Tethered teenage psychiatric patient shocks Netherlands

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This is appalling, and seems to have been going on for three years before anyone realised that it is wrong.

What sort of people work in these institutions?

Here in Buffalo its hard to find people to take care of the elderly so they take anyone who is willing to wipe an old person's ass. I have seen news reports about elder abuse from different nursing homes. Everything from sexual abuse to physical abuse is done to the elderly. When you see the people who did these horrible acts upon the elderly you are left yelling at the screen why did they let someone who looks like that near the elderly. I plan on dying before I get in my 70's before I need nursing home care just to keep from being touched by the freaks they hire to take care of the elderly.

My mother use to work at a nursing facility as part of the cleaning staff. She said she could not believe some of the stuff the nurses aids got up to and got away with. They knew who they could abuse and who was in their right mind so they should not be abused because they will tell and cost the nursing home a lawsuit. She quit because they kept telling her everyday to leave the room so there would be no witnesses.

Last edited by Todesking on 22 Jan 2011, 11:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I saw the film and I noticed something.

The staff at the home say that the boy is strapped down as he is violent, but why then is there plenty of stuff to use as a weapon in the room. I can see chairs / tables in the room. Even if they are screwed down to the floor it is still possible to bang your head (or slam someone else's head) on them.

If the staff are so nervous of this teenaged boy, why then is he in a room with objects which can be used/adpated as weapons.

While I do not think that straightjackets / padded rooms are nice, I can imagine that these things may have to be used on rare occasions in prisons and mental hospitals to deal with people who are ultraviolent. The great test in my mind is "is the padded room being used as punishment or long term management of the person". If the answer is yes then something has gone seriously wrong.

I think this has come to light because of this (in Dutch). I don't speak Dutch, but do speak English and German, and while it's easy to follow, I'm not going to attempt a translation.

Obviously he has learning difficulties and challenging behaviour, but he isn't a violent monster requiring a ball and chain. That he's been in this harness for three years suggests that someone thinks it's acceptable long term management of him.

It's despicable.

It's nothing new, I suffered a whole year in a supported living place being degraded by their staff. One in particular who took an instant dislike to me and would continualy berate me about my appearance, style, taste of music and even my haircut & colour at the time. One incedent happend where she suposedly slashed one of the other residents with her two inch nail extentions, I saw the blood on the girl's coat, but I didn't see it happen so I was unable to do much against the woman. However, as bad as this was, it's nothing compared to what goes on in some other places that are supposed to be 'caring' for people.

The place I was at employed immature young female staff, who made up about 80% of all those working there, most of them were more interested in flashing their legs & chests at the male staff (and residents!) than they ever were caring, hence why so many potentialy fatal mistakes were made regarding medication & housing etc. Fights between the residents at the house I lived at were frequent, once one was so bad police had to break it up as the tiny framed big boobed excuses for staff just locked themselves in a room while these two great big men beat the hell out of each other in the kitchen. Also a fire broke out one night when one of the residents arrived home from the local dive bar totaly drunk, and decided to try and make himself toast, the toaster caught fire and the residents who were in bed didn't even get out of bed when the alarms went off because some of them were also drunk!

Why do I think of Shutter Island when I read this thread?

At least they have hospitals that try to treat people like that. In the states, most psychiatric hospitals just won't accept people who are violent anymore. A lot of people just end up in jail.

Quite apart from the barbaric way in which Brandon is being treated - over on mental nurse there's lots of hand wringing (and some petty racism about the Dutch) from apologists for manual restraint and forced medication - in reality the psychiatric industry in the UK is no better, it just favours different methods; there's the question of whether he needs to be detained at all, or whether it's just for convenience or the institution's profit. He doesn't look like a dangerous monster to me. In one of the video clips he can be seen playing with a ball with an unseen person, when he accidentally kicks the ball at their head the first thing he does is say sorry.

That it has taken THREE YEARS for someone to realise that this is wrong is unbelievable. Now there's loads of hand wringing on television and even in the Dutch parliament, but I bet nothing is done about it.

There are hospitals who specialise in detaining people whose sole or major diagnosis is autism. We should be afraid - this could happen to any of us.

We must never forget that people with mental problems or discrepancies, or who merely are assumed to have it, are not considered to be of the same value as the rest of the population... this is an absolute truth. Don't ever tell them you are suicidal, either, because then they have to "do their job" and stop you, prioritizing it even before what is MAKING you suicidal, and then get paid for their "services", while you maybe end up getting raped in some mental ward, or just receiving the "help" to make you all better. And at the end of the day, regardless of how it goes with you, at least they had someone to experiment on with drugs from the medical companies, on the companies' behalf. They don't care if it fùcks you up for life. They don't even care in the more or less socialistic Sweden. My sister was one of their guinea pigs, messing her up so bad. I almost became one. It's a hell of a world out there, for people like us - expect the worst to be able to happen, because if you don't stand on your guard, it most likely will. In society, there is the respectable norm - "the guy next to you" that you should show respect for - and then there's us.

I am aware of that there are select few psychiatrists and psychologists that actually are good, but they are exceptionally rare, to say the very least. One has to, by default, assume that they are bad. If one does not, one is being very reckless.

Well for unsupervised access to vulnerable people who will never be believed if they complain, I can't think of a better career choice than psychiatric nursing.

This isn't appalling. This is actually quite reasonable. He is not locked into the vest and can unstrap it himself. He is required to tether himself in the presence of others because he is actually schizophrenic and subject to violent, uncontrollable rages which he feels deep remorse for after. The tether is to prevent him from accidentally hurting someone if he should suddenly fly into one of these fits.

Once they leave his apartment, he can take it off.

This is a valid and reasonable use of restraints.

The question is, is he allowed outdoor exercise? If not, then that would be appalling.

What is appalling is when people in state care are restrained or drug against their will for expressing normal emotions in a manner that does not put anyone at any risk.

There was a time when state agencies here would regularly drug kids under their care, who didn't have any actual psychiatric problems, just a rough life, with thorazine so they wouldn't have to deal with normal child reactions to their situation.

There was a state hospital not far from me that used to do lobotomies in the 1950's and did forced electro-shock therapy well into the 1980's. This was one of those old school institutions where patients had absolutely no rights unless they admitted themselves.