From: drarwingnuttephd@gmail.com   
      
   Another mentally ill inmate died of dehydration   
   Posted by Joseph Neff on September 25, 2014    
      
      
      
   A North Carolina prison inmate with a history of mental illness died of   
   dehydration in March, according to an Associated Press report. All the details   
   are not yet known, but there are a number of striking similarities to the 1996   
   of a Vietnam veteran who    
   suffered from post traumatic stress. A subsequent federal audit found a host   
   of problems plaguing medical and mental-health care at Central Prison:   
   inadequate staffing, an out-of-date facility, poor management and overuse of   
   drugs and restraints in the    
   psychiatric hospital.   
      
   In March, Anthony Michael Kerr, 53, died of dehydration while in care of   
   Alexander Correctional Institution.   
      
   Here is the article on the previous death.   
      
   November 2, 1997 Sunday   
      
   Case puts prison's hospitals on notice   
      
   JOSEPH NEFF AND WADE RAWLINS, STAFF WRITERS   
      
   Glen Raeford Mabrey was a Vietnam veteran with a drinking problem and   
   post-traumatic stress disorder. When he got drunk and behind the wheel, as he   
   did repeatedly, the state of North Carolina locked him up. Last year, during   
   his fourth stretch in prison    
   for drunken driving, Mabrey lost touch with reality and drifted into a   
   psychotic haze. He didn't know who or where he was.   
      
   Officials at Umstead Correctional Institute shipped him to the medical   
   facilities at Central Prison in Raleigh for his protection.   
      
   After eight days in the care of medical staff there, Mabrey, 47, was dead.He   
   died of thirst.   
      
   Prison officials say the rapid death of a man in adequate physical health   
   could have been prevented. Locked in a cell without water for days, his   
   kidneys shut down.   
      
   And when he was moved to Central's hospital, medical personnel botched his   
   care, according to documents from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner,   
   the Department of Correction, the Department of Human Resources and the N.C.   
   Board of Nursing, as well    
   as court records.   
      
   "Had I been the physician in this case, I would have handled it far   
   differently," said Dr. Barbara Pohlman, who was named the Department of   
   Correction medical director nine months after Mabrey's death.   
      
   Said Mabrey's sister, Cheryl Hollowell: "He shouldn't go to prison for a   
   two-year sentence and come back in a body bag."   
      
   How Mabrey died provides a snapshot of a troubled medical institution.   
      
   Prison officials kept outmoded policies in place for years. Prison guards, in   
   some cases, were able to overrule the medical decisions of doctors and nurses.   
   Correctional officers with no medical training were - and still are - given   
   the task of    
   monitoring mentally ill prisoners.   
      
   And there have been repeated warnings that staffing at Central's psychiatric   
   hospital is inadequate in light of a growing prison population.   
      
   Central Prison houses the state's most dangerous criminals. Still, its two   
   hospitals are charged by law with providing basic health and nutritional care.   
      
   "Inmates are wards of the state, and we have an obligation to provide the best   
   medical care we can," Correction Secretary Mack Jarvis said.   
      
   The Department of Correction fell short of its obligation in Mabrey's case,   
   according to official records.   
      
   His death brought some changes to Central Prison: Nursing policies have   
   changed. The understaffed medical hospital hired dozens more nurses. Jarvis   
   has asked the National Institute of Corrections to audit his department's   
   health system. The psychiatric    
   hospital has begun video monitoring of some inmates.   
      
   But the 144-bed psychiatric hospital operates with a staff as barebones now as   
   in 1993. The chief psychiatrist cannot say that inmates are being adequately   
   checked.   
      
   As a result of the Mabrey case, the N.C. Nursing Board has disciplined six   
   nurses. The N.C. Medical Society has taken no action against any doctor   
   involved.   
      
   ###   
      
   A damaged veteran:   
      
   Mabrey grew up in Roanoke Rapids, the oldest of four children. His father was   
   a loom repairman for J.P. Stevens, working in the textile mill featured in the   
   movie "Norma Rae."   
      
   Drafted after high school, Mabrey served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1970,   
   escorting convoys, setting up ambushes and protecting an Army base in the Ia   
   Drang Valley.   
      
   "It was rough," said Melvin Tharrington, a boyhood friend who recalled the   
   night they spent pinned down under enemy fire for five hours. "Glen was good   
   as gold. He was like a brother to me. He wasn't the same Glen I had known   
   after he got back. I think    
   it just really got to him."   
      
   A week after Mabrey's return, his mother heard noises in his bedroom. She   
   found him in his closet crying, banging his head against the wall.   
      
   "Momma said he talked about all his friends coming back in body bags and it   
   was too much for him," Hollowell, his sister, said.   
      
   He was a welder by trade, but had trouble holding a job. Diagnosed with   
   post-traumatic stress syndrome, Mabrey lived on monthly $ 900 disability   
   checks.   
      
   He had numerous run-ins with the law resulting from his abuse of alcohol and   
   cocaine: DWI, driving with a revoked license, larceny, writing bad checks. His   
   first marriage ended. His second marriage was rocky. He was arrested for   
   assaulting his wife,    
   usually while he was drinking.   
      
   He was sent to prison in December 1994, after his fourth conviction for DWI.   
      
   Cutting off the water:   
      
   In prison, Mabrey was a frequent client of mental health services, receiving   
   treatment for depression and other illnesses.   
      
   When he became incoherent and disoriented, officials at Umstead involuntarily   
   committed him to Central Prison's psychiatric hospital. That was Feb. 21, 1996.   
      
   He was put in a cell with a mattress, a blanket, a toilet and a sink.   
      
   Dr. James Smith, medical director of the psychiatric hospital, noted that   
   Mabrey was "acutely psychotic."   
      
   Mabrey repeated the word "raisins" over and over. At night, he yelled and   
   banged his head on a door, as he did when first home from Vietnam. He piled up   
   his mattress and clothes and poured food on them.   
      
   Smith ordered that Mabrey be put in restraints and given Thorazine, an   
   anti-psychotic medicine sometimes referred to as a "pharmaceutical   
   straitjacket." The Thorazine continued daily while he was in the mental health   
   ward.   
      
   Two days after admission, Mabrey flooded his cell at 5 a.m. by stopping up his   
   toilet and repeatedly flushing it. He said he smelled smoke.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)