Psychiatric nurses argue that more staff are needed to manage violent patients – but are patients with mental illness any more violent than the rest of the community?

When the union representing psychiatric nurses launched a campaign for extra staff earlier this month, it painted a disturbing and violent portrait of life on the wards of our mental hospitals.

Due largely to hundreds of staff vacancies, the union argued, there has been a sharp increase in assaults on members of staff. It said 1,314 assaults on staff were recorded last year, up from 966 in 2007 and 1,104 in 2008.

On one occasion eight gardaí in riot gear had to come to the assistance of nurses trying to manage a highly aggressive patient at St Brendan’s Hospital in Dublin. In Ennis, it says, a single patient was being managed 24 hours a day by security staff due to a shortage of nurses and secure facilities.

The result, the Psychiatric Nurses Association said, was that patients suffering from depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder were having their recovery threatened by this “frightening and threatening hospital environment”.

The picture depicted by the union, however, has been criticized by some mental health campaigners. John McCarthy, founder of the Mad Pride movement, says the behavior of a small minority of patients has been used to further nurses’ demands for higher staffing levels and better working conditions.

The collateral damage, he says, is that efforts to reduce stigma against people with mental health problems are being undermined.

Is bipolar disorder a disease? Can medications like lithium correct chemical imbalances and stabilize mood? Do psychiatric drugs act completely differently on the brain than recreational drugs? UK psychiatrist Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, author of The Myth Of The Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment, discusses how seeing psychiatric medications as treatments for disease misleads the public about how they actually work, and obscures their potential for abuse as tools of social control.

Off the Beat: Village Hill picks up steam, despite economy

An anemic economy may have slowed momentum at Village Hill Northampton, but efforts to develop the former state hospital grounds into a mix of homes and businesses is picking up steam this summer.

On the north campus, where most of the homes are being constructed, Wright Builders Inc. reports that interest in its high-end subdivision has revved back up this year. The Northampton company is also a year ahead of schedule in its development of a cluster of townhouses.

Meanwhile, the state agency overseeing the sites overall development is in negotiations with a developer for a 26-home bungalow complex north of the community gardens. MassDevelopment is expected to ink a deal with that unnamed developer rather soon, said spokeswoman Kelsey Abbruzzese.

Finally, on the developments south campus, Kollmorgen Electro-Opticals new 140,000-square-foot manufacturing and office facility is expected to be completed in a few months, at which time the company plans to move its 370-plus employee workforce there from its King Street headquarters.

As for the home construction already under way, Jonathan Wright of Wright Builders said that nine of the 11 high-end, single-family lots in its Morningside subdivision are spoken for. Three of those homes are already built and one is under construction. Work on three more is slated for the fall, with two more to begin next spring.

Meanwhile, the 12-unit Eastview townhouse complex is selling fast. The first of three buildings is finished, with the units selling for between $269,000 and $349,000, depending on their location and whether they have two or three bedrooms.

Katie D. Lusnia, of Easthampton, was soaking up the atmosphere at the homeless shelter known as the Grove Street Inn. The couch where she and her mother sat was comfortable, the wall behind them hung with photographs donated by local artists. Sunshine poured in through the window.

“It feels like a home,” she concluded.

The 10-year-old had arrived with her mother, Deborah B. Lusnia, and a check for $426, which she handed over to the shelter’s director, Danielle C. DeBerry. The money included the $401 in proceeds from a talent show she put on last year as a fourth grader at the Pepin School in Easthampton. An aunt in Texas, impressed by Katie’s philanthropic spirit, threw in another $25.

“So now it’s a little higher, Lusnia told DeBerry.

With 21 beds and a waiting list that hovers around 30, Grove Street is in high demand among the homeless during the summer months. The pressure eases a bit when the Interfaith Cot Shelter on Center Street opens for the season, which lasts from Nov. 1 to May 1.

Run by ServiceNet, Inc., the shelter depends on Community Development Block Grant money and the United Way for much of its funding, but donations are an essential component, according to DeBerry.

