social engagement, sometimes combined with a lack of bedding, clothing, natural light or exercise, are conditions which Maryland has been shamefully slow to reject, especially as applied to individuals with serious disabilities; and compared with other states. We share this information because it is indispensable to the reforms that must come, but which will not succeed if conditions are kept from public consciousness.”

View a recording of the press conference on our Facebook page (embedded below).

 

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