Young children housed with violent teens in psychiatric hospitals

<p>Mentally ill children as young as 6 years old have often found themselves housed with teens charged with rape, child molestation and other crimes in Georgia's state psychiatric hospitals, according to officials.</p><p>"There is concern that children who are small in stature and powerless to defend themselves are not safe in state hospitals," wrote regulators with the Department of Human Resources in 2000, after investigating complaints by two adolescent patients who said other teens attacked them at Central State Hospital _ which has one of the two adolescent units in Georgia's state psychiatric hospitals.</p><p>A review of incident reports, internal investigations and other public documents by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that housing violent teens with criminal records at the hospitals, coupled with chronic overcrowding and inadequate staffing, creates an atmosphere conducive to fighting and sexual assaults.</p><p>In 2001, for example, a 12-year-old boy in the adolescent unit at Georgia Regional Hospital/Atlanta reported that his roommate, an older teenager, tried to rape him.</p><p>In 2005, a 15-year-old boy at Central State, in Milledgeville, said another adolescent patient had sexually assaulted him. The other patient said the sex was consensual, records show, so state investigators dismissed the charges.</p><p>Other cases allege beatings and consensual sex between male and female teenagers.</p><p>Placing teens with violent records alongside younger patients leaves the children "vulnerable, extremely vulnerable," said Dr. Andrea Bradford, the state hospitals' former medical director.</p><p>Mentally ill children "may not be able to report (assaults) or defend themselves," Bradford said.</p><p>She said the hospitals don't have enough workers to monitor the older patients, many of whom are in the institutions to be evaluated for their fitness to stand trial.</p><p>The state says it is taking steps to separate adolescent patients by age groups. But officials have acknowledged for years that commingling young forensic patients with mentally ill children creates a dangerous situation.</p><p>This spring, a Superior Court judge ordered Central State to admit a teen for pretrial psychiatric evaluation. The teen became the third in the adolescent unit facing felony sex crime charges and the ninth sent to the unit by juvenile court judges.</p><p>In a memo, obtained by the Journal-Constitution under Georgia's open records laws, Bruce Callander, Central State's chief of psychiatric treatment and forensic services, said Central State's adolescent unit was confronting "increasingly difficult challenges."</p><p>"Half of our current population is under the jurisdiction of a court," Callander wrote. "Given the physical configuration of our unit, it is difficult if not impossible to separate these populations due to space issues as well as staffing issues. We simply do not have the staff to address the issues of male/female, big/small, passive/aggressive, etc., much less separate them within the unit."</p><p>After adolescent units at two other state hospitals closed earlier this decade, the remaining facilities at Central State and Georgia Regional in Atlanta began accepting young patients from a broader area.</p><p>State officials say they're starting to place older adolescents in the Atlanta hospital and younger ones at Central State, but have set no firm age limits on either group.</p><p>There are still cases where mentally ill children may live among adolescents accused of crimes, said Gwen Skinner, director of the state's mental health division.</p><p>The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether conditions in Georgia's state hospitals have violated the civil rights of patients.</p><p>Many other states take a different approach to treating young mentally ill patients and criminal defendants.</p><p>Texas and Michigan have special adolescent forensic units separate from wards that treat young psychiatric patients. Arkansas operates a separate unit for adolescent sex offenders and Indiana and Oregon closed their adolescent psychiatric units altogether and now treating young patients in community settings rather than state hospitals.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x2e12ab4)</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2007/7/93682