The Latest Psychiatric News in NJ (And My Thoughts About It)

New Jersey Hospital for the Insane, Morristown, NJ, archival photo

A lot has been happening to the psychiatric hospitals in New Jersey in the last couple of weeks. Here is a recap of what is going on.

Trenton Has the Highest Incident Rate of NJ State Hospitals.

Given the choice to close either Trenton or Hagerdorn, Governor Chris Christie announced his decision last month (July) to close Hagedorn in June 2012. An analysis by The Express-Times of state hospital data from 2005 through 2010 shows Trenton Psychiatric Hospital recorded the highest rates of violence and patient restraint compared to New Jersey's other four state psychiatric hospitals. In 2010 alone, Trenton Psychiatric had 26 patient on patient incidents with major injury, while the other four hospitals had a total of eight. Story continues here

Greystone Patients Boycott Therapy Sessions, Protest New Rules

Nearly half of the 432 patients at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital have signed a petition or boycotted therapy sessions this month to protest new rules they say further limit their activities and force them to attend programsthat don't help in their recovery, patients and advocacy groups say. The changes at Greystone led to the petition enumerating 17 complaints ranging from "neglect of low-functioning patients to cold food to the medicating of agitated patients instead of seeking "a resolution to the problem". The report from the Newark Star Ledger is here. 

Marlboro To Recieve 3.5 Million For Improvements

Governor Christie has signed into law a piece of legislation that appropriates 3.567 million from the Clean Waters bond fund for sewerage infrastructure improvements at the former Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital. Even though the hospital is closed the sewerage treatment plant serves the New Hope facility, a new state of the art, multi million dollar addiction treatment institution. The plant's preservation will also insure the viability of any redevelopment or preservation that may happen at the site.

DMHAS Proposes To Reduce Partial Care Funding and Staff

Recent reductions in funds available to community mental health programs and to providers of Medicaid/NJ Family Care program services require reductions to existing reimbursement rates for partial care services in order to ensure that consumers can receive needed services in the most efficient and effective manner possible. Such reductions necessitate a corresponding reduction in program costs for providers of these services. Partial care programs will not receive sufficient funding to operate under current staffing ratios. Therefore, staffing adjustments must be made to ensure that the same number of consumers receive the needed services. The proposed rule is here. (As a PDF file).

My thoughts. There are five psychiatric hospitals in NJ. The worst are probably Trenton and Ancora, then Anne Klein. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be any hospitals, but if they are going to start shutting them down, Governor Christie should shut down Trenton first, and not Hagedorn.  As a resident and a paying taxpayer in NJ, I would love it if the Governor could call up some type of hearing where people who have been in these places could tell the Governor what WE THE PEOPLE, we the consumers want. Have a hearing made up with people who have been there and will talk about it. Put it on the ballot in November.  On the books it looks like closing Hagedorn is a good thing. But in reality, it's the best psychiatric hospital in the state. Close the hell holes first. Trenton is hell on earth, Hagedorn, isn't. If the Governor doesn't believe me, then take his car from Drumthwacket and do a road trip, it will take a total of twenty minutes. Then make an decision. That is my opinion, just my two cents. 

A list of the five psychiatric hospitals with adresses and numbers to call is here as a PDF file.

Psychiatric Patients' Advocates Sue New Jersey

From the New York Times- August 4, 2010-

Patient advocates filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday charging that New Jersey psychiatric hospitals routinely medicate patients against their will without a review by an outside arbiter, a practice that is banned in most other states.

Twenty-nine states require a judge’s ruling for involuntary medication, according to the suit, including New York, Connecticut and other large states, like California, Florida and Texas. Five other states leave the decision to an individual or panel outside the hospital. Some states also provide an advocate to represent a patient in a hearing on forced medication.

But in New Jersey, state rules allow a patient in a state hospital to appeal medication decisions only to people in the hospital. The lawsuit contends that the internal appeal process is routinely ignored and that psychiatric patients in private hospitals lack any opportunity to appeal medication regimens at all.

