NEWS, COMMENTARY, AND ARTS BY PSYCHIATRIC SURVIVORS, MENTAL HEALTH PEERS, AND OUR FAMILIES
VOL. XXXVI NO. 1
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FROM THE HILLS OF VERMONT
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SINCE 1985
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SUMMER 2021
Activist Voices Heard
Residence Drops Restraint, Seclusion Plan By BRETT YATES
MONTPELIER – A flood of opposition directed to the legislature by psychiatric survivors and their supporters led to an abrupt change of course in the Department of Mental Health’s plan to allow the use of restraint and seclusion at a state-run locked program under development in Essex. “We understand that there have been significant concerns raised to the department regarding the proposed use of seclusion and restraint at the recovery residence, and I think what I can say is that we’ve heard you,” Commissioner Sarah Squirrell told members of the House Health Care Committee. “We’ve heard your feedback; we’ve taken it into consideration, which is why we’re no longer proposing the use of seclusion and restraint at the expanded program.” Advocacy organizations had opposed any policy allowing use-of-force since seeing initial
floor plans with a seclusion room last summer. Still, department officials had initially told legislators that it was essential to the program. The same opponents, however, were unsuccessful in blocking the overall plan to build a $16 million, 16-bed locked facility to replace the current 7-bed secure residence in Middlesex. That construction received final approval from the legislature in May. It still requires approval by the Green Mountain Care Board, which is expected to review the plan this summer. The new building is planned as a replacement for a pair of temporary trailers surrounded by a chain link fence that has served for eight years as a makeshift hospital step-down program after Tropical Storm Irene’s destruction of the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury. According to the department, the program
is for patients who “are no longer in need of inpatient care but who need intensive services in a secure setting.” The new locked residence is planned for the former site of the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center and will expand the locked hospital step-down capacity by nine beds. The expansion in the number of locked beds in the state was the other focus of opposition. Until the state’s policy reversal, it would have also added a seclusion room and a restraint chair, which are not present in the Middlesex program. The department had argued that the availability of restraint and seclusion would permit a greater number of patients to transition from hospitalization to a residential setting, thereby freeing up more costly beds at the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital and relieving backlogged emergency departments. Vermont Psychiatric Survivors, NAMI-VT and other groups were joined by individual opponents who contributed the bulk of the 39 (Continued on page 4)
Child ER Waits Recognized As Crisis By ANNE DONAHUE
MONTPELIER – A letter from a Counterpoint reader about long waits in the emergency room for children in mental health crises sparked a legislative inquiry and an action plan by the Department of Mental Health.
Data show a growing trend since 2010 in the number of children waiting and the length of time they are held waiting for admission to a treatment program, with a spike of as many as 19 children one day in April. Some had been waiting for weeks.
Members of the House Health Care Committee listen to Andy Anderson (lower right) testify at a Zoom hearing about his child’s four-day wait in an emergency room.
UVMMC Faulted In Patient’s Death
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The University of Vermont Medical Center reported that the number of children and adolescents between 10 and 18 whose reason for an ED visit was a psychiatric crisis has nearly tripled since 2010, from 4.3% to 12.3%, with the length of stay increasing “exponentially” from 12 hours to 62 hours – more than 2 ½ days. Delays in psychiatric admissions have been a topic of alarm in the past but usually focused on adults. “The emergency room is a really bad place for kids,” Andy Anderson testified at a House Health Care Committee. “It’s really isolated. It’s confined. There’s no activities. “What surprised us the most, and took us 24 hours to realize, [was] that there was zero care that was going to take place in the emergency department,” he said. They waited four days for a placement for treatment. DMH Commissioner Sarah Squirrell said she agreed the situation was “completely unacceptable” and said the department would work on short and long-term solutions. A (Continued on page 5)
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Call to Action For Peer Support