Daisy Woodard
September 20, 2014
Mental Health
Professor Rose Carter

Wyatt v. Stickney (1975)

This is a case about patients being confined to a mental health facility, Bryce Hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The hospital and certain employees of the Alabama Health Board requested for a respected determination of standards for current and future mental treatment by the hospital in effecting the right to treatment. The Alabama Mental Board and the Alabama Department of Mental Health had gone through some substantial governmental changes. The defendants are the commissioner and the deputy commissioner of the department of Mental Health of the State of Alabama. This case was submitted by the guardians of the patients that are confined to this facility. Bryce Hospital is a facility that treats mental retarded patients. Bryce Hospital had about 5,000 patients, the majority of them was involuntarily committed through civil proceedings by the various probate judges in Alabama. Bryce Hospital employed about 1,600 employees during the time of this preliminary injunction. In October of 1970, 99 of the employees where terminated, due to budgetary cut backs in tax revenues that was available to the Department of Mental Health of the State of Alabama. The transition had only just been completed, but not fully implemented. The population at Bryce is about 1,000 mental retardates, most of whom receive only custodial care without any psychiatric treatment. The evidence reflects that there is considerable confusion regarding the primary mission and function of Bryce Hospital. Some of the nonpsychotic geriatric patients and the mental retardates, and other non-mentally ill person, have been and remain committed there for a variety of reasons. Bryce Hospital had a per-patient expenditures per day. The court finds evidences that the programs of treatment at Bryce