In June of 2014, twenty-seven year old Tuarus McNair, a mental patient at Treasure Coast Forensic Treatment Center, was punched repeatedly in the head by another patient during a fight.
The hospital workers’ response to this brutal attack was unbelievable. Instead of merely separating the two men, attendants gave McNair an enormous dose of an antipsychotic drug (Thorazine) and led him to his room.
When hospital workers checked on him later, his heart had stopped.
Despite clear evidence of a Thorazine overdose (he was given 10 times the recommended amount), medical examiner Dr. Roger Mittleman blamed McNair’s death on a rare heart malfunction that can strike drug abusers or athletes. The Department of Children and Families (DCF) ruled McNair’s death was “natural.”
McNair’s Mother searches for the Truth
Mrs. McNair, who spent 15 months attempting to get to the truth behind her son’s death states, “If they get away doing it with my son, it could be your daughter next time, your son, your mom or your dad that they get away with it.”
The anguished mother says “I just want someone to tell me what happened to my baby.”
Last March Mrs. McNair arranged to pick up her son’s medical records. She arrived with a reporter and was met by two security guards in company with Enza Abbate, the hospital’s risk manager.
Abbate, who must surely have a heart of stone, told Mrs. McNair “You’ll be getting a letter from our corporate office. This conversation is over.”
The grieving mother was ordered to leave. She never did get any records from the hospital. Mrs. McNair states, “My son is dead and no one will tell me what happened.”
Forty two year old Man Killed at another Florida State Mental Hospital
Another victim was 42 year old Luis Santana, who died at South Florida State Hospital in Pembroke Pines. His caretakers thought he was having a psychotic episode, and gave him five powerful drugs to “calm him down.” They left him in a bathtub that reached temperatures of 118 degrees, causing his skin to peel off when workers eventually attempted to revive him.
The fact that hospital attendants were to check on him every 15 minutes, and neglected to do so, can only be found in sealed reports. To make things worse, the names of the employees in charge of his misguided care were also deemed secret.
The state’s wall of silence and secrecy concerning its mental hospitals has created a deadly and dangerous situation where tracking neglect and abuse is difficult, if not impossible.
Psychiatric Hospitals Above the Law?
Reporters from the Times/Herald-Tribune have looked into injuries at six of Florida’s mental institutions. Information regarding the incidents has not been forthcoming. Deaths have been classified as natural even though neglect and mistakes by employees contributed to or caused the fatalities.
Well-meaning but misguided state officials feel the solution to the neglect and abuse rampant in these psychiatric houses of horror is providing them with additional funding.
But throwing more money at a profession unable to scientifically diagnose or cure a single mental disorder is a recipe for disaster. The tortures of electroconvulsive therapy, psychiatric brain operations and permanently disabling antipsychotic drugs should be outlawed, not funded by the taxpayer.
The truly insane need gentle treatment in a safe environment, not manhandling by brutal attendants armed with hypodermic needles.
To read the full investigative reports, please click on these links:
http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2015/investigations/florida-mental-health-hospitals/secrecy/
http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/investigations/2015/11/02/state-mnetal-hospitals-10-investigates-tampa-bay-times-sarasota-herald-tribune/75058432/
Abuse And Attacks In Florida’s Mental Hospitals
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Tel: 1-800-782-2878
South Florida State Hospital is a brutal torture camp with no medical validity. There are constant fights and people going bezerk in their concrete and metal cages,punching doors and walls until they break bones,smashing their own heads until they break open.This is while they are on their prescribed medications. The doctors intentionally give toxic and dangerous drug combinations and lie about what pills are what and what the dosages are. I was overdosed and lied to until I could no longer remember what year it was or who the President was,which was done to keep me from testifying in court against a wicked and corrupt criminal conspiracy that fabricates charges and then has people disappear into the torture center and drugged until they totally incoherent.Then they have to take an insanity plea and agree to sign away all rights to everything and adhere to every medical demand and personal whim of the system or go back to jail. So in effect they take innocent people and force them to take an not guilty insanity plea which then means they are a meal ticket(medical expenses) and voiceless puppet of the system and have lost all human and constitutional rights.
Please consider filing an abuse report at https://www.cchrflorida.org/report-psychiatric-abuse/
Once I was sent to one of these,it’s as bad as you think…the food is bad,the beds hurt,the people there were very mean,and I used to get very emotional and I cried alot,I have generallized aniexty disorder,and depression disorder, and would have aniexty attacks and panic attacks,and they never helped me,since I went voluntarily by my parents,I panicked so much that they had to much and my parents picked me up,I get a outpatient doctor and I got my medical and therapy,it’s still bothers me and I get flash backs,and I still have some aniexty attacks(way not as bad as it was back then) it was the worst thing in the world,never again,if you have a mental problem too,and you are reading this, remember, get therapy first and think twice.
Did the author who wrote this have any college degree to make this credible?
Hi, you would need to contact the Tampa Bay Times and WTSP to find out if the reporters had college degrees.
who wrote this?????? and what date was it posted? gracias
This post was written by a CCHR volunteer staff member and it was posted in January 2016.
I typed a conversation in the past wherein a mother lost her son, too – in the emergency room of a regular hospital, where psychiatric doctors decided that a man there for severe headaches, had been trying to commit suicide with the tylenol in his pocket. These arrogant and presumptuous doctors had not fed nor hydrated the man, when he called and asked his mother to get him out of there (he was not a minor). She was not allowed to see him, with the threat that if she tried to remove him, they would institutionalize him. Outside his room, she heard these doctors administering some new drug to him and heard them say, “uh oh…. uh oh…” They tried to bring him back, but he died. The mother said they wrote “suicide” on the death report. She tried to prosecute, but didn’t have the money to do so. Psychiatrists are getting away with crimes on a daily basis; and this is because mental patients are not considered to have the rights of other persons. Those rights have been stripped away. This begins in schools where nurses and parents and then psychiatrists decide normal behaviors are disordered, and give them drugs. This society is letting them get away with murder.