Unduly locked up in psychiatric hospital: “I don’t want to be here, I can’t move and it feels like I’m in a prison”, that’s what Carla told her sister when she managed to visit her.
Carla is 24 years old and has a rare disease called chronic lyme. Her symptoms have been changing over time and now she is at a critical point. She has been unable to move from her bed for months, with acute malnutrition, ulcers in her intestine and feet and thrombi in her arteries among other serious symptoms. According to Sandra, her sister, at the end of March Carla was admitted to the University Hospital of Burgos (Spain) for aggravation.
However, a few days ago the hospital decided to transfer her to psychiatry unit without her consent nor the consent of the family, and without having any psychiatric diagnosis or disability to justify it. An expert on mental health rights that was consulted by The European Times said that “it seems like some psychiatrist is using force to obtain new ‘clients’ against the person’s will and needs”.
Carla’s family put a petion in change.org, to gain attention to the case and impinge on the hospital to place Carla on the proper care unit, and stop stigmatizing and mistreating Carla [ Change.org/SalvemosACarla ]
“What is happening to my sister is not treated in psychiatry” said Sandra. The ward where she is has very strict rules, “but those imposed on my sister are even stricter” continued Sandra, “she cannot talk to her lawyer, we can only see her for half an hour a day and with an assistant in front of her, she has no right to a cell phone…” But in addition, experts say, this place is not even adequate to treat Carla’s symptoms.
“We are very concerned about how all of this may affect their health both physically and mentally. Having chronic lyme is very hard and for me it is not easy to assume that my sister is dying, but on top of that, when you start the mourning you see that they are violating her rights and giving an undignified treatment to a person so sick and whom you love so much is beyond you at all levels” said Sandra about the human rights violations that her sister is suffering.
El Mundo reported that Rocío Muñoz is “very disgusted”. She is also astonished, but above all, she is concerned about the condition of her daughter Carla, admitted without prior notice to the Psychiatric Department of the University Hospital of Burgos (HUBU) after being on the ward since the end of March. Since her transfer on June 10, the family has denounced an “accumulation of nonsense” without answers to satisfy their doubts in this regard. For this reason, a hundred people gathered in the Plaza del Cid, in front of the Teatro Principal, to support this 24-year-old woman with chronic Lyme disease, to denounce the “illegal retention” to which she is being subjected and demand her immediate release from the Psychiatric Unit, and be brough to a proper hospital where she can be treated of her physical conditions.
“We know that my sister is in a very serious physical condition, but we are not going to allow her to be locked up, isolated and unable to exercise her rights as any other citizen. Even a criminal has more rights than her” said Sandra in the petition thatthe family has posted in Change.org.
Sandra continued saying that “It is unbelievable how with her they are skipping all the basic principles by which healthcare should be governed. I don’t know when her last day may be, if it will come soon or in a long time but what is clear to me is that we are going to fight to the end for my sister to be treated with the dignity she deserves. For her and for all people with Lyme disease”.
It is clear that anyone in Carla’s place would want to be treated properly, to be listened to and to be able to be with her family as long as possible, but the “hospital managers either dont think the same or someone is giving them a wrong and criminal advice” said a consulted expert.
Burgos connecta, a local newsroom from the city of the victim, reported that Carla’s mother, then filed a legal complaint at the Burgos Duty Court after making several complaints through the hospital’s Patient Care Services, due to her daughter being unduly transferred to the psychiatric unit, where Carla seems to have lost all her rights, instead of transferring her to an intensive care unit or any other more appropriate unit, whee her rights will be respected and can be given the appropriate treatments.
“The judicial resolution has not been notified to Carla or her family, Carla has not signed anything,” her mother explained. “Carla has a very great immunosuppression and the family is told that the only place where she can be cured is in psychiatry, because it is the most aseptic area of the hospital, which I do not understand,” continues Rocío. “If she is so serious, which is true, it is normal for her to be in the ICU, but in the ICU they tell us not because she is at risk of contracting nosocomial diseases, but it does not seem to me that she should have restrictions on her fundamental rights. If they leave her in psychiatry because they consider it the safest place (from the viewpoint of infections), fine, but they should not restrict her rights,” she said.
The hospital uses the excuse of “data protection” to hide “details of the patient’s situation” while hindering more important rights.
One of the posts on the instagram account that Sandra has created to denounce the violations being suffered by her sister in the psychiatric unit, reads:
“Today dear sister,
I went to the meeting like every day with the doctors to know about you, since I can’t see you ?. I have asked them things like your hemoglobin since you have needed blood transfusions or for your high heart rate which they tell us is because of your pains but in internal medicine with those same pains were in normal values, I am worried because you have a pericardial effusion and I am worried about those frequencies. They have attacked me. They have managed to make me cry?, feel guilty for wanting to hear from you and worry about you. Their incredible HUMANITY has not allowed them to say “calm down let’s all calm down”. they didn’t care. They also told me that even though I am a nurse, I cannot understand such technicalities, such basic things as hemoglobin, or insulin pattern, as if we nurses were stupid. WELL, NO, DOCTORS, WE KNOW ABOUT HEMOGLOBIN, INSULIN, PAIN CONTROL AND PHARMACOKINETICS OF DRUGS AND MANY OTHER THINGS. I will keep fighting for you Carla?, because that’s what you ask me every time I see you. May we get you out.❤””
