At long last, an article on forced drugging in Connecticut. Don’t expect a six-part series like the investigation into forced electroshock in Connecticut turned out to be… because I am officially done with this investigation.
Last month I received a letter from the State of Connecticut Office of the Probate Court Administrator where they shared data on requests they received to forcibly drug individuals held at inpatient mental health facilities in each probate district throughout the state.
Of course, they omitted people who were forcibly drugged that weren’t under legal conservatorship. People like me. We’re also missing from the Biennial Reports they publish. If it’s confusing, you can plainly see in their Biennial Reports that they refer to C.G.S. § 17a-543(e) – for people who were under conservatorship – but make no mention of forced drugging requests under C.G.S. § 17a-543(f) – for people who were not under conservatorship.
What difference does it make?
I’m not sure anyone realizes that the law spells out that subsection (f) applies to an individual who is “capable of giving informed consent” whereas subsection (e) applies to an individual who is “incapable of giving informed consent”.
That part should be confusing to you. It still doesn’t make any fucking sense to me. If a person is capable of giving informed consent… what exactly is the grounds to be forcibly drugging them? (or forcibly electroshocking them for that matter?)
What is so frustrating about this fucking thing is that the state appears “transparent” since they publish anything at all in their Biennial Reports about involuntary psychiatric treatment, despite omitting important details.
So, I had to waste my motherfucking time writing to these people again politely requesting that the quit their fucking bullshit and just give me the goddamned data on people not under a conservatorship.
And, believe it or not, they sent me the data showing how many forced drugging requests were filed in each probate district separated out by whether the patient was under a legal conservatorship or not.
Problem?
None whatsoever. Not a fucking problem at all.
Just don’t let these fucking ass holes tell you that the people they forcibly drug are “so out of their mind they have no idea what’s going on.” We are fully aware. It’s stated in plain fucking English when these fucking things are filed under C.G.S. § 17a-543(f) instead of C.G.S. § 17a-543(e).
Now, I fully understand that nobody gives a fuck, but maybe you can go fuck yourself and deal with the fact that I also received the data I requested from the State of Connecticut Office of the Probate Court Administrator on requests filed to torture criminal defendants in order to “help” them stand trial under C.G.S. § 17a-543a(a)-(c). This data also seems to be absent from their “transparent” Biennial Reports. (Also, I asked and they do not have records splitting it up between (a), (b), and (c).)
Again, no big deal, I guess they all just deserve to be tortured since they’re criminal defendants?
Sadly for my fellow lovers of human torture data, but it appears that’s all the publicly accessible information we are allowed to have about forced psychiatric interventions in the State of Connecticut. As I said, this investigation is officially over.
I cannot close this without giving a ‘fuck you too’ to whoever signed off on all the forced drugging requests at Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut (Probate District 41 – PD41). And to think I gave you a shout out at the Connecticut Shock Awards. I’d say something cruel, but honestly, there are no words that could ever do to you what you to do your psych patients. I would like to know… how often do you have to tie them down to forcibly drug them and how often do they just surrender in fear? And, of course, how often do you fucking tie them down anyways even after they surrender? As for the people working at Griffin, you’re all good in my book unless you’re a psychiatrist or the motherfucker running the place who signed off on this shit since these requests require the signature of two physicians and the head of the hospital.
And, yes, the other recipient of the Lonely Duck Award at the Connecticut Shock Awards (Northeast Probate District 26 – PD26) is in the forced drugging data as well… which means, for those of you who want to avoid being tortured through involuntary drugging or forced electroshock: there is no inpatient mental health facility you can go to in the state of Connecticut without risking being forcibly drugged and/or forcibly electroshocked.
Perhaps it’s best put in bold letters: there is NO safe place to seek mental health services in the state of Connecticut.
To be clear, this isn’t just an issue for people walking into emergency rooms seeking services. Every licensed mental health practitioner in Connecticut is a mandatory reporter, which means that if you say the wrong thing to them then they are legally obligated to pick up the phone and have someone come and take you away to one of these facilities where you’ll be forcibly drugged and possibly even forcibly electroshocked as well (though, as stated, forced electroshock isn’t on the menu in Derby Probate District or the Northeast Probate District).
This article shouldn’t really be concluded by shitting on Derby and the Northeast District. After all, at least they are not electroshocking people against their will like they are everywhere else in the state. I’m sorry, but really the only conclusion one can draw from all of this is that there is no safe place to seek mental health services in the state of Connecticut. I mean, for fuck’s sake, as I understand it, “the United States [military] does not torture people”, so, it would seem that we do to our psychiatric inpatients that which we aren’t even willing to do to fucking terrorists.
Though, not to worry, we now know that forced drugging and forced electroshock are both fair game for torturing U.S. military veterans at the Connecticut VA… though odd that they do more forced electroshock than forced drugging there (see West Haven Probate District – PD39).
So, in the end, I guess the best way to sum it all up is that if you want to avoid being tortured, you are safer being a terrorist than a soldier (at least in Connecticut).
Those of you who want to dig into this further can go to the public stoptheshockct folder, but I am done with this thing.