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Hartford Courant
Thursday, October 15, 1998
OUT OF TRAGEDY, A CRUSADE FIGHTING IN THE
NAME OF THEIR SON
Gagging the mouths of patients was standard
procedure during restraints at the Charter Greensboro psychiatric
hospital.
This ``homegrown'' practice, which was included
in no training manual, led to the death last March of 16-year-old
Tristan Sovern. He suffocated after being restrained face-down by
seven staffers who wrapped a towel and a bed sheet around his head
to prevent him from biting or spitting.
``I cannot understand how, when they heard my
son screaming that he couldn't breathe and that they were choking
him, not one of those people said, `Stop,' '' said Jean Allen,
Sovern's adoptive mother.
Jean Allen and her husband, Richard, who have
six other children, including four adopted ones with special needs,
are fighting for Sovern now just as strongly as they did when he was
alive.
They plan to draft and lobby for national
standards that would become known as ``Tristan's Law.'' The
legislation would require mental health aides to be licensed and
would ensure minimum qualifications and training. It would also
require criminal background checks of all prospective mental health
aides.
``I don't think as a nation that we should
allow people who don't have proper training, who are not supervised
properly, to go and work with those who need the very best,'' Allen
said. A college professor with a doctorate in child development,
Allen once worked in psychiatric hospitals in California.
Although individual states and institutions set
individual training levels, there are no national standards on the
proper use of restraint. Only three states -- California, Colorado
and Kansas -- have active licensing laws in place for mental health
aides.
Sovern, who had developmental and emotional
problems, had been placed on a suicide watch at Charter Greensboro,
part of the nation's largest chain of psychiatric facilities.
Acting on a tip from another patient that
Sovern might be trying to hurt himself with a fish hook, seven
staffers burst into his room to restrain him.
The aide leading the charge had twice been
convicted of assault outside of work, including an incident in which
he tried to run down someone with a car.
He was hired after the first conviction, then
kept on staff after the second.
Joel Weiden, a spokesman for the hospital's
owner, Charter Behavioral System, said he did not know why the
worker was kept on staff. But the Greensboro facility no longer uses
mouth coverings, he said, ``and I'd be surprised if any other
Charter facilities still use them.''
Weiden blamed mistakes in restraint use on the
lack of national standards -- the same sort of standards Jean Allen
is now fighting to ensure.
``There is no national standard, and no
direction from government agencies or any of the trade
organizations,'' said Weiden, whose chain of hospitals had another
restraint-related death just three months before.
``So each facility,'' he said, ``has been left
to develop its own policies.''
To Allen, that is simply unacceptable.
``People would be up in arms if they found out
animals were being treated this way at the local animal shelter,''
she said. ``We owe no less for our children.''
Caption: PHOTO 1: CLUTCHING A PICTURE OF HER
SON, Jean Allen is comforted by her husband, Richard Allen, at
Tristan Sovern's grave in Liberty, N.C. Sovern, 16, died last March
at the Charter Greensboro psychiatric hospital after being
restrained. The Allens now are working to draft national standards
requiring that mental health aides be licensed, meet certain minimum
qualifications and be subject to criminal background checks. The
legislation would be known as "Tristan's Law.''
PHOTO 2: HIS MOTHER KEEPS AN ALBUM with photos
and this award that Sovern won in school when he was 12.
Memo: Andrew McClain's Death Brings Change
But will a legacy remain?
Page A11
This series DEADLY RESTRAINT is available on
The Courant's Web site, including a national database of
restraint-related deaths, a discussion forum and more.
http://courant.ctnow.com/projects/restraint/day1.stm
www.courant.com
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