After effects of psychiaty.2 stories of homes for psychiatric
outpatients. In the first story a David McQuaid died of pneumonia
after living in a 5 degree celcius room.

http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/story.asp?id=41C1E7B0-
9F8A-4D79-9EB7-C28E5E4875BA

Douglas warned facility filthy
Knew for months. Health board found Mascouche residence was dirty,
lacked food
DEBBIE PARKES
The Gazette
December 04, 2003

This residence in Mascouche for psychiatric patients, under contract
with
the Douglas Hospital, was shut down in October after complaints about
the
conditions there.
CREDIT: JOHN KENNEY, THE GAZETTE

The Douglas Hospital knew for months about desperate conditions at a
home
for psychiatric patients it oversaw but only shut it down after being
forced to act.
The Pavillon des Pins home in Mascouche had been the object of a
formal
complaint by the regional health board last May for lack of food,
unsanitary conditions and brown tap water. And more than a year prior
to
that, one of the residents had died of pneumonia after becoming
hypothermic. Ambulance attendants who arrived to pick up David
McQuaid on
Jan. 27, 2002, reported the temperature of the room at 5C, the
coroner's
report says.

McQuaid was in a very bad state of hygiene, the coroner's report says.
After being sent the coroner's report in November 2002, the Douglas
put
together an action plan to correct problems. Hospital general manager
Jacques Hendlisz said one of the changes - that there always be at
least
two people on duty - was carried out, but others were not. Sources
close to
the Douglas also said, as recently as this summer, front-line hospital
workers who visited the place periodically had voiced concerns to
their
superiors but to no avail.

Last week, Hendlisz said the hospital has hired an investigator - the
hospital's former lawyer, Johanne Brodeur - to find out why nothing
was
done. Since then, the investigation team has grown by two members.
Yesterday, Montreal Health and Social Services Board spokeperson Lise
Chabot said her organization will take part, too, as will a member of
the
Douglas's users' committee.

The hospital also suspended its manager in charge of housing, Steve
Wohl,
on Nov. 17 pending Brodeur's report, expected mid-January.

Pavillon des Pins was finally shut down in October after
representatives of
the Public Curator's office paid a surprise visit. They found a
pitifully
depressing place, stinking of urine, with mildew on the walls and
windows,
no toilet paper in the bathroom and a dark, unlit hallway. Nor was
there
enough food to feed the 15 Douglas patients who'd been placed there,
says
their report dated Oct. 22.

The residence was under contract with the hospital for about $24,000 a
month to care for the patients. Hendlisz acknowledged residents had
lost
weight and some also had foot problems. He said he didn't know how
much
weight they'd lost.

But sources say several patients had lost so much weight that some
Douglas
Hospital staff were alarmed. The patients were relocated temporarily
at the
hospital before being placed in other homes.

Many Douglas employees are wondering why nothing was done. As far
back as
May, the Lanaudière Regional Health and Social Services Board, in
whose
geographic territory the residence is located, phoned and wrote the
hospital about a complaint dealing with salubrity and food, said board
official Marc Chouinard. He said his board's May 29 letter
mentions "an
evident lack of food," "a permanently insalubrious state" and "water
that
is apparently brown."

The complaint was also brought to the attention of the Montreal
health and
social services board, since it - not the Lanaudière board - is the
overseeing board in this case, Chouinard said.

Sources say people upset about the hospital's lack of action finally
alerted the Public Curator's office, the legal representative of five
of
the 15 patients at the home. On Oct. 20, two Public Curator office
representatives, two Douglas staff members and a representative of the
hospital's users' committee paid a surprise visit to the home, about
10
kilometres off the northeastern tip of Montreal. On Oct. 27, the
Public
Curator's office faxed the hospital, giving it 48 hours to get its
people out.
"Our analysis of the situation leads us to conclude a complete
absence of
any quality of life," the office wrote the hospital, adding it would
also
notify the Quebec Human Rights Commission. The hospital complied and
within three days, moved out all the patients. The human-rights
commission
has launched an investigation, a spokesperson confirmed.

