Within healthcare, there are several types of abuse. Some of these types of abuse include: emotional and verbal abuse, financial abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, etc (Fremgen, 2012). Although abuse not only happens in the healthcare setting, I will be focusing on abuse in a hospital setting. In this assignment, I will focus on abuse in a mental hospital. This happens a lot more often than one would think. The type of abuse within the scenario I am about to present is sexual, physical, and psychological.
A young woman is admitted into a mental hospital for depression, and she is beaten and raped by two of the orderly men that work there. Once the girl is released from the mental hospital, she becomes very depressed, and reaches out to local police to report the attack and rape. The police then become very concerned about her state of mind, and end up transferring her back to the same psychological facility. Once she arrives, she is restrained to the bed, and diagnosed as being suicidal. An ITO is ordered, and against her will, she is given medication. After she spends three weeks in this hospital, she is discharged to her parents; however, the treatment that she was given in the psychological facility is continued at her parent’s house as well.
The girl begins to find it difficult to study her lessons, and her grades begin to go from As to Fs. The medication makes it hard for her to concentrate and comprehend her lessons. She begins to get becomes even more sad, won’t have meals, and begins to give problems to her folks. The doctors in the psychological facility advise the police to not go through with the rape investigation due to the fact that they think it will make it harder to rehabilitate her. She is overtaken with sadness and begins thinking about killing herself. She has no sources of motivation or meaning. Her folks talked to their lawyer and sent in a request to the Mental Health Review Tribunal describing how the medication has turned their daughter into a zombie, more or less. However, the application failed to give them any progress, and the forced treatment was continued. Her life, as it should be, has been destroyed due to the forced treatment from the psychological facility. In this scenario, the abuse definitely could have been prevented. I feel that before anyone is hired, a thorough background check should be done. In this case, the sexual and psychological abuse should have been investigated by the police, regardless of what the psychiatrist recommended. In lots of cases, they will simply move the offenders to other facilities, and that does not solve the problem. The offenders should be, in my opinion, given time off without pay until the investigation is complete, and if they are found to actually be guilty, they need to be fired, and prosecuted.
References:
Fremgen, B. F. (2012). Medical Law and Ethics. (4th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
