Imagine yourself residing in a room that is 9 feet long and 6 feet wide. The walls were once painted stark white, but have faded to a dingy yellow. The furniture you do have, a bed, a metal desk and chair, and a commode are all bolted to the floor. You have only one blanket to keep you warm at night. The window, if you can call it that, is covered with shatter proof glass and steel bars, obstructing the view of any sunlight you may have gotten. There is a windowless steel door, and no matter how hard you pound on it, or how loud you scream, no one comes. You are locked in this room 23 hours a day, day after day, year after year.
No, this is not a maximum-security prison. This is a room in an anonymous mental institution. You are being treated for depression, and you have been locked in this room because the medication you were ordered to take has side effects that made you prone to violence. When staff members were "forced" to restrain you when you refused to take your medication, you were left covered with bruises. You suspect your wrist may be broken. You've asked for a doctor repeatedly, and still, no one comes.
And so you sit in this room, rocking back and forth on your hard mattress, letting your mind wander. Soon, you fear, you won't have much of a mind left. You would give anything for a book, even a child's book, anything new to think about. Eventually, you start to think about suicide. Even death would be better than this existence of forced medications, restraints, abusive staff, and sensory deprivation. Although your concentration is quickly fading by the hour, you know that you are definitely worse for the wear since coming to this institution, this place where the mentally ill are supposed to come for care and healing.
Little did you know that when you checked yourself into this facility for treatment that it had over 80 citations for various different violations over the last 10 years. Of those 80 citations, 13 of them were for patients who had died due to lack of care, medication overdoses, or abuse by the staff. All you wanted to do was get better. All you knew was that your depression had reached a level that was unmanageable. So you checked yourself into the nearest state-run psychiatric hospital for the mentally ill. You didn't pause to consider that you may nit receive the best care. After all, state run hospitals must be monitored closely, forced to follow strict guidelines and mandates, or the state wouldn't be funding them.
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