A Patient's Narrative

By Chris Smith

"A Patient's Narrative" offers an honest and compelling look into a mental institution, specifically Whiting Forensic Hospital (WFH) in Middletown, Connecticut, from the perspective of a former patient. Both unique and deeply personal, this book highlights stories and lessons that will never be reported due to the hospital's fear of losing support and funding. Learn the truth about life in a mental institution through these pages. This is as close as you can get.

This comprehensive book is filled with advice and expectations that will be beneficial for anyone coming into a mental health hospital or other incarcerating institution, those studying mental hospitals, or anybody who is looking to learn more about the mental health system – particularly in Connecticut.

The author shares real life examples of events, people, and activities that happened at WFH. He also shares advice on how to deal with situations, people, and scenarios that helped him during his time at the hospital. Fundamentally, this book was written to share the "whole picture" of mental health institutions and systems from the patient's point of view. For far too long, this has been an underreported and undervalued segment of mental health literature due to patients being incapable or afraid to come forward and share their stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667831244

Chris Smith

Dr Chris Smith is a Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge as well as a microbiologist working at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. Dave Ansell is the Naked Scientists' Kitchen Science specialist who now works full time promoting the public understanding of science.

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A Patient’s Narrative

© 2022 Chris Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Print ISBN: 978-1-66783-123-7

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66783-124-4

Contents

Introduction

Overview of Whiting Forensic Hospital (WFH)

Overview of Facilities at the Maximum-Security, Whiting Forensic Building at WFH

Overview of Patient Units at the Whiting Building of WFH

Rooms in a Patient Unit at the Whiting Building at WFH

Other Facilities for Patients in the Whiting Building at WFH

Overview of Differences in Freedoms for Whiting and Dutcher Patients

Overview of Facilities at the Medium-Security Dutcher Building at WFH

Rooms in Patient Units at the Dutcher Building at WFH

Other Facilities in the Dutcher Building at WFH

Patient Facilities at Dutcher Outside the Dutcher Building at WFH

Upper Administrative Staff , Outside Organizations, and Professional Staff Personality Examples at WFH

Line Staff Personalities at WFH

Patient Personality Examples at WFH

Conclusion

Introduction

If a person is reading this book, then that person must be interested in life at a maximum- and/or medium-enhanced psychiatric security facility, such as Whiting Forensic Hospital (WFH) in Middletown, Connecticut. This book is written by a former patient that went to WFH, and wanted to show you, the reader, how the hospital facility, administration/professional staff, line staff, and patients/clients will affect a patient’s life at the hospital through examples of each and a candid explanation of what the reader should expect from each facet of the hospital. This is not an all encompassing book, but just a lot of examples of what I encountered at the hospital so that the next person that goes to WFH will have some insight in what to expect and how to navigate the nuances associated with the aforementioned hospital or any facility like it.

Overview of Whiting Forensic Hospital (WFH)

If a person is going to reside at WFH, then that person must have gone through a negative life-altering experience/event. If that person is like me, then that person went to jail and got a not guilty by reason of mental defect verdict, and got placed under the jurisdiction of the Psychiatric Security and Review Board (PSRB). For the sake of this book, people with similar scenarios will be called PSRBs. Other patients who came through a court evaluation to be held to be found competent to stand trial or not will be called competency patients. Other patients who are being held for a psychiatric evaluation, usually sixty days, will be called sixty day evaluation patients. All other patients whether civilly-committed, voluntary, end-of-sentence, or other conditions will be called, civils or civil patients.

So, a person finds themselves at WFH, that person will be housed at either the maximum security, Whiting Forensics Building, or the medium security, Dutcher Building, All I can tell that person is everything is against that person from leaving and trying to get their freedoms back, and living a normal life again.

Look at the facilities, that person/patient is constantly locked-up, monitored, scrutinized and just plain watched to see if that person screws up to hold the patient longer at the hospital, which has been referred to as a prison. The cameras are there not to help the patient if he/she has a problem because many patients who have had problems with staff and/or patients have requested the camera footage to no avail. However, if the staff needs the camera footage to get that patient into trouble, the staff has no problem obtaining it. Also, everywhere the patient goes, on the units, groups, or courtyard, the patient is constantly being monitored, not for any good or positive things the patient could do, but for anything objectionable the patient could do, as the patient will find out when he/she reads their treatment plans that are always written in a negative light, no matter how many good things the patient does.

After the facilities, the book looked at the upper administration. The Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) who runs the hospital does not want to talk to the patients at all. Personally, I have written them multiple times of how and when I was wronged at the hospital and they dismissed my letters by sending letters to the upper hospital administration. Who, in turn, dismisses me by sending it to the unit professional staff (psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers), who turns my letter it a negative on my treatment plan, which will hinder my chances of getting out of the hospital. In other words, DMHAS, the upper hospital administration, and the unit professional wants to be as hands off with the patients as possible. Honestly all of the upper professional administration wants to have as little to do with the patient as possible, and see patients as being beneath them or at least beneath their time and effort. More proof of that is the miniscule amount of time the all of the upper professional administration spends on patients, including the tiny amount of time the unit professional staff spends meeting with a patient in the formulation of a patient’s treatment plan even though this treatment plan dictates the time a patient is trapped at the hospital and when he/she can leave and be a person again. The unit professional staff spends, at maximum, one hour a month with an individual patient, unless the patient’s therapist is the unit psychologist, then you get one hour a week to determine the patient’s treatment plan.

Along with the upper administrative and professional staff, the line staff, normal staff a patient engages with everyday like Forensic Treatment Specialists (FTSs) at the Whiting Forensic Building, nurses, and Mental Health Associates/Workers (MHAs), want to do as little as possible for patients. Even though everything is locked away from patients, it is hard to get any line staff to get towels, sheets, or medicines for patients without a big hassle on the patient’s part. The line staff will spend hour talking about vacations, how hard they work, different shifts the work, union business, personal business, politics, and other useless items, but try to get them to work, especially some of the more obstinate line staff, it takes a production. And the line staff that do work, get burned out due to all the patients going to them with their needs, since their co-workers won’t help the working line staff out with patient’s needs to the detriment of patients.

In addition to facilities and staff negatively affecting a patient’s stay at the hospital, the patient’s fellow patients will impact your quality and duration of his/hers hospital stay. Some fellow patients are aggressive, nasty, mean-spirited, disgusting, psycho-/sociopathic (pathologically wrong), paranoid, don’t know how to conduct themselves, and/or problematic to say the least. To this end, civil patients, usually, are more unpredictable and problematic, especially at the Dutcher Building. In addition, the male patients have to worry about female staff and patients, and their vices. All a female has to say is that a male patient had harassed them or worse. And as a guy, that male patient will be in the hot seat whether or not what she said was true. Some females will weaponize this to derail a guy from doing well at the hospital; honestly I have personally seen females do exactly that. A lot of the more difficult personalities the readers of this book have seen in the general public are even more concentrated and extreme at the hospital, and more frequent problematic scenarios occur due to the patient being constantly immersed with these difficult people. Also, like in jail, everybody minds each other’s business, so I will give the reader a saying my dad told me living in New Jersey, Everybody sees everything, but knows nothing. In other words, situational awareness and knowing where the patient is at all times is key. Also that information is paramount, don’t disclose unless absolutely necessary.

With all of these negatives against a patient, it is up to the patient to navigate all these pitfalls to get out of the hospital institution. However, the next chapters of this book is to give the reader examples of the facilities and people, so the reader can get an accurate and raw semblance of what a patient is up against at the hospital. The examples of the people have had their names altered for confidentiality and privacy, but are of all real patients that I have encountered at WFH. Remember, I had to keep the goal of getting out as well as circumventing this minefield of facilities and people during my tenure at WFH. My advice to the reader is try and not personalize with anybody or anything, but to stay objective, professional, slightly standoffish, and keep your eye on the prize of getting out and being a person again.

Overview of Facilities at the Maximum-Security, Whiting Forensic Building at WFH

As a former patient advocate said on television after a patient abuse scandal was found and reported on at Whiting Forensic Hospital (WFH), which includes the maximum-security Whiting building (Whiting) and the medium-security Dutcher Building (Dutcher), Whiting (WFH) has an identity crisis. Is it a hospital or a prison?. From a Whiting facilities perspective it is a prison. The Whiting building has one entrance and exit with a meal detector, constant police monitoring, a steel door that a visitor needs to get buzzed into by police to get through, and every time a patient has to leave Whiting, for court, certain doctor’s appointments, and transition group for those fortunate enough to be considered to be transitioning to the medium Security Dutcher building (a lessening of restricted housing), the patient must be stripped and cavity-searched. This door leads to a geometrically-shaped building with Patient Units 1,3, and 5 looking like a perpendicular sign from math class, a long linear hall with a small indent hall, Patient Unit 2, 4, and 6, looking like a y letter, two linear halls connecting at an angle with a small indent hall, with some additional rooms, including, a visiting room, professional room, offices, dentist room, upper gym, and police station near the entrance door, and lower gym and Unit 1 basement for groups primarily. In the middle of this outer building is a big courtyard where patients can go out on good weather days. All of the units, rooms, and courtyard are constantly observed with cameras and staff, just like a prison. In addition, whenever a patient leaves the unit, like for meals, groups, or courtyard there are staff either accompanying or there watching and observing patients, ready to enter anything that the staff don’t perceive as right into the patient’s treatment plan, which ultimately determine if a patient gets to leave Whiting, Dutcher, and gets to have his or her freedom back.

To discuss more about the facilities, I have to discuss a patient’s typical Whiting daily schedule. For me, I woke up at 5:00 AM (showers open at 5:00 AM), showered, used the bathroom, and got ready for the day (no brushing teeth or shaving since the instruments used are considered sharps and can only be done under close supervision after meals for teeth brushing, and 7:15 AM for shaves. I usually did any writing, calling, watching television from 7:00 Am until 9:00AM. Also, during this time, I got my medications, had breakfast, and brushed my teeth and shaved, all under close supervision for these activities. Also there was a dead time before breakfast and after brushing teeth that seemed to go on forever and was boring. From 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM there were groups or courtyard time, weather permitting. Then from 10:30 AM to 1:00 PM there was a dead time until lunch, lunch for the patients, brushing teeth after lunch, and another dead time until 1:00 PM. Lunch and teeth brushing was closely supervised, but the dead times were so boring with nothing to do and all the patients on the unit were being restless. Next from 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM, there were groups and courtyard time. From 3:30 PM to 6:00 PM, there was the most dreaded dead time (in terms of length and boringness), dinner for the patients, and brushing teeth after dinner, and another boring dead time until 6:00 PM. Then from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM, there were groups and courtyard time. Finally, from 7:30 PM to approximately 8:30 PM, there were medications and snacks. I did not stay up usually after 8:30 PM because just like inmates in jail, most bad behavior by patients happened at night and I learned to go to bed early, and sleep away and ignore the bad time of the day, but for completeness the curfew was at 10:00 PM. Just like in jail, this schedule pretty much happened every day, day-in-and-day-out. As the reader can probably see a lot of time is spent on the unit, so the dichotomy of a unit and its facilities greatly influence the quality of daily life of the average patient, as well as group rooms and the courtyard. Next I breakdown what is in the unit, then outside the unit, and talk about examples of things to expect when utilizing these facilities in the Whiting building at WFH.

Overview of Patient Units at the Whiting

Building of WFH

The units at Whiting are distinctly different. Unit 1 is the coed, mixed male and female, unit for all patients, no matter if they are civil, PSRB, competency or sixty day evaluation patients. The major thing about this unit is that a patient has to deal with almost every female, except one on Unit 6, and notably their problems, where as all the guys are split-up on 5 different units (Unit 5 was closed to patients residing there while I was at Whiting), So a male on Unit 1 was not expected to be problematic, especially towards females. Trust me, the females on Unit 1 were problematic and assaultive, where one blinded a staff and another broke a fellow patient’s eye socket, to nymphomaniacs and sexually-driven problems, like one that had to be restrained due to too much masturbation, and to just overall combative to anybody male or female, like one female who was so combative that one steering committee group was stopped because she was verbally lashing out at everyone nastily and telling confidential information (like people’s index crimes/situations that brought them to the hospital—my tip, just like jail, a patient wants to be discrete and not tell anybody their information because other staff and patients will gossip to others and weaponize private information against that patient).

Unit 2 is a short-term sixty day evaluation patient, competency, civil, and PSRB male patient unit. This unit is the go-to unit for long term patients who fail Unit 4 and Unit 6 long term units. The best thing about this unit is a staff member that brings in boot-leg copies of current movies. Watching an almost brand new movie feels awesome, and makes a patient feel important and relevant to today’s world, specifically, not to feel like some forgotten and ignorant bum.

