A patient at a state-run mental hospital lay flat on her back, bound hand and foot in heavy leather restraints, for hundreds of hours until she died. At another Virginia psychiatric hospital, a patient died after the hospital failed to treat her despite her complaints and warnings from family that she was dying. The state Cabinet secretary responsible for the mental health system vowed last month to raise confidence in the system and improve patients' rights protections.
Human rights is a very critical issue.
We don't want the feds continuing to come into Virginia and tell us how to run our facilities, Claude A. Allen said. The Justice Department has been investigating Virginia's mental hospitals since 1990 for what it says is inadequate patient care that has led to dangerous, sometimes life-threatening situations. Lawsuits were settled last summer in cases involving Eastern State Hospital, Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute and Northern Virginia Training Center, which cares for the mentally retarded. Laurie M. Flynn of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill said no state had more federal mental health investigations as Virginia. It's a remarkable sign of the relatively poor quality, she said.