my heart cries, home

there are notorious patients who resided at western state hospital, one of them is Frances Farmer. the building is an old brick institution, and it's a long way from home. it's where they want to send my daughter for "long-term care".
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this story isn't about Frances Farmer, or lobotomies, or ECT, or patients waiting to leave for lack of housing, lack of advocates and existing in an underfunded, understaffed high stress and dangerous environment.

this story, is about a man who was part of a recent cover up by the hospital, and part of a Federal report.

"Gordon's family has filed a lawsuit, seeking justice, truth and compensation.

Phyllis Gordon recently told Halsne the state has always been evasive about what really happened to Anthony in the moments leading up to his death. That’s why she called KIRO TV and that’s why her family sued.

“They (Western State Hospital) continue to try to cover it up with a new lie and a new lie and a new lie.”

This latest independent investigation states "had Mr. Gordon's bed been secured to the floor of his room, he would have been deprived of the means of hanging himself."

That’s the same conclusion KIRO Team 7 Investigators came up with 6 months ago. We discovered the bed was supposed to be suicide-proof, designed to keep mentally ill patients from harming themselves. Public records we found show those safeguards were not installed by Western State. Basically, the hospital didn’t bolt the bed down to the floor until four days after Gordon killed himself.

Now, taxpayers might pay a hefty price for the failures listed in this report.

The Washington Department of Health and Human Services, which is the state agency that oversees Western State, won’t comment due to pending litigation. The Attorney General’s office has been assigned to defend the mental hospital in ongoing legal proceedings."
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Department of Health and Human Services and the state are the ones who run the group home my daughter was discharged to on October 20th, 2009, where, on October 24, I received a phone call she was missing and a statement that "we are not calling police for 24 hrs, and she has been missing 3 hours".

In fact, when I called police and found her with the police after missing 7 hours, half-clothed on a 44 degree night at midnight---the police officer handed me his card and told me she in fact was missing 6 hours "the last 3 nights, my partner and I have found her". She was only there 4 nights when he told me that.

Now she is re-committed in the psych ward, and more psychotic, no one knows what happened to her while she was missing for hours and hours and no one I talk to can understand one minute why that group home would not call police.

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the mental health system is so dysfunctional, so unable to truly care for clients other than medication based treatment--so underfunded for housing--and based on lies and cover ups, that there truly is no where my daughter can be sent where she will be safe, unless they send her home.

I love my daughter and as an advocate for her, I also demand that the state care for a client better than this. She is a human being, and in their care, and she is just one of many, many faces in the system. Another case file number.