Unit 3 is a short-term sixty day evaluation patient, competency, civil, and PSRB male patient unit, which primarily houses Hispanic and non-English-speaking patients. I was put there because I have a Puerto Rican last name, and the hospital likes to profile patients before a patient enters The hospital primarily profiles patients on race and index crime/situation nature in particular, like sex offenders, murders, robber, etc.—just like in jail. Unfortunately Unit 3 was also the roughest unit in terms of problematic patients during my tenure their due to the number of codes called (just like jail when somebody gets assaultive with staff or patients, staff call a code). When I was on Unit 3 there was one patient who was sentenced to jail for fighting staff (the hospital only sent patients to jail for fighting staff, fighting other patients all both sides did was claim the other side started the fight and the hospital never sent either patient to jail). In other words if a patient gets in a fight, claim the other person provoked them and they won’t get any outside charges and go to jail. Funny enough, two other patients had three fights in five days where he would always sing a robotic tune before striking, I learned that song was the cue to get away fast, and five fights in seven days with patients, with patients giving each patient victim a black eye! No jail time for either!

Unit 4 was a long-term civil and PSRB unit where levels meant more time and freedom inside and outside the unit. The lower levels like 1 and 2 meant more observation by staff and restricted to inside the unit. However, on Unit 4, level 3 and 4 (the highest level) meant more monthly order-out times. Level 3 had one order-out time a month and level 4 meant two order-out times a month. Also, Level 4 patients got to use a special room with an additional Playstation 3 only for Level 4 patients. No other patients with lower levels could use that room, which equal more privacy and more Playstation 3 access.

Unit 5 was an empty unit for patients, except Unit 4 and Unit 6 patients ate in its dining room. This unit has been used for patients before, but when I was there the unit was being turned into professional staff offices. There was a rumor that this unit was haunted by a patient who committed suicide to the point, some staff would not enter this unit on third shit. Apparently, a former patient hung himself in the room across from the dining room.

Unit 6 was a long-term civil and PSRB unit for the worst-behaved long term patients. One female was allowed to live with the male patients due to her dislike and problems with one of the other female patients who was known to be extremely assaultive and overall combative. The best thing about this unit was that every single patient room is a single and a patient did not have to worry about roommates. Not having a good roommate at Whiting or Dutcher made life miserable, but not having a roommate made life infinitely better. For one day I had a single room on Unit 4 and it was fantastic. Alone by myself to read and sleep was one of the best things at Whiting. That came to an end when a civil patient complained about sharing a room and having nightmares when sleeping, and the hospital always gave preferential treatment to civil patients over PSRBs. I know the hospital will say the politically-correct thing and say they treat each equally, but as a former patient I will tell you the reader that the hospital always favors the civil patients. So many times, civil patients where worse-off behaved but got preferential treatment. For instance, at Dutcher, a civil patient punched out a window on Dutcher North Three’s nursing station. WFH put him on the coed unit, Dutcher South Three, and then sent him home a month later. If a PSRB patient did that, that PSRB patient would have his level dropped, and WFH would make sure it took him years of "stability (their catch-all word to hold patients indefinitely) before he could get a chance to get his freedom and definitely, WFH would not put him with the females. In this case, that civil patient came back to the hospital a short time later to the Battel Building at Connecticut Valle Hospital (CVH), where the civil patients are usually housed. I personally saw him at work at the Greenhouse, and can verify that an assaultive civil patient got out and came back before a non-assaultive and non-combative PSRB patient got a chance to be free, i.e. me.

