Just as quickly as I finished the tragic story of a mother overwhelmed by her daughter’s special needs who did the horrific…killed her, I read this story in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

I love these two reporters, Alan Judd and Andy Miller, for their tenacity and their tireless championing of the rights of the mentally ill. But, I have a hard time reading these stories. Last year they did a series exposing the neglect and abuse at Georgia’s state mental hospitals, including the senseless death of a girl we actually knew, named Sarah Crider.

This week, they cover the plight of Vince Allen, a 15-year-old teenager with autism, who was so severely neglected, and likely also physically abused, during an 11-day stay at the Georgia Regional Hospital that he was taken by ambulance and spent 36 days at a local children’s hospital being treated for dehydration, kidney failure and infection to some very nasty untreated self-mutilation wounds. Twice the agency governing the state mental hospitals, Department of Human Resources, has investigated Allen’s stay at Georgia Regional in January 2006, and found lack of sufficient evidence that the hospital was guilty of neglect or abuse.

Read the article for yourself and you begin to question just what WOULD constitute neglect or abuse in DHR’s eyes, if a child could decline in 11 days enough to have his kidneys fail. Having ambulance drivers find him in a fetal position in a soiled diaper on the floor with wounds all over his body so infected that they need to be drained…hmmm…in 11 days? Well, apparently that's just not enough evidence.

I’ve had a hard time blogging about this story, mostly because I can’t stand to read and re-read it. It hits too close to home. I understand all too well that this, and the story of Sarah Crider, could some day be my LuLu; some day if/when our money runs out. We hospitalized her last fall in a private hospital, covered by our insurance. But the truth is that health insurance coverage of mental illness is spotty and eventually runs out. And these reporters have made it clear that Georgia’s mental hospitals are dangerous places to be.

I can’t read all this without getting incredibly angry. We’re talking about human beings here folks! I was highly agitated that the hospital we had LuLu in wouldn’t follow her diet (despite me telling EVERYONE there) or insist that she brush her teeth (which she didn’t the whole time she was there.) And the staff was quick to share their frustration with me that she was lifting her shirt and exposing herself to other patients; yet they weren’t insisting that she wear a bra. We also had an incident where a staff member may have lost his temper with LuLu (not surprising) and bruised her. And this is the reportedly best private facility in the area.

All if this pales in comparison to dehydration, kidney failure and deep, untreated wounds Vince Allen endured. No one has yet been able to give an accounting as to why a DFCS caseworker documented this horrid situation in his file, but did nothing about it. It is as if the system here in Georgia (and likely other states as well) says time and time again…we don’t see children with severe developmental delays or mental illness as worth caring for or about. They are truly less-than-human. Read the article…this is exactly what the actions of those who work at the hospital, work at the DHR and work at DFCS say to me.

And here’s a little kicker for those of us in the adoptive/foster community. Vince, whose parents are now finally suing the state for this abuse, was placed in therapeutic foster care six years ago because they had no other choice to care for him. It was the foster system that sent Vince to this mental hospital twice, the last time resulting in his need for emergency medical treatment. I’m trying to imagine what would have happened to the biological parents or the foster parents had Vince’s medical condition been like this while he was in their care…they’d be in jail for a very long time (as anyone who abuses or neglects children should be!)

Vince survived the ordeal and is now 17. He has some lasting effects from the severity of his infected wounds. And as if I wasn’t outraged enough by this story, it is disgusting that less than a month later, poor Sarah Crider died of an untreated bowel obstruction on this very same adolescent unit. Her family has been awarded a $1.25 million settlement to their neglect case.

When will our state mental health systems treat our special children with at least as much care and dignity as most counties and cities do with pets who have been taken to the animal shelter?

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