• SITE
• HOMES
• MOTORS
• CAREERS
• STUFF

AUSTIN (AP) – More than 70 employees at Texas’ 10 state mental hospitals have been fired and dozens others disciplined since 2005 over allegations of brutal beatings and other physical abuse, according to a newspaper report.

Disciplinary records obtained by The Dallas Morning News show the violence against patients included chokeholds, headlocks and threats. Hundreds of other employees have been fired for other violations, including sleeping on the job and overmedicating patients, the records show.

There are about 18,000 patients and about 7,400 employees working in the state psychiatric hospital system.

State officials say there will always be reports of abuse and neglect in an institutional setting. And they say they take any allegations of mistreatment seriously. But the records show that as in other state-run facilities, abuse and neglect are systemic, the newspaper reported Sunday.

The state psychiatric hospitals, like other systems for vulnerable Texans, are chronically starved for cash, advocates of more state funding say, and services at the local level can’t keep up.

Officials with the Department of State Health Services, the agency that runs the psychiatric hospitals, say abuse and neglect are “absolutely not” pervasive – and verified cases are actually dropping.

In the past two years, they confirmed 15 “Class I” cases –the most serious abuse.

On average, investigators substantiate 5 percent of the more than 2,000 allegations they examine annually.

And nearly 90 percent of patient deaths since 2005 were attributed to natural causes, agency spokesman Doug McBride said. Five were suicides, and none were the result of abuse.

State officials acknowledge that the psychiatric hospitals are stressful environments. There are times, McBride said, when employees “do not handle a situation appropriately.” But they say the rules for reporting abuse and neglect are stringent and confirmed cases of physical and sexual abuse are reported to police.

But some advocates fear the mentally ill patients may face greater risks.

Patients of the psychiatric hospitals are largely indigent, transient and not connected to their families, so they have few allies as they bounce through the mental health system.

“It’s a population that’s easy to abuse because they’re not on the radar in any way,” said Richard Hansen, a Texas mental health advocate who was chemically restrained, shackled and beaten to the point of broken ribs years ago while suffering from bipolar disorder in a New York mental hospital.

Hansen said many employees are conscientious, but conditions vary from hospital to hospital and ward to ward. Some are simply warehouses, where patients are often overmedicated and ignored. In others, patients frequently turn up with unexplained injuries, he said.

Aaryce Hayes, a mental health policy specialist with Advocacy Inc., said the Department of State Health Services is working to improve the state hospital system.

Texas ranks 48th in the country in per capita funding for people with mental illness.