Rooms in a Patient Unit at the Whiting Building at WFH

Each unit had similar rooms like, bedrooms, laundry rooms, two television rooms, a radio/game (Playstation 3) room, nursing station, hallways with telephone, a shower room (which was attached to the bathroom in Unit 4), a kitchen (staff can only access), a snack room (which was in kitchen on Unit 3), and a conference room. However, the bedroom situation was different on different units. Unit 1 had single rooms and one double occupancy room, where just one double had problems when it came to the females. For example, a combative female patient, who broke another patient’s eye socket, and a lying female patient, who even the staff put in her treatment plan that she was a compulsive liar—she showed that treatment plan to me for whatever reason and I did not tell anybody until this book to show what readers should expect from patients. These two females just could not get along and ultimately had to be separated. Unit 2 had four patient dormitories and single rooms for what I remember, I got to see other units as the dental advocate at Whiting when I was there. One day a patient on the unit caught his sheets on fire by opening up a covered box wall electrical socket (no socket just a cover), and ended up getting charged with a twenty-year arson charge. Believe me, the hospital, staff, and agency police officers are looking for patients to misbehave or screw-up to write the patients up and make a name for themselves by getting patients charged with more and more serious crimes. Whether it is a fight, sexual action, arson, etc. the hospital is watching with some bedrooms having cameras (this actually got Whiting busted for patient abuse on Unit 6 when staff bullied and harassed a patient in a room with a camera), to get any dirt on patients. Unit 4 had four patient dormitories, single occupancy rooms, and a triple occupancy room. One of the dorms was almost unlivable because one of the patients stunk so bad that other patients in the room had a hard time living with him. Like I said before, a bad roommate made life unbearable, so talk to other patients and find out who are good roommates to room with and I did my best to move in with them. My advice, be proactive for your own benefit! Unit 3 had four patient dormitories, single occupancy rooms, and a double occupancy room. I was fortunate enough to be in the double occupancy room most of my stay on Unit 3. I had a good roommate that I got along with. He was older and hard of hearing but a good person, the best-behaved civil patient I encountered at Whiting or Dutcher. I got lucky, but I also had to push that luck by talking to staff into letting me have that room. At WFH, I had to speak-up and hint an idea to get what I wanted, do not push too hard because that will be a negative on a patient’s treatment plan, nut be assertive! Not passive and not aggressive! Finesse, not force! Just some personal advice to the reader about getting what I wanted at WFH. The last unit, Unit 6, was all single occupancy rooms. The single occupancy rooms make that unit more desirable one to live in, but it also made people be in the hallway listening to everyone else’s business more prevalent. I had a job, fortunately, to be dental advocate, which let me teach dental stuff to each unit’s patients under guidance of the dental assistant. I got to experience each unit, and Unit 6 had a weird aura to itself in terms of everyone being in everybody’s business. Unit 6 had its own personality compared to the other units, which were mostly vacant in the hallways, and subsequently not so much in each other’s business.

The next room each patient unit has was a laundry room. Each patient had two laundry slots a week of two hours in length for each slot. Just so I got my full two hours, you need thirty-four minutes for washing and at least an hour for drying, I went fifteen minutes early before my laundry time to the person ahead of me to make sure he got his clothes out on time. Usually, it took ten minutes for him to get in and out of the dryer so I started five minutes early. Sometimes I had to direct other patients, i.e. be on top of mine and their game, to get what I needed done. Also, as a patient, I had to be weary of patients who monopolized the laundry and other public resources like telephones, television rooms, etc. There was one patient on Unit 6 that dominated everything by trying to intimidate fellow patients and staff to let him have his way, he was very combative. The staff went along with him, so patients on Unit 6 just had to do what they could to get their laundry done. Since a lot of patients on Unit 6 did not want the hassle, they mostly stunk, but a few who finagled laundry times did get their laundry done at the expense of the laundry times of those who stunk, in other words they pushed the stinky patients out of the way and did their laundry in the stinky patients slots. You gotta do what you gotta do, said the only female patient on Unit 6 to me, when it came to laundry, thanks to that dominating and monopolizing male patient.

Then each unit had two television rooms with a large television room and a small television room. However, it never failed that each unit had at least one television hog. Due to the dangerousness of a patient, it was smart to just let them have the room. My advice, always look before entering a television room and have some street smarts. If the other patient is too dangerous, then let him/her have the television room. Once I was in the big television room in Whiting Unit 3 and an assaultive patient came in (he had five fights in seven days giving everybody black eyes, and my friend said I had a phone call. As soon as I got out, my friend told me he lied to get me out of the room, and ten seconds later there was a code because that assaultive patient attacked somebody out of nowhere and gave him a black eye. Thanks to my friend, it wasn’t me that got assaulted. I got lucky thanks to a friend intervening. Also another time on Unit 3, a patient monopolized the small and large television as well as the radio room, and he had rage issues, so you have to worry about patients who monopolized public resources–like in jail. Also, all the television hogs that had poor hygiene, i.e. they smelled, just happened to be sex offenders or have sex-based crimes in my experience at WFH, Whiting and Dutcher. In this case, I went to my room to read because discretion is the better part of valor. Both situations showed the value of my situational awareness. I learned this at the Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Yes, I went to a military academy for eighteen months, it did not end pretty ad I resent the nastiness shown to me at the academy. However, my sense of patriotism and morals compelled me to go there and to write this book to impart wisdom and do the right thing for the next patient like me to not come to a place like this hospital and be blind-sided by the overt nastiness and/or apathy showed to patients by hospital staff and patients alike.

Next each unit had a radio/game system (Playstation 3 when I was there) room. Usually the Playstation 3 had music loaded on it, also, as well as its movie (DVD) paying capability and game playing capability. This room was usually given to the worst-behaved patient on Unit 3 at Whiting to placate him. The patient who went to jail for assaulting staff, was given that room with any and all new bootlegged movies the staff could get, old or new from the Unit 2 staff who brought bootleg movies. The staff just wanted to placate him as well as a civil patient, later on, who ended up being sent to Florida because he was so bad to staff, mainly, and patients that they could not keep him at WFH in Connecticut. On Unit 4, Level 3 and 4 patients could use the radio/game room, and there was a separate Level 4 room with a Playstation. I loved the Level 4 room because I could play the music uploaded to the Playstation 3 and watch movies with one of my friends that had movies sent from home, to do this he had to send it to the unit director to be screened and checked before our usage. It was great and the Level 3 and Level 4 radio/game system had a bigger television, which was good for the co-op mode, two players playing together at same time, on our favorite game, Uncharted 3. Here is an example of how the same room can be used for two different reasons depending on what unit a patient was on at Whiting. Funny, the Level 4 room given to the patients on Unit 4 was actually was given to the patient who went to jail for attacking staff when he was on Unit 4, before he went to Unit 3. He was such a problem on Unit 4, the hospital put him on Unit 3. Unit Hopping is what patient’s called it. Also, for the civil patient who was sent to Florida, the hospital pandered to him by putting a Playstation 3 in his own personal single occupancy room and let him have combs and other grooming stuff in is room, which would be considered sharps for PSRB patients. WFH would never permit this for a PSRB patient!"

Another room in the patient’s unit was the nursing stations, also called the bubble. It was an enclosed room that patients could not enter with clear plastic that every patient had to go to for dialing out on the phones located in the hallway, get pens for writing, and get towels and wash clothes. The phones had numbers and a keypad, but a civil patient was calling and harassing hospital staff on their personal lines, so now a patient had to go to the bubble and ask. This shows no matter how good a patient behaves; a unit is only as good as its weakest link, so if one patient misbehaves, everybody suffers. The hospital liked to group punish instead of addressing the badly-behaved patients individually. In addition, the staff only gave out a few pens, usually two, to patients at specific times, and once I had to go back to the bubble twenty-two different times to finally get a pen with ink. It was ridiculous! The staff had to go to the police station to get more pens because other patients on my unit, Unit 3, kept out the pens and kept using all of the ink in the pens. Another example of how the other patients affected my life at WFH, negatively, a patient on Unit 4, when I lived on that unit, did not give his pen back to the bubble for a long time approximately six months, that patient said to staff. The agency police and staff found it during a shakedown, when rooms and body cavity searches were conducted, of the unit because a staff lost his keys. Most shakedowns were initiated by staff losing keys, cell phones, or sharps. The hospital staff took the patient’s level and wrote in his treatment plan/chart a note that made the patient stay at Whiting longer by inhibiting the patient from going to the medium-security Dutcher building. Finally towels and washcloths were what patients mostly had to go to thebubble for because the staff did not want patients to stockpile those items. This made it hard for patients to shower, especially is the staff were being lazy, problematic, or the unit was too busy.

The largest area of the patient unit was for the hallways. The hallways had telephones where any other patient could over hear your phone calls and could weaponize that private information to use against a patient, like in jail. There was no privacy at WFH! Also, on Unit 3, there were some patients who constantly paced/walked the halls for exercise, being bored, to work out problems, etc. but this was not allowed on Unit 4. On Unit 4, the staff told patients not to be in the halls. Just another example of how the units are different, so if a patient gets switched to another unit, be ready for irregularities in rules, policies, and procedures. Besides this book, nobody is going to give a patient a heads-up, so a patient has to be flexible. Standardization is a luxury at the hospital, not a necessity, as you might have expected. Also, the hallways have cameras, so be on your best behavior because the agency police, who used to look over the cameras until they failed to find staff at fault for the patient abuse scandal that made the hospital get third-party camera viewers, were only looking for patents misbehavior when I was there. Anything that could link a staff to doing wrong was overlooked, and the tapes were erased approximately every month masking staff abusing their powers. However, if a patient did something wrong, the staff and agency police did everything they could to press outside charges on the patient. As a patient, mind your manners and dot your is and cross your ts because everything the hospital can hold against a patient, it will, especially if a patient is under the PSRB. That is the truth! Any skeptical reader can read a few treatment plans and prove it to themselves! Be my guest, prove me right, please do! Why do you think the hospital uses HIPAA restrictions from letting patients and average people from reading treatment plans—it is called covering your ass and the hospital is good at it, like any bureaucracy?

The next room on a patient’s unit is the bathroom. It has a few sinks, two urinals, two toilets, a trash can, and one big mirror. It is always dirty and stinks since over twenty patients were on the unit, at least Unit 3 and Unit 4 that I was on. One patient on Unit 3 and later on Unit 4, when I was on both units, masturbated the entire time and always masturbated in one specific toilet. So when he was on my unit, there was really only the other toilet that was used by everybody. Also on Unit 3, that non-masturbating toilet had too much water rushing into it, so it would wash your balls in nasty water, so the bathroom was an all-around nasty place. Additionally, there were no cameras in the bathroom, so a majority of fights happened in the bathroom. So be warned that as a patient to be on guard in the bathroom! In addition, as a patient be on guard for sex offenders getting their jollies in the bathroom, i.e. watching other patients in the bathroom. One guy used to take off is shirt, flex, and stare at himself and other patients as if he was trying to advertise himself homosexually. When he was in the bathroom, I just got the heck out of there. Again the other patients on the unit I was on affected my quality of life, so I had to have situational awareness to avoid trouble, pitfalls, and problems as I stayed at WFH.

The shower room is the next room on a patient’s unit. On Unit 3, it was its own room, but on Unit 4 it was attached to the bathroom. So on Unit 3, I had to go ask staff to unlock the shower room, which limited when I could use the shower room. Also, once, a patient on constant observation (CO) came into the shower when I was taking a shower. However, he had a female staff observer, and since there were no curtains in the shower and I am a morally conservative person, this made me feel awkward and I did not like the experience. Plus, I did not want any chance of getting into trouble with all a female has to say is that something happened, especially a female staff, and as a guy patient I would have been screwed, as in I would get in a ton of trouble. So I got out of there as fast as possible. Also, in the shower there were buckets to return linen for washing for patients of Unit 3. When I was mentally sick, one of the doctors took me off my psychiatric medications, I was putting clothes in these bins and another patient was taking them out and wearing them. Believe me when I say WFH, Whiting and Dutcher buildings, community living means don’t leave things lying around because patients will take your things in a heartbeat. In addition, on Unit 4, the showers were more accessible since they opened at 5:00 AM and stay open all day, on Unit 3 the showers were closed during group times. However, I suggest any patients should go early because the weirdoes and sex offenders who stare at people in the showers usually are not up at that time. I showered late once, and had to scream and yell at some other patient to stop looking at me showering. It is horrible and violating to have to deal with that behavior from those kinds of people, but there is nothing I could do about it, except shower early when these people were still asleep. I told staff about the incident but staff just dismissed it. The staff won’t interject in homosexual harassment, but if a male patient does something or is said to/alleged to have done something to a female patient, then that male patient will be crucified, i.e. extremely punished, by the hospital. So male patients have to be extremely careful and have to have situational awareness to avoid any trouble or perceived trouble with females. Also, the shower rooms do not have cameras, so be careful of everything from physical violence to sexual violence, just like in the bathroom.

The next room in a patient unit is the kitchen/staff lounge. No patients are allowed in this room, but this room is where snacks are provided by the state, called state snacks, and personal snacks sent by family, called personals, and given out at 8:00 PM. Grapes are snacks given out by the state for patients, but never got grapes on Unit 3, and only got them three times on Unit 4 because the staff would eat them. Good snacks, like Cheetos and grapes, were eaten by the staff and us patients barely got any. All state snacks were not enough to give a grown man to satiate any hunger. Portion sizes were tiny at best. Patients were hungry, especially if the dinner was uneatable like the rubbery pink chicken they served us patients. That characterization of the chicken is not an exaggeration, it was nasty. However, on Unit 4, patients had sports group on Sundays for football season, and got lots of snacks. It was great! Also, on Unit 4, the staff were cooking themselves breakfast sometimes and gave me potatoes, sausage and toast. Again, that was great! I thanked the staff who gave it to me, but he said, I don’t know what your talking about while winking at me. Reminds me of plausible deniability in the Air Force, if nobody explicitly told a soldier, then officially the soldier knows nothing about it—so the staff or I did not get into trouble for giving me that extra food. I am discrete and never told anybody about that food until this book. It is funny, the snack room on Unit 3, I have negative memories, and the snack room on Unit 4, I have fonder memories--just shows the reader the discrepancy in procedures from unit-to-unit.

