Psychiatric Patients Restrained 50 Times More Often Than National Average

VIDEO – LA HOSPITAL LOVES BONDAGE –

Oct. 15, 2023 – Hospitals are forbidden under federal law from restraining psychiatric patients except to prevent them from harming themselves or others. Restraints can be used only when other steps have failed and are widely discouraged by psychiatric professionals, seen as a measure of last resort that frays trust and can traumatize patients. At L.A. General — a public hospital serving some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the nation’s most populous county — the psychiatric inpatient unit has restrained patients at a higher rate than in any other in California, a Times analysis has found.

Those numbers doubled between 2020 and 2021 — the latest figures publicly available — even as the statewide average for other inpatient facilities barely increased.

L.A. General staff have reported 200 cases in which psychiatric inpatients were restrained for a total of 24 hours or more within a month, records dating from 2018 show. Nearly 40 of them were restrained for the equivalent of one week or more, including a woman who spent an entire month in restraints.