More stories of America's throw-away people
by digby
The Sacramento Bee has been reporting this hideous story of Nevada putting its mental patients an greyhound buses and shipping them to other states with no resources for months. It's a truly harrowing tale that says a whole lot about our health care system in this country. Here's just one of the stories:
Spencer moved to Las Vegas from Fresno in 2010 hoping for a new start. He found an apartment and work as a driver, and later at a private mental health treatment facility.
“I did my best. But behind the scenes I was battling these issues,” Spencer said.
Last summer, at 47, his health started failing, and depression set in. He checked into Harrah’s on the Vegas Strip, fashioned a noose out of a bed sheet and tied it to the shower bar.
Then he heard a housekeeper’s cart rattling down the hall.
“If I do this,” he remembers thinking, “I’m going to traumatize someone else.”
He left the room and made his way to a hospital, which sent him to Rawson-Neal, southern Nevada’s main psych hospital. That was on Aug. 26, 2012. There, Dr. Jacob Manjooran wrote:
“He states ‘I hate life and people.’ His mood has been very depressed for about 2 months, he has nightmares. … Has made six suicide attempts. …
“His only child, a son aged 22, died from drug abuse 2 months ago. Currently homeless. … Nephew and an uncle committed suicide.”
The staff gave him antidepressants and therapy. But mostly, he sat. A notation in his chart says: “William is ‘tired of being left alone with my thoughts’ and feels that the staff is uncaring.”
On Sept. 18, as Rawson-Neal prepared to release him, he was asked whether he’d like to return to Southern California, where he grew up. He wanted to stay in Vegas. He especially didn’t want to go anywhere near the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale. A note in his file says Spencer “discussed feeling very scared about being back in Glendale where he has numerous memories of bad relationships and worries that he will be back at square one.”
The staff persisted, telling him California has much better services, and gave him a discharge plan. It was a cruel joke: “The patient is being discharged to Pasadena, CA, where he will be enrolled at the Passage Ways Program.”
Pasadena is next door to Glendale, the place he feared going. But he said a Rawson-Neal social worker assured him that Passageways was expecting him and that he’d get treatment there.
On Sept. 19, the hospital sent him by cab to the Greyhound depot in downtown Las Vegas and paid $66 for a ticket for the 1:35 a.m. bus to the Greyhound depot on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.
At the Greyhound counter, he asked why the bus wasn’t going to Pasadena. The clerk answered that bus didn’t stop in Pasadena. With no clue how he would get from L.A.’s Skid Row to Pasadena, he called Rawson-Neal.
Whoever he spoke with at Rawson-Neal offered him no help, except to suggest that he call Passageways when he arrived in Los Angeles and ask to be picked up, or call 911. He knew he could walk away from the Vegas depot, but had no other place to go and decided to take the Rawson-Neal social worker at her word.
As the bus crossed the desert, however, he became anxious. At a stop in Riverside, he gathered up his few coins and phoned Passageways. The Passageways receptionist had no idea who he was, had no beds, and would have no way of picking him up if he arrived in L.A.
Ryan Izell, a director at Passageways, told me he was unaware of anyone calling from Rawson-Neal trying to arrange care for Spencer. The service’s limited funding is reserved for people in Pasadena, and there aren’t enough shelters for the “hundreds of individuals who are homeless in Pasadena,” Izell said.
He ended up walking into a police station and a kindly cop took him to a hospital.
There are hundreds of these stories some of which have ended in tragedy, with innocent people being killed at the hands of some of these mentally ill individuals. And apparently this has been going on for decades.
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