Arbour Health System

November 11, 2014

That is a picture of part of the first page of the website for Arbour Health System.

Since moving to Boston in 2011, I have been a patient at the Arbour Fuller Hospital in South Attleboro, the Arbour Hospital in Jamaica Plain, and the Arbour  in Brookline.  I also was a patient at the women's partial hospitalization program at the Arbour in Brookline.  Once, I was able to get through an entire week at the partial program, being harassed even by the female psychiatrist.  The next time that I tried to do the partial, I left because I had to go to court for the final hearing about my apartment at Braintree Village, from which I was evicted.  The third time that I tried to do the partial program was during this past summer.  I was sickeningly harassed by several staff people, including the male manager of the program, before I walked out.  

At every Arbour facility, I have had the same experience.  There are patients and staff who harass me, and I am diagnosed as being delusional because I think that I'm being harassed.  This past hospitalization was the most seriously dangerous one so far, with the medical director of the Brookline hospital petitioning the court to have me forced to take large quantities of antipsychotic medication.  He did not succeed, because of the many hours that I spent while I was a patient at his hospital writing letters, making phone calls, speaking with people from my state-appointed attorney, the independent psychiatrist who evaluated me, other staff on the unit whether they were initially hostile to me or not, to the Department of   Mental Health, to prevent him from forcing me to take medication that I don't need and that has serious side effects from weight gain up to 100 pounds to tardive dyskinesia.  

At no time has the crushing pressure of the conglomerate's treatment of me been acknowledged by a doctor.  I am always treated as if everything is my fault.

I don't know what medical staff are thinking when I'm at an Emergency Room and am asking to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital or a crisis stabilization unit.  I don't know if they're thinking that I just don't like homeless shelters and that I want to stay somewhere cushier for a while.  Psychiatric facilities are always nerve wracking for me.  I know what they'll be like, and I always have to weigh what I know will happen when I get admitted against these criteria for being hospitalized:

Am I able to take care of myself?

Am I at imminent suicide risk?

Am I at risk of hitting someone?

When I asked to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital at the beginning of October, the answers to those questions were No, Yes and Yes.

I also know that when I leave a psychiatric facility, everything outside the facility will be the way it was before I was admitted to the facility.  I'll be harassed.  I'll be stalked.  My life will be in danger from people who are waiting for the moment when they think they could rape and kill me and put the video of my being raped and killed online and be treated like heroes instead of being arrested.  I'll be videotaped in toilet stalls and showers.  I'll be homeless.  The conglomerate will be promoting child molestation.

Copyright L. Kochman, November 11, 2014 @ 9:26 a.m./edited @ 9:30 a.m.