(UPDATED Thursday, May 23, 3 p.m.) HARTFORD, CT – Following a three-year investigation, the legal advocacy group Disability Rights Connecticut (DRCT) released a report Wednesday alleging statutory and constitutional rights violations against a large mental health center and the department that oversees it.
The DRCT’s report focused on the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC), which is an in-patient psychiatric facility in New Haven, and the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS), which is the agency that operates the center.
After reviewing 14 patient records and over 300 policies and procedures at CHMC and DMHAS, the DRCT concluded that significant overhaul is needed.
“Substantial improvements must be made to both CMHC and DMHAS policies, procedures, practices, and staff training with respect to protection from harm including protection from sexual abuse; patient treatment plans; restraint and seclusion; therapeutic approaches to improve patients’ life skills; discharge planning; and inadequate quality assurance data collection,” the report said.
DMHAS Chief of Staff Christopher McClure responded to the report with a written statement Wednesday, saying that CMHC is an accredited facility and that the care of its patients is the department’s paramount concern. He also said the agency had already engaged with Disability Rights Connecticut during the investigation.
“While we appreciate the hard work and input of DRCT, and while we continue to review their report, the agency has numerous concerns with DRCT’s findings and recommendations; which include subjective criteria, calls for systems change when robust risk management, quality assurance, and critical incident reporting are already in place, and citation of isolated events that have since been remedied,” DMHAS Chief of Staff Christopher McClure said in the statement. “Our concerns with these findings and recommendations have already been articulated to DRCT throughout this process and with vigorous debate.”
One of the main points of emphasis in the DRCT’s report is what is described as a poor reporting system for patient care and abuse.
“CMHC lacks sufficient mechanisms for reporting, investigating, and tracking essential areas of patient care that can place patient safety at risk,” the report said.
According to the report, although some incidents are reported, on multiple occasions DMHAS was either not made aware of or did not look into incidents of sexual misconduct.
“CMHC failed to report or investigate two occasions of two different patients masturbating in a common area of the facility in the presence of other patients and staff. CMHC also failed to report multiple occasions of sexual abuse of a female patient by three separate male patients,” the report said.
The report goes on to say that CMHC failed to investigate four out of five allegations of sexual abuse made by patients that were reviewed by DRCT.
Of those allegations, three were made against CMHC staff and one was a case of “abuse and neglect” from a patient’s family member prior to the patient being admitted to CMHC.
“Those allegations included sexual contact by staff on two occasions, a patient allegation that a staff member asked the patient to perform oral sex on the staff member,” the report said.
The report outlines several other findings of the investigation, including failures on the part of CMHC and DMHAS to:
- ensure personal safety of patients;
- ensure appropriate use of restraint and seclusion, and;
- provide adequate treatment, including active treatment and discharge planning.
“Consequently, patients have suffered irreparable harm, and they are at serious risk of suffering
continuing irreparable harm if these violations are not immediately remediated,” the organization said in its executive summary.
The DRCT report makes several recommendations to CMHC on different issues, including:
- Instituting a more concrete system of reporting and investigating abuse and neglect;
- Creating a better system for reporting areas of patient care including quality assurance data and treatment and discharge plans, and;
- Developing adequate procedures to protect patients from excessive use of restraint and seclusion.
DRCT’s report also said that many of the findings of its investigation were similar to findings reported by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) at Connecticut Valley Hospital, another DMHAS facility, in 2007.
Those findings resulted in a settlement with the DOJ.
A day after the release of the report, Senate Republicans at the General Assembly released a statement, attributed to Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding, Sen. Heather Somers, Ranking Senator on the Public Health Committee, and Sen. Jeff Gordon, a medical doctor and a member of the Public Health Committee:
“Shocking. Disgusting. Unacceptable. The report cites failures on multiple levels. Failures which cry out for corrective actions and oversight. We will work on a bipartisan basis to fix what is broken at this facility.”
Somers said she plans to ask for a formal investigation.
