}
Wednesdav. August 21. 1974
University Daily Kansan
Mental Patients' Rights Stir Controversy ...
Seclusion rooms at Larned lack toilet and lavatories, according to the interim committee of the legislature. Patients are forced to use buckets.
AND THERE are no beds, only mattresses, the newspaper articles said.
But, Keller said, lavatory facilities and specially constructed beds exist in almost all quiet rooms at Larned and at the state hospitals in Tocayne and Osawatomie.
Sometimes, he said, pillows can't be put on the beds in quiet rooms for fear that they will become a source of anxiety.
However, if patients are so combative that the psychiatrist thinks they might try to hurt themselves, they are put in rooms with mattresses only. Keller said, so that they can't injure themselves by hitting their heads on bed frames.
ANOTHER COMPLAINT of Frydman's group is that patients allegedly aren't paid for maintenance work they do for the hospitals.
Frydman, in testifying against the accreditation of Topeka State Hospital, said all residential care institutions in Kansas had been required to inform the Labor informing them that they were legally bound to pay patients as much as they pay nonpatients under the Fair Labor Act.
"Topeka State patients," Frydman said, "are as of today, continuing to do involuntary labor without having been informed of their rights under this act. Shouldn't two months be long enough to notify the patients?"
Bt state hospital officials said rigid guidelines ensuring patients' rights were better.
ANOTHER AREA ATTACKED by Frydman and other patients' rights advocates is the legal definition of a mentally ill person.
Kansas law defines a mentally ill person as someone who is so mentally impaired that he requires care and treatment; who is or probably will be dangerous to himself, to others or to their property, and who can't understand that he needs care.
Frydman said the present law was vague and allowed "clinical judgment to deprive a patient of life."
"It's the same thing as preventive detention, of which dictatorships are so fond," he said. "It's dictatorship under the gueuse of the Good Samaritan. We're dealing with preventive detention for the supposedly mentally ill that the criminal code is based on." It's a very repressive and dictatorial measure against which there's no 'defense.'
BUT JULUS COHEN, assistant director of the High Plains Comprehensive Mental Health Center at Hays, defended existing laws.
"Many people who lack good judgment and badly need care may not seek and may even refuse such care," Cohen said. "Yet we must ask the same as to demand some kind of intervention."
Cohen cited the example of a wife who always had been somewhat jealous but suddenly became unbelievable in accusing her husband. Her husband knows that the complaints are untrue and that she is not jealous. Cohen said he asked her to seek treatment, she refuses and insists that her problem is her husband's alleged infidelity.
"She is obviously delusional but has not demonstrated evidence of violent or homicidal behavior," Cohen said. "She is, however, becoming increasingly unbelievable to live with and is completely disrupping her family. Since she refuses to attend such courses does the husband have for getting relief, other than to separate from her."
Advocates of patients' rights also want mental patients to have the right to refuse care if they are in a position where patients sometimes were given overdoses which produced spaced-out feelings. He said patients should be told of possible side effects and then have the right to refuse the medicine.
BUT CAROL SWIFT, director of special projects at Waydonia Community Mental Health Center in Kansas City, Mo., said he was frustrated it's not sure enough to make such decisions.
"It is quite hard to talk logic to an illogical mind," she said.
Howard V. Williams, director of Kansas community mental health services, said the need for mental illness treatment required from an unconscious nonmental patient and, therefore, shouldn't be required from a mental patient, whose consciousness is impaired by mental illness.
'The doctrine of implied consent permits medication for the patient who is unconscious and is seen by a doctor," Williams said. "To the degree that mental illness affects the consciousness of the individual, care should be considered. A fully conscious patient should be able to judge medication. Otherwise, the opinions of others—hospital aides, spouses, guardians, judges, nurses, physicians, statisticians—need to be taken into account."
14th St. Entrance To Campus Closed In Economy Move
The 14th Street entrance to the University of Kansas campus will be closed from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday.
The entrance is between Spooner Art Museum and Danforth Chapel.
L. E.W. Fenstemaker, of Security and Parking Department, said the 14th Street closing was an economy move. The closing cost was $620 per car, the traffic control booth there, he said.
Fenstermaker said that few cars entered campus from 14th Street during school hours, causing the 14th Street booth wouldn't be burst on the remaining traffic control booths.
Congestion at the remaining four entrances to campus is normal for this time of year he said because new students were required with University traffic regulations.
Fenstemaker said the 14th Street closing was approved at a parking board meeting later.
GUIDELINES OF PATIENTS 'rights at the Meninger Foundation in Topeka and for state-operated mental hospitals guarantee the right to "proper and adequate treatment" and to an explanation of status, including medications, to the individual and family."
But neither document says a patient may refuse medication.
The ability to send or receive unencensed mail is another point of controversy.
J. Lee Denner of the KU Medical Center he said he opposed all censorship of mail to and from patients. He made only one exclamation, and continually received threatening letters.
"I WANT my patients to retain all their are hospitalized," Dempster said.
But guidelines for the state mental hospitals say mail and visitation privileges
And Julius Cohen of the Hays mental hospital said the right to mail unchecked letters posed problems for patients with impaired judgment.
"Witness the ordering of objects for which
payment cannot be made," he said. "One patient wrote to a radio station offering her 'lay-on hands healing power' to the public. Another patient wrote a threatening letter to the President and incurred a visit from the FBI.
"MANY PATIENTS CANNOT gauge the appropriateness of the consequences of their actions of statements. What provision is to be made then for dealing with the consequences of these statements? How much staff time should be tied up in dealing with these consequences?" he said.
"It is perhaps a question worth answering as to whether a patient should be allowed to create difficulties or whether to anticipate such difficulties with him beforehand and perhaps prevent unfortunate consequences." I personally prefer the second alternative.
Howard V. Williams of the community mental health services said allowing a patient to see his records could cause trouble. For example, he said, a spouse may have been discharged for a file. If a former patient discovers this, he said, it may cause martial problems.
Another of the patients' requests has been the right to see their medical and physical exam.
WILLIAMS SAID HE thought friends and relatives should be permitted to talk about a patient in strictest confidence. People giving information to mental health workers or doctors can demand that it be off the record, he said.
Doctors speculate about medical, legal, moral and religious implications of a
patient's illness, Williams said, and mental patients who read their own records could learn.
It would be harmful for a patient to read his file and discover a label like "manic depressive" applied to him, said Rix Shanline, secretary of the Kansas
"There's a time and place for everything's a time. It could be that projection."
MOST OF THE RIGHTS asked for by groups like Louis Frydman's were contained in Senate Bill 239, which was in the Kansas Legislature's latest session.
State Sen. Arden Booth, R-Lawrence, said he would be ready to refuse to compromise on certain points.
But Frydman blamed State Sen. J. C. Murphy for the committee's chairman of the committee, for the failure
"The Judiciary Committee threw up its hands and walked away," Booth said.
"IF THAT BILL COMES out (of my committee) it will be over my dead body." Tillsonon was quoted as saying, "I'm a director of the High Plains Mental Health Center Hays and they call me this bill would tie their hands in treatment. It goes too far."
Julius Cohen, assistant director of the Hays facility, said the bill would make it impossible to treat certain types of patient, who are the highly suspicious paranoid patient.
"A major assumption in the bill is that it is all too easy to impose unjustified
Feedback Grant Funds Denied
By DENNIS ELLSWORTH
Kansan Staff Reporter
A request for a $120,000 federal grant for funding of the Curriculum and Instructional Survey has been refused, according to Philip McKnight, director of the office of instructional resources. The program is commonly known as Feedback.
Application for the grant was made under the Fund for Improvement of Post-Secondary Education of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
Notification of the refusal came in late July but the reasons for the department's decision were still being drawn up and be provided at a later date, McKnight said.
These refuels, the program will be unaided this year on a much smaller scale.
The federal funds would have provided money for two years of operation and extensive research of the program, McKnight said.
A Special Project Request for about 50 students from the University also was released.
"The University is committed to the program," McKnight said.
About $15,000 will be used for operations of the program this year, McKnight said. This money will be used solely for operating the system and computation time and student help, he said.
Current plans call for administering Feedback only during the fall semester and an increased emphasis on making it more relevant to specific courses, McKnight said.
He said that the program directors would be trying to help instructors make better use of the five question blanks left at the end of the survey for their use.
McKnight said an advisory board composed of both faculty members and students would be established this semester to offer counsel on matters concerning the survey.
He said the board would consider all aspects of the program, including funding.
Resummital of applications for grants and seeking funds from the Student Senate are possible methods of financing, McKnight said.
large amount of money available for funding the survey.
John Beinser, student body president,
said the Student Senate wouldn't have any
"I think there will be reluctance on our part to get back into funding the program since the University has essentially taken it over," he said.
We'll give you the shirt off our back
Jayhawk
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hospitalizations and harsh treatment on patients in Kansas." Cohen told Tillotson's committee. "regarding admission and confinement procedures, I raise the questions: Are the present laws inadequate? Or are they being poorly administered in some instances because of uninformed judges, insufficient hospital
staff and overcrowded facilities. If the latter conditions are the problem, then a mere change in the law will accomplish little."
Frydman said the best way to assure patients' rights would be to make hospital staff members criminally and civilly liable for abuses suffered by patients.
BLUE CROSS & BLUE SHIELD ENROLLMENT TIME AGAIN
This is a voluntary plan which supplements the regular student health services.
There is a special Blue Cross and Blue Shield
participating Major Medical Coverage, for KU
students.
When you enroll for classes, stop at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield enrollment table in Allen House. Fill out the application card and present to the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Representative.
Don't miss this opportunity to enroll in this special student plan.
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