The sister of a woman who lived at Pavillon des Pins said she
suspected
nothing.
That was until she got a phone call Oct. 24 from a woman from the
Public
Curator's office asking whether she'd seen the place recently. The
sister
hadn't been there in several years because previous visits had
extremely
upset the patient. When she went the next day, she didn't even
realize the
woman standing in front of her was her sister. She'd lost so much
weight,
the woman said. "It felt like a place where people had been left to
wait to
die," she said, likening it to the place in Alexander Solzhenitsyn's
book
Cancer Ward. After she left, the sister said, she cried for half an
hour.
She called the hospital and demanded her sister be taken out
immediately,
she said. The sister asked for anonymity to protect her family's
privacy.

The three-page report by the Public Curator's office paints a grim
picture:
"There are nauseating smells of urine throughout," it says. "From (the
water heater) room ... a strong smell of humidity and mildew." The
report
also says there was only one shower and one rusted bathtub for 15
people.

Toilet paper was supplied only on demand, and it appears from what the
visitors observed, residents often never bothered to request any. The
room
with the sinks was kept locked. The report describes how one resident
proudly showed off her neatly arranged clothes, including her feces-
soiled
underwear.

"It's clear that madame is in need of clothes," the report says. It
says
one resident told the visitors she hadn't been taken shopping since
February 2002.

In another passage, the report tells of residents lining up for their
medication, and one patient protesting, only to have the pills put in
her
mouth for her. "It is clear that the workers aren't trained to
interact
with and stimulate this type of clientele," the report says. "There's
no
warm contact, no touch, no gentleness toward the people housed at this
residence. Perhaps the odd exchange of smiles, but nothing more."

The residence is owned by Suzanne Turpin and her partner, Daniel
Coutu.

Reached at her home in Hull, Turpin refused to comment. Efforts to get
through to Coutu were unsuccessful.

The Douglas's Hendlisz said that when he and the hospital board found
out
about the conditions at the residence after the surprise visit in late
October, they were in shock. "We had no knowledge of this. This
information
never made it up to our senior management," he said. But once the
Public
Curator's office sent the letter, the hospital acted immediately,
taking
all the patients out in three days, Hendlisz said.
He easily acknowledged there were problems in terms of quality of
life and
quality of services. For example, he said, "Basic hygiene things:
when you
looked at pictures of the place, it didn't look good." But Hendlisz
also
said: "Their lives were not threatened." But someone did die, a
reporter
reminded him.

"Somebody died there, yes," Hendlisz responded. "And when we received
the
coroner's report, we immediately put on a plan of action." Hendlisz
called
it unfortunate that the plan of action wasn't followed through. Had it
been, " we don't think we would be in this situation today," he said.
The
hospital has since taken the decision to do a systematic check of all
its
150 foster homes and two other, larger, privately-run residences,
Hendlisz
said. "Our problem now is to ensure that the system never fails
again," he
said. dparkes@...

Extracts From Report

From the internal report of the Public Curator's office after their
visit
to the Mascouche residence in October:

No one goes out. In the back yard, there are some mouldy benches, a
broken
swing, a rotten wooden picnic table and two tables salvaged from a
restaurant in the same condition. On the side of the building, a
falling-apart Tempo. In short, there's no motivation for anyone to go
outside.

It's dark in the hallway. There are lights on the ceiling, but
they're not
on and it's impossible to know whether they even work. ...There are
nauseating smells of urine throughout the residence. ...(From a room
with
rusted water heaters) emanates a strong smell of mildew and humidity.
In
the adjacent bedroom, where two people reside, there's brownish mould
on
the wall.

The bedrooms, of a normal dimension, house two people. The rooms are
dirty
and badly insulated. The ambient temperature is cool. We kept our
coats on
throughout our hour and a quarter visit.

(In the kitchen), there are two fridges, a stove, a microwave, a small
table and a few chairs. One resident told me that for breakfast she'd
had a
bowl of porridge, coffee and a slice of bread with peanut butter. We
asked
why there was no toast. The answer was simple: "No toaster." For
snacks,
we're told, the workers serve yogurt - morning, noon and night.

In one of the (two) fridges, there were three lettuces, tomatoes and
condiments, not of a quantity to feed 15 adults, and the freezer was
empty.
In the other (fridge), a bag of frozