Category: Abuse

Resources for Conservatorship and Guardianship Abuse Awareness Day

From NCLER: For Complete Post, Click Here…

Resources:

More Antipsychotics Given for Dementia During Pandemic

By Kate Kneisel: For Complete Post, Click Here…

ngd-Maybe the use of them has absolutely nothing to do with any need of the resident, but the desire of staff to knock the residents out and make their jobs easier…

Rates remained high into 2021, despite lifting of pandemic restrictions.

Antipsychotic drug prescribing rates among people with dementia increased markedly during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a multinational database study showed.

Notably, those rates did not return to prepandemic levels after the acute phase of the pandemic had ended, Kenneth K.C. Man, PhD, of University College London School of Pharmacy, and colleagues reported in JAMA Psychiatryopens in a new tab or window.

In U.S. Medicare data, the likelihood of dementia patients getting prescribed antipsychotics after the introduction of COVID-19 restrictions rose 43% (95% CI 1.20-1.71) compared with the same period in 2019.

While new diagnoses returned to normal in most of the databases, incidence in the latter months of 2021 remained below the prior 3-year mean in the U.S. data.

The researchers suggested that disruptions in dementia diagnosis services and increased mortality among those who were or would have been diagnosed with dementia were likely behind the changes.

MDHHS outlines improvements in protecting children in state’s care

From MDHHS: For Complete Post, Click Here…

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) today shared an update on the transformation it has made to the child welfare system that has resulted in improved safety for children and families since the inception of a federal lawsuit.

MDHHS appeared virtually in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan for the latest update, which has been tracking progress since a 2008 settlement agreement following a 2006 lawsuit. “I am delighted with the progress that has been made since we adopted the (corrective action plan) last April,” said Judge Nancy G. Edmunds. “I think the state has taken huge steps under (MDHHS) Director (Elizabeth) Hertel. Congratulations are in order for sure,” Judge Edmunds said, adding that more work needs to be done to address issues mentioned by federal monitors.

Specifically, the department emphasized in court how child safety has improved through the increased monitoring of and investment in congregate care facilities where foster and juvenile justice youth are placed. The update came nine months after MDHHS and federal court monitors unveiled new strategies to target 14 areas in the child welfare and juvenile justice system as part of a corrective action plan. “We maintain our steadfast focus on ensuring the safety of all youth receiving treatment in congregate care facilities through intensive improvements in oversight of the facilities where our children are placed,” Hertel said. “I am proud of the work we do and the improvements we have made as we continue to work toward excellence in our child welfare system.” Recent MDHHS actions that are producing results include:

Youth lead anti-corruption talks on disability

From EDYN: For Complete Post, Click Here…

The 1st episode of the Youth Lead Anti-corruption Talks series named “Inclusion and leadership of youth with disabilities to contribute to the achievement of SDG16″ took place virtually, on December the 9th 2022, and was dedicated to the Human Rights Week and the International Day of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities celebrated on December the 3rd. These talks are being organized by the Youth Lead Board of the UNODC’s GRACE initiative. Each of these talks is dedicated to a certain UN observance day and thus focuses on a given topic. For instance, the first edition was focused on disability inclusion and was prepared by Esma Gumberidze and Sylvain Obedi from the Youth Lead Board.

Healthcare-Related Injury Found in Nearly One-Fourth of Hospitalizations

by Crystal Phend: For Complete Post, Click Here…

Study suggests “disturbing” rate of potentially preventable errors.

Nearly a quarter of hospital stays involve adverse events from healthcare errors, and nearly one in 10 cause serious harm, according to a study replicating the landmark 1991 Harvard Medical Practice Studyopens in a new tab or window (HMPS).

In a random sample of 2,809 admissions at 11 Massachusetts hospitals, 23.6% had at least one adverse event, 32.3% of which required substantial intervention or prolonged recovery, David W. Bates, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues reported in the New England Journal of Medicineopens in a new tab or window.

Woman and her 2 sons die after walking freezing Michigan streets for days

By Dennis Romero: For Complete Post, Click Here…

ngd-Appalling lack of safety net….

A woman and two of her children were found dead in a field over the weekend after wandering the streets of Pontiac, Michigan, for nearly three days amid freezing temperatures, authorities said.

Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said the deaths could have been prevented.

Pontiac Mayor Tim Greimel said at a news conference Monday, “This is a horrible, heart-wrenching tragedy.”

Rolling With the Punches: Self-Defense for Wheelchair Users

By Deborah Rubin Fields: For Complete Post, Click Here…

Imagine you’re hanging out by the pool in your wheelchair with a friend, and a group of thugs emerges from the bushes, knocks out your friend and rushes your chair. What do you do? 

Double amputee Ted Vollrath found himself in exactly this situation and he didn’t hesitate. He knocked down the closest attacker with two quick punches, grabbed a ninja star from his spokes and zipped it across the pool, right into the jugular of another assailant who was reaching for a gun. Vollrath then finished off the remaining thugs with an array of punches and body attacks, eventually dragging two of them into the pool and subduing them. 

If that sounds slightly (or extremely) fanciful, rest assured, Vollrath — reportedly the first wheelchair user to receive a black belt in karate — did do all these things … but he did them as the eponymous title character in the 1978 grindhouse classic opens in a new windowMr. No Legs. Without the benefit of Hollywood magic, however, the prospect of defending yourself as a wheelchair user can be quite daunting. What are the best tactics to protect yourself? Can a wheelchair user actually stave off attackers? And if so, how?

In Child Welfare Cases, Most of Your Constitutional Rights Don’t Apply

by Eli Hager: For Complete Post, Click Here…

ngd-This ignoring of due process is used especially against anyone with a disability…

The child welfare system rarely offers the same rights as the criminal justice system, leaving many families facing permanent separation without due process protections.

Every year, child protective services agencies across the nation investigate the family lives of roughly 3.5 million children, or about 1 out of every 20 American kids.

In these cases, government officials frequently accuse parents of wrongdoing. They enter homes to conduct searches and interrogations, and what they find can be used against the parent by a state attorney in court. And the accused will face punishment — including, often, having their children removed from them indefinitely.

Child welfare cases, that is, operate a lot like criminal ones.

Yet the mostly low-income families who are ensnared in this vast system have few of the rights that protect Americans when it is police who are investigating them, according to dozens of interviews with constitutional lawyers, defense attorneys, family court judges, CPS caseworkers and parents.

Depression is more than low mood – it’s a change of consciousness

By Cecily Whiteley: For Complete Post, Click Here…

You’ve lost a habitable Earth. You’ve lost the invitation to live that the Universe extends to us at every moment. You’ve lost something that people don’t even know is. That’s why it’s so hard to explain.

This is one person’s experience of living with depression, as recounted in the psychologist Gail Hornstein’s book Agnes’s Jacket (2009). If you ask someone to describe what depression is like, they will often struggle to put it into words. We know a lot of the symptoms, but we still don’t understand the nature of the illness. We are like someone who knows that a fever, a cough, and loss of smell are all symptoms of something, but has no idea about the virus that causes them.

People who’ve never been through depression might assume it’s just an extreme form of feeling low. Don’t we all find that our daily activities can sometimes lose their sparkle? Yet, accounts of people with depression point in a different direction. As another person said to the psychologist Dorothy Rowe, recorded in her book The Experience of Depression (1978): ‘I awoke into a different world. It was as though all had changed while I slept: that I awoke not into normal consciousness but into a nightmare.’

Such reports support the idea that depression stands apart from other forms of everyday experience, as the philosopher Matthew Ratcliffe has emphasised in his book Experiences of Depression (2015). Depressed people often say it involves a fundamental shift, like entering a different ‘world’ – a world detached from ordinary reality and other people. Depression seems to be a more totalising kind of experience than some others. Perhaps it is even a distinct state of consciousness, and can, in turn, reveal something about the nature of consciousness itself.

Tranq Dope: Animal Sedative Mixed With Fentanyl Brings Fresh Horror to U.S. Drug Zones

By Jan Hoffman: For Complete Post, Click Here…

Over a matter of weeks, Tracey McCann watched in horror as the bruises she was accustomed to getting from injecting fentanyl began hardening into an armor of crusty, blackened tissue. Something must have gotten into the supply.

Switching corner dealers didn’t help. People were saying that everyone’s dope was being cut with something that was causing gruesome, painful wounds.

“I’d wake up in the morning crying because my arms were dying,” Ms. McCann, 39, said.

In her shattered Philadelphia neighborhood, and increasingly in drug hot zones around the country, an animal tranquilizer called xylazine — known by street names like “tranq,” “tranq dope” and “zombie drug” — is being used to bulk up illicit fentanyl, making its impact even more devastating.

Xylazine causes wounds that erupt with a scaly dead tissue called eschar; untreated, they can lead to amputation. It induces a blackout stupor for hours, rendering users vulnerable to rape and robbery. When people come to, the high from the fentanyl has long since faded and they immediately crave more. Because xylazine is a sedative and not an opioid, it resists standard opioid overdose reversal treatments.

More than 90 percent of Philadelphia’s lab-tested dope samples were positive for xylazine, according to the most recent data.

“It’s too late for Philly,” said Shawn Westfahl, an outreach worker with Prevention Point Philadelphia, a 30-year-old health services center in Kensington, the neighborhood at the epicenter of the city’s drug trade. “Philly’s supply is saturated. If other places around the country have a choice to avoid it, they need to hear our story.”

A study published in June detected xylazine in the drug supply in 36 states and the District of Columbia. In New York City, xylazine has been found in 25 percent of drug samples, though health officials say the actual saturation is certainly greater. In November, the Food and Drug Administration issued a nationwide four-page xylazine alert to clinicians.