Also, there was a snack room on Unit 4 just for personal snacks, actually it was a closet unlike Unit 3 where all snacks were given from the kitchen. If a patient’s family sends snacks or a patient orders snacks from a mail order place for food and the like—for institutions like WFH and jail/prison, then a patient cold have personal snacks. Most of the time on Unit 4, I could get a couple of my own snacks, which made personals more advantageous to one state snack. However some patients were known to steal other patient’s personals so a patient has to be weary of getting too large or too tempting of a snack. I had a couple candy bars stolen, so I told my dad not to send Snickers anymore. Removing temptation is the best way to show discretion with personal snacks. Also when a patient gets personals in the mail, the patient has to go to package call at the police station at 9:00 PM to get those snacks. The agency police open the package in front of the patient and take/confiscate anything that is deemed unacceptable. I lost a couple of bags of pistachios that my brother sent me because the agency police confiscated them. I saw the agency police open up one of the bags and started eating them right there in front of me…bastards! I heard from another patient that a patient can donate confiscated stuff to the gym rehab staff and get some of it back from them. I heard this after my pistachio loss. So later when that patient had some toffee bars that the agency police was not going to let through, he donated the toffee bars to the gym rehab staff, and he and I got to eat toffee bars…they were great! I also learned there are ways to work the system if a patient is in the know. That is what this book is all about, making the reader in the know, like the old GI Joe cartoon used to say, Now you know and knowing is half the battle!.

Another major room in a patient’s unit is the conference room. This is a room with a big table, chairs, and a computer. This is the room where patients have treatment plan review (TPR) meetings, where the psychiatrist spends his one and only hour with a patient a month, talking about the patient’s treatment plan, including all the good and bad things, mainly bad, that happen to the patient the last month. They emphasize the bad in the TPR meetings, including a patient’s index situation, the hospital call it the index crime even though PSRB patients were acquitted of a crime, and anything that is not pleasing to the staff or hospital in general about anything the patient did. The patient could disagree with something in the treatment plan, but the staff/hospital would not change anything and were not compelled to change anything. It would be simple if they don’t care, but the staff add their own opinions of what and how a patient is doing, opening a Pandora’s Box of negativity into a patient’s treatment plan, so a patient is kept punitively at Whiting, and it does not get an better at Dutcher either. To add insult to injury, the staff asked if a patient wants to sign his/he treatment plan, not to say a patient accepts it, but to say patient was included in its formulation. The staff could care less if a patient signs it, and the staff do it to legally cover their ass even if a patient was not consulted during a patient’s treatment plan formulation. It is just a way for the hospital to justify holding a patient at the hospital, mainly because PSRBs are worth at least $1600 dollars a day in funding—the hospital will claim other reasons but some staff told me that reason and I believe it, the bottom line is a powerful motivator. Despite a patient’s rights to be treated and let out of the hospital, or as the statutes say in the least restrictive setting, in a reasonable time frame, which never happened and was a crock of crap. I was quick to be let out of the hospital and I was stalled well over five years, twenty-one months in jail to get my not guilty by reason of mental defect verdict after my defense was ready and stalled over fifty-three months at the hospital waiting for movement to lesser-restrictive settings I was approved for by the hospital, timed to my conditional release when I wrote this book. The hospital stalling of me full discharge from WFH ad the PSRB is blatantly ridiculous and just shows a complete disregard of my rights and shows the reader, to be ready for apathy and being stripped of your American rights if you become involved with WFH and the PSRB systems. Think, people who have the power to help a patient leave meet with a patient just once a month for a maximum of one hour, how will these people ever get to know a patient in a reasonable time frame?

The next chapter will talk about other facilities at Whiting maximum security building that is not in the patient’s units. Remember, patients were not only camera-surveilled, but are personally escorted to these areas, just like in jail.

Other Facilities for Patients in the Whiting

Building at WFH

This chapter is dedicated to the facilities at Whiting that are not in the patient’s units. These facilities can only be accessed by a patient if the patient is escorted or watched by staff, just like in jail. In addition, some of these rooms have agency police in them while those patients are in them, just like jail. Like I originally said, paraphrased of course, From a facilities perspective, WFH is a prison. Well, I guess I should add, From a procedural and policy perspective WFH is a prison and patients are treated like inmates, especially with all the agency police monitoring and staff escorting/monitoring. It was funny on television, the head of the CVH Whiting Legislative Task Force asked an investigator, What is the difference between Whiting and jail? and the investigator basically declined to answer, he said there were some differences but did not speculate. I think he did not speculate because he just did not want to go on the record saying that Whiting, for all intensive purposes, is essentially a prison. However, I think I made a decent case showing that Whiting at least has "jailhouse