Congressional hearing reveals 4 more deaths at Tomah, Wisconsin, VA Hospital

Selections from this report on the Reveal website

Four more veterans died under suspicious circumstances than previously reported at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Tomah, Wisconsin, under the leadership of its chief of staff, psychiatrist Dr. David Houlihan. The deaths, revealed in a rare congressional field hearing today in the small Wisconsin town, bring to 33 the number of unexpected deaths The Center for Investigative Reporting has found occurred during Houlihan’s decade at the helm. The medical center became known as “Candy Land” for the ease with which narcotic painkillers were prescribed.

They include Kraig Ferrington, a 45-year-old Army veteran and union plasterer who died of an overdose of seven medications prescribed by Houlihan in 2007, and three veterans that a VA pharmacist told lawmakers died in the VA parking lot in 2008 and 2009.

“We are doing everything we can to make sure these tragedies don’t happen to others,” Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, told a packed audience of 400 veterans and family members at the Cranberry Country Lodge. The hearing brought together many of the people who had suffered and complained for years about Houlihan’s practices to no avail. Members of Congress from both parties made the trip to the rural community, which had until recently been more famous for cranberries and cheddar cheese than notorious for narcotic painkillers.

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Today’s hearing marked the sixth congressional hearing where overmedication and abuse of authority at the Tomah VA have been discussed since CIR revealed the problems in a story published Jan. 8.

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Within a week of that story’s publication, Houlihan and Frasher were removed from their positions pending the completion of an internal investigation.

On March 10, they were placed on administrative leave after a preliminary review found that Tomah patients were 2.5 times more likely than the national average to receive high doses of opiates. On March 20, the VA told Congress that Houlihan’s boss, Tomah hospital Director Mario DeSanctis, had been “reassigned to a position at the Great Lakes Health Care System network office, a position outside of the medical center.”

The VA Office of Inspector General, the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration also have opened fresh investigations of Houlihan and the Tomah VA.

Throughout the three-hour hearing, lawmakers expressed exasperation that few alternatives to narcotics are being offered. Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., an Army veteran, said he had been pressing the VA to adopt a more nuanced approach to pain management since 2008. [...]

Witnesses included Ryan Honl, a Gulf War veteran and West Point graduate; Noelle Johnson, a pharmacist who was fired in 2009 after she refused to fill prescriptions for high doses of morphine that she believed were unsafe; and family members of those who died, including Heather and Marvin Simcakoski, the widow and father of Jason Simcakoski, a 35-year-old former Marine who died of an overdose in the Tomah VA psychiatric ward in August.

Congress Holds First Hearing on Abuse in Unregulated 'Troubled Teen' Industry, Exposing Quackery and Torture Across America

While not directly related to psychiatrists or psychiatry, you have to wonder where these jokers got their theory of mental health from. Just the name of "Attack Therapy" is enough to give me the chills. That said:

FIRST, we have this press release from a Statistics Watchdog Group in advance of a hearing held today on Capitol Hill. You have to know that when the statisticians are after you, you have really screwed up. We include it here because it speaks so well to the issue:

Deaths from medical neglect and other severe child abuse in teen "wilderness programs" "boot camps" "emotional growth boarding schools" and other residential facilities will be the subject of a first ever Congressional hearing this week. On Oct. 10, the House Education and Labor Committee, chaired by Representative George Miller (D-CA), will hold a full committee investigative hearing.

Parents of adolescents who have died in these programs will testify and the Government Accountability Office will present its findings from a recent investigation of the industry. Seven boot camp guards and a nurse are currently on trial for manslaughter in the death of one boy in Florida.

Statistical Assessment Service Senior Fellow Maia Szalavitz helped spur this investigation with the first book-length expose of this billion-dollar industry, "Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids" (Riverhead Books, 2006), which detailed the horrifying abuse, medical ignorance, and neglect that caused thousands of injuries and dozens of deaths. It is the only book to comprehensively cover this subject. She will attend the hearing and be available to the media.

Your dog has more protection than your child

A federal law protects mule deer from harassment -- but teens held in these programs do not even have the right to contact their parents or law enforcement or be free from food deprivation, sleep deprivation, isolation, restraint and other severe punishments.

Most parents are unaware that in many states, dog kennels and nail salons are more highly regulated than the health and safety of children in these institutions.

Where state regulation exists, enforcement is lax. Anyone -- including convicts -- can open a program; no qualifications are required.

Szalavitz has continued to investigate this highly profitable industry, exposing the spurious treatment practices and abuses for STATS and other publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reason, and the American Prospect.

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About STATS: Since its founding in 1994, the non-profit, non-partisan Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) has become a much-valued resource on the use and abuse of science and statistics in the media. Our goals are to correct scientific misinformation in the media resulting from bad science, politics, or a simple lack of information or knowledge; and to act as a resource for journalists and policy makers on major scientific issues and controversies. For more information, contact Trevor Butterworth at 202-841-2868 or visit http://www.stats.org.

Second, we have this link to an earlier story regarding the political links between one political party and the 'Troubled Teen' industry, which would explain why investigations were not conducted earlier. It also includes a history of the weird origin of the Attack Therapy used throughout these prison camps for kids.

Thirdly: There are other reports (USA Today, Huffington Post) on these hearings as well. The complete video of the hearings can be seen online here

Finally, we have the Committee's press release, complete with direct links to the report and to transcripts of the testimony of several witnesses. :

A new government report released today found thousands of allegations of child abuse at private residential treatment programs between 1990 and 2007. The report also examined in detail ten cases of child abuse and neglect that resulted in death between 1990 and 2004.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which prepared the report at the request of House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA), testified about its findings at a committee hearing today. Three parents whose children died in private residential programs also testified at the hearing.

There are estimated to be tens of thousands of children enrolled in private residential treatment programs – often called “boot camps,” “wilderness camps,” and “behavior modification facilities” – around the country. A weak patchwork of state regulations governs the operation of these programs.

The GAO report found that the 10 programs it examined were marked by ineffective management, untrained staff; reckless or negligent operating practices; and misleading marketing practices.

Cynthia Harvey’s daughter, Erica, was 15 years old when she died of dehydration and heat stroke at a wilderness program in Nevada. “When Erica’s eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fell off the trail, head first, into rocks and scrub brush, she was left to lie where she fell for 45 minutes, while two [program] staffers, still unwilling or unable to recognize what was happening, watched Erica die a slow, painful death,” testified Harvey.

Paul Lewis’ son Ryan committed suicide at a residential school and wilderness program in West Virginia in 2001. “Our family was duped into believing that caring people would help Ryan, who was struggling with a learning disability and clinical depression. We thought these were professionals who knew what they were doing. We had no idea that their interest was profit, not healing.”

Bob Bacon’s son Aaron died at a wilderness program in Utah in 2004. According to the GAO, Aaron showed signs of physical distress for three weeks that were ignored by program staff, including a company-employed Emergency Medical Technician. In those three weeks, Aaron lost 20 percent of his body weight.

“This company-employed EMT . . . dismissed [Aaron’s] final desperate plea to see a doctor who could prove he wasn’t faking and made a conscious decision to prove a point rather than render aid, thus effectively killing our son rather than saving him.”

Miller said today that Congress must act to regulate the industry to prevent abuse from happening.

“This nightmare has remained an open secret for years. Sporadic news accounts of specific incidents have built a record that should never have been ignored, but shamefully was,” said Miller. “Without regulations, the industry as a whole will continue to present unacceptable risks to the children it serves.”

Miller requested the GAO investigation in December 2005. The GAO is expected to release a comprehensive report in early 2008. To see a copy of Miller’s 2005 request, click here.

To see Miller’s opening statement from the hearing, click here.

See also this Video report