The James House, a 19th century building that some feared would become a white elephant for the city, is about to complete its transformation to an adult learning center.

Teri A. Anderson, Northampton’s Economic and Community Development Coordinator, said this week that the city has awarded a $201,000 contract to Garland Construction of Chicopee to complete the second phase of renovation. The project will be financed entirely with federal stimulus funds and a gift from the Beveridge Foundation and will not cost the city any money, Anderson said.

The city bought the Gothic Street building in 1994 for $355,000 with the thought of using it to house a new police station. A planning committee instead chose to build the new police facility next to the current one on Center Street.

The Franklin-Hampshire Juvenile Court occupied the James House for several years before moving to Hadley in 2008. About that time, Mayor Mary Clare Higgins began developing a plan to use the building for adult education, noting that Northampton is one of the few county seats without a community college.

The first phase of the project, which transformed the former juvenile court administrative offices into child-care classrooms, was completed last year. The labor for that project was donated by the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, Local 108 and by the Westover Job Corps.

The Shaw’s we know was a place where lone men and women with mental-health problems could find some semblance of a home. People down on their luck could get a decent bed and some privacy at Shaw’s. There have been drifters and imbibers, sometimes on the run, looking to step back into the shadows for a while.

A long time ago, maybe 20 years, I interviewed a resident of Shaw’s. I couldn’t find the story in our data base, but I recall that he was among those set adrift by the closing of Northampton State Hospital.

We sat in his little box of a room with a fan humming, and he told me his story. I don’t remember the story, only that he was eccentric and shy and maybe a little blinded by the bright light of life. Inside that box he had everything he needed.

Following a trend that has seen other hospitals sever their connections with outpatient mental health and substance abuse programs, Cooley Dickinson Hospital is turning over its behavioral health services to a nonprofit provider.

Clinical and Support Options, a Greenfield-based agency, will assume management of Cooley Dickinson’s behavioral health programs, most of which are based at 10 Main St. in Florence and at 170 University Drive in Amherst. The agency will also manage the response team located in the hospital’s emergency department, which treats people with emergency mental health and substance abuse needs.

Leesa-Lee Keith, Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Patient Care at Cooley Dickinson said most hospital employees working in those programs will transfer to Clinical and Support Options and see patients in the same locations.

“We want, for both the clinicians and the patients, to make this as seamless as possible,” she said.

Spoken

• 

  
  
  Patricia
  

  In the late 1960′s a mother moves to the area to raise her family and through tragedy comes to know the State Hospital.

Filmed

• 

  
  
  Preview: Steven

  An attorney vows never to leave Northampton State Hospital until he can help close it forever.

A transcript of Patricia’s and the full length version of Steven’s are forthcoming.

The Narratives also happen to be the most energy intensive element to produce. While writing and rewriting or image enhancements do take time, editing video down to the ten minute ideal while retaining an interviewee’s intention is an order of magnitude greater of effort. As such rather than attempt to create perfection I have chosen to only edit out distractions such as phones going off and repetitive information. I should have the first audio Narrative for Patricia finished shortly and the video Narrative for Steven published sometime in July.

It’s a safe bet that no one who lived in this area in the 1970s and 1980s was unaware of the program called deinstitutionalization. The mouthful of a term referred to the decision to end the long-accepted practice of warehousing people with mental disabilities in institutions such as the Belchertown State School and Northampton State Hospital, which were all too often overcrowded, understaffed, filthy and bleak.

The closings of those institutions and others like them across the state and around the country – bitterly opposed by some – represented a seismic shift in attitudes about the meaning of humane treatment of people with disabilities.

Story continues…

The release party with be held at Jones Library in Amherst on May 25 at 5 p.m. You can find out more about the book as well as place an order at Publishing Works Inc.

Also be sure to check out the Center for Human Development, which like other local agencies such as ServiceNet and the Hampshire Educational Collaborative were created or expanded during the Decentralization movement.