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"Dumping" Mental Health Patients
State budget cuts making it tough to afford to care for your state's (Nevada's) mental patients? No problem, just drop them off at the bus stop with a ticket to California! Problem solved!
Sounds like criminal neglect to me.
State budget cuts making it tough to afford to care for your state's (Nevada's) mental patients? No problem, just drop them off at the bus stop with a ticket to California! Problem solved!
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/17/nevada-buses-mentally-ill/2091727/Faced with deep budget cuts, Nevada's main public psychiatric hospital has bused more than 1,500 patients from Las Vegas to other states during the past five years, a Sacramento Bee investigation has found.
Some patients apparently had no family in or connections to the 176 cities in 45 states where Greyhound buses deposited them after one-way trips from Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital. About one third wound up in California...
The state's actions came under scrutiny in February after 48-year-old James Flavy Coy Brown, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia, turned up at a Sacramento homeless shelter confused and suicidal. He had been to the California capital and knew no one.
His papers from Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services read: "Discharge to Greyhound bus station by taxi with 3 day supply of medication" and provided a vague suggestion for further treatment: "Follow up with medical doctor in California." Brown said staff at Rawson-Neal advised him to call 911 when he arrived in Sacramento.
Sounds like criminal neglect to me.