Showing posts with label isolation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label isolation. Show all posts

Saturday, March 24, 2012

GARTH DANIELS - Seclusion: The Invisible Torture

"Hospital: A health care facility that provides beds, nursing services, organised medical staff for diagnosis and treatments for both surgical and medical patients for a variety of diseases and disorders". Mosby's Medical Nursing and Allied Health Dictionary, 3rd Edition.
 
Fifty-one days in solitary confinement, isolation, seclusion call it whatever you may...  add to this a combination of  neuroleptics  (psychiatric drugs) and the psychological effects of isolation 24/7...its mind altering... its an invisible torture... well documented in South Africa.  What about the hypothalamus and pituitary and what is the patients renal function at this point in time?...  What about Hyponatremia...an electrolyte disorder...the risk of mortality associated with potentially adverse outcomes? 

Saturday 24 March 2012 the patient...Garth Daniels...was removed from the seclusion room and permitted to sleep and remain in the secure open ward.  Is this Thomas Embling Forensic Hospital ?  Forensic yes! Hospital remains a question of definition...

Garth Daniels is not free.  STOP PRESS Thursday 29 March Garth Daniels was ushered back into solitary confinement,

Thursday, December 23, 2010

GARTH DANIELS - HDU - The Culture of Psychiatry

HDU-Accronym for High Dependency Unit - used in hospital Psychiatry Wards which implies security doors locked from the outside...cut off from the rest of society...being treated without informed consent...treated in isolation against one's free will.

The HDU also has rooms for solitary confinement, referred to as seclusion...total isolation from other patients... It is noted that a senior hospital administrator Ben Kelley of Maroonda Hospital not too long ago referred to seclusion as a form of treatment. It begs the question why society tolerates such "treatment".

The reason perhaps is because we as a society don't wish to know...? Or is it because no one other than those committed are aware of the culture that prevails behind those locked doors...until now?