A 53-year-old Western State Hospital patient died Saturday, two days after choking during dinner.
Read more : http://blog.thenewstribune.com/crime/2012/09/10/western-state-hospital-patient-dies-after-choking-on-dinner/
A 53-year-old Western State Hospital patient died Saturday, two days after choking during dinner.
A 53-year-old Western State Hospital patient died Saturday, two days after choking during dinner.
Read more : http://blog.thenewstribune.com/crime/2012/09/10/western-state-hospital-patient-dies-after-choking-on-dinner/
State law says doctors, not judges, decide when the mentally ill should be released from Western State Hospital in Lakewood. If those decisions spin a revolving door and allow repeated trips in and out of commitment, so be it.
No vacancy is no excuse for denying treatment to the mentally ill. That idea, the core of a legal ruling issued Wednesday by Pierce County Superior Court Commissioner Craig Adams, throws an inconvenient wrench into the gears of the state's ailing mental-health system and forces a public debate over a practice known as psychiatric boarding.
A clogged mental-health system has left patients languishing in emergency rooms, awaiting a spot in a state psychiatric hospital. Now the state is moving to reduce the number of those spots assigned to Pierce County patients.
Prosecutors call them “gap cases.” It’s the gap between competency to stand trial in the justice system and competency to be released from a psychiatric hospital.
The state has chosen a new leader for its largest mental institution.
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