The suit, filed in Federal District Court in Trenton by the group Disability Rights New Jersey, seeks a court order requiring the state to provide judicial review of involuntary medication. It notes that a prison inmate has more power to contest treatment decisions than a psychiatric patient.

The drugs forced on patients include powerful medications for conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. They help many people with those diseases function better, but can have serious side effects, including diabetes, tremors, seizures, high blood pressure, obesity, sedation, aches and impaired mental function.

“As a patient in a state hospital, it’s your legal right to refuse and go through a process, but you get severely penalized if you try,” said W. Emmett Dwyer, litigation director of Disability Rights New Jersey, a federally financed organization. “They view you as noncompliant with treatment. They give you an injection instead of a pill. And they tell you if you don’t take it, you won’t get out.”

There are about 1,800 patients at any given time in New Jersey’s five state psychiatric hospitals, and 1,000 in private ones.

Michael D. Reisman, a lawyer with Kirkland & Ellis, which is helping bring the lawsuit, said recent records from one state hospital showed that fewer than 20 percent of patients contested their medication.

But the advocates and several former patients said many more objected to their prescriptions but submitted quietly, rather than risk painful injections or a longer hospital stay. Others, they said, are too medicated to object.

“When I said no, they just shot me up instead, so pretty soon I gave up,” said Alice Hsia, 34, who has been in and out of hospitals for schizophrenia. “The times I was sedated, I would sign anything they wanted.”

Mr. Reisman said the question often was not whether some medication was needed, but rather one of dosage or a desire to try a “different drug with fewer side effects.” Some hospital psychiatrists do not take such concerns seriously, he said, but “a judicial hearing would give the patient more leverage and force the doctors to listen.”

The State Department of Human Services, which runs the hospitals, declined to comment on the suit. But among advocates for the mentally ill, there are wide-ranging opinions on involuntary treatment.

Phil Lubitz, associate director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New Jersey, said he did not see forced medication as a major issue, noting that it was extremely difficult to get patients committed in New Jersey, and that most who were presented “a danger to themselves or others.”

But Robert Davison, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Essex County, called New Jersey’s policy “beneath contempt.”

“This state is way behind the times,” he said. “It suspends people’s civil rights without due process, and it’s troubled me for years.”

A few states require that the issue of involuntary medication be addressed when someone is being committed. More than 20 states require a separate hearing on the subject. There is no way to know how many patients in New Jersey would have their medications changed if there were an external review. But the advocates say a fundamental right is at stake.

The rest of the article is here.

Are you listening Senators Menendez and Lautenberg? Governor Christie? My congressman is Rush Holt. I'm going to his office at 9 am today. This is serious, folks. Please, if you live in NJ pick up a pen, call or write to you congressman, senator, or Governor Christie.  Tell NAMI they are wrong on this one. Do you want your beloved family member drugged against their will? How would you like it. 

The pen is mightier than the sword.  Get writing.
Eta: I added contacts for NJ Senators and Governor Christie

New NJ Law Reports on Ancora Incidents

Soon to be leaving Governor Corzine (D), signed nearly two dozen bills into laws on November 20, 2009, in an attempt to get his house in order before Governor-Elect Chris Christie (R) takes office in January. Most bills have been sitting on his desk for months. Among the new laws, Measures will be taken to restrict marketing of credit cards on college campuses, it's now illegai to sell and distribute novelty lighters, doctors can write several prescriptions at once for certain drugs, and police must now tell school principals when students commit certain crimes.

And according to NJ.Com:

One law, written after a series of violent incidents at the Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Camden County, requires the Department of Human Services to report physical assaults and deaths at state-run psychiatric hospitals online and to the Public Advocate.

The law is "a direct response to delays in the release of statistics on assaults at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital (in Winslow)," the legislators said.

According to the Courier Post:

It requires the Department of Human Services to track the number of assaults and unexpected deaths at the hospitals. An online report is to be updated quarterly.

Another health bill, inspired by the death of a developmentally disabled woman who lived at a group home in Edison, requires facilities to give the medical examiner contact information for the deceased's relatives.

The sponsors included Assembly members Pamela Lampitt of Cherry Hill, Louis Greenwald of Voorhees, Sandra Love of Gloucester Township and Nilsa Cruz-Perez of Barrington, all Democrats.

Kudos to Corzine for signing these two mental health laws- but why did he have to wait until he was almost out of office to do it?

Complete Smoking Ban starts at NJ Psychiatric Facilities

Today's (NJ) Newark Star Ledger has a piece up, stating that

Beginning today, smoking will be banned in all areas of the Greystone Park and Ancora psychiatric hospitals, with similar bans to follow at three other state psychiatric facilities, Human Services Commissioner Jennifer Velez said.

Smoking already is forbidden inside state psychiatric hospitals. The measure extends the ban to outdoor areas and affects patients, employees and visitors.

I would like to know what genius convinced Governor Corzine this is a good thing. They sure as hell didn't ask me. I have been i private and public hospitals- and what do you do in them? You smoke. Like Eliot's Prufrock measuring his life by tea spoons, you measure the hours by cigarette breaks.

The article goes on...

The ban comes 15 months after Gov. Jon Corzine signed legislation that divided the state's mental health community; proponents praised the health benefits for patients while opponents said the ban it violates patients' civil rights.

"This initiative mirrors what is being done at hospitals, medical centers and corporations throughout the country and supports the Division of Mental Health Services' efforts to embrace a system which focuses on wellness and recovery," Velez said.

Deputy Human Services Commissioner Kevin Martone cited a national study from 2006 that showed people with mental illness live an average of 25 years less than the general population. Some 75 percent are estimated to be addicted to nicotine, contributing to the premature death, the study found.

"That's not acceptable. Our intent is to increase the life-spans of our patients, not to shorten them," Martone said. "As providers of health care, our state psychiatric hospitals should treat the illness, whether it is schizophrenia, nicotine dependence or high blood pressure.

Mr. Martone- with all due respect, since I know you by one degree of separation- The last time I was in a hospital, the smokers were going off the wall, craving their cigarettes. The nurses were giving them patches, but the thing is about a patch, you want something to hold in your fingers, to put in your mouth, to shake into an ashtray, to grind the butt down. It's not just the process of lighting the cigarette, putting it to your lips and inhaling, it's everything.

Take it away from people in psychiatric hospitals, what do you get? A bunch of unhappy smokers who are forced against their will to wear patches and crave a cigarette. They get unhappy. They snap at the doctors, and nurses. They are miserable, crabby, and just not pleasant to be around.


And you mention high blood pressure. How many psychiatric drugs increase blood pressure? Have you looked? If I had a choice between a pill like, say Zyprexa,and a Marlboro, guess which one I would take?


Article continues.... one for, one against, standard stuff, but worth reading. Especially this quote by Carolyn Beauchamp, the President of the Mental Health Association in NJ.

These are not regular hospitals. Many of these people are not there by choice but are committed against their wills, sometimes for long periods of time'' Carolyn Beauchamp, president of the Mental Health Association in New Jersey, said last night.

"We're not in favor of smoking, but we think in these particular settings there should be some different standards that consider the rights and needs of these patients," she said.

You know, it's come a long way since my first stay in a hospital , where everyone smoked in the day room. Now it's outside, one cigarette an hour, with the staff lightning them for the patients. But it's still better than nothing.

Why do I feel so strongly about this? Because I found out one or two cigarettes a week quiets my brain better than most of the drugs I have been on. When I am suffering from suicidal ideation, smoking is the only thing that can get me out of that.


I shudder to think what will happen if I am hospitalized again, and cannot smoke. They better have chocolate. Lots of it.





Ancora State Hospital, NJ, From the Newark Star Ledger

A Ray of Hope in New Brunswick, NJ

New Jersey has traditionally concentrated its mental health money on housing and medical care, not on programs like Laurel House, according to board members. “We gave them decent housing, but we didn’t give them hope, and they vegetated,” said another founder, Jackson Toby, 83, a retired sociology professor at Rutgers.


From Sunday, December 28, 2008 New York Times-Laurel House in New Brunswick is a great place to be with others. I can personally vouch for this place and am thrilled they got a beautiful article in the Times.