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Jan 14, 2019 at 10:55 PM

This is really a tragedy. What's most concerning is there were entire groups of clinicians and others conspiri g to dump patients rather than one 'bad apple'.

Quote:

UPDATED NOVEMBER 01, 2018 04:36 PM

James Flavy Coy Brown, who had vanished after arriving in town by bus on Feb. 12, is now living at a boarding home in Sacramento. Pictured with his pipe, he awaits his morning medication.

A Las Vegas jury on Thursday unanimously decided in favor of mentally ill people who were cast out of a Nevada psychiatric hospital and bused across the country without proper care or planning.

The Clark County jury decided that each participant in the class-action lawsuit is entitled to $250,000, said Sacramento civil rights attorney Mark Merin, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of patients.

The panel also said Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital, the state’s primary facility for mentally ill people, must revise its discharge policies to ensure that patients are safely transferred in the future.

“I’m so very happy for these patients,” Merin said, minutes after the verdict was announced, “This is one of the high points of my career.”

Merin filed the lawsuits on behalf of James Flavy Coy Brown, whose bus trip took him to Sacramento, and potentially hundreds of others who had similar experiences.

The Sacramento Bee documented Brown’s story beginning in 2013. Subsequent investigations by the newspaper found that Rawson-Neal regularly discharged homeless patients using “Greyhound therapy,” sometimes to places where they had never been and had no ties.

During the long ride to Northern California, Brown had rationed the peanut butter crackers and Ensure nutritional supplements that a staff member at the mental hospital had given him, along with his discharge papers and a bus ticket to Sacramento. His food was gone, and he was nearly out of the medication to treat his array of mood disorders, including schizophrenia, depression and anxiety.

According to a state investigation, Brown spent 72 hours in the hospital’s observation unit before a doctor discharged him to a Greyhound bus to Sacramento. The discharge orders noted he should be given a three-day supply of Thorazine, Klonopin and Cymbalta to treat his schizophrenia, anxiety disorder and depression, plus “Ensure and snacks for a 15-hour bus ride.”

Brown wound up homeless in the capital city after arriving by bus. No prior arrangements had been made for his care or housing. He told police he was advised by the Nevada psychiatric hospital to “call 911” when he arrived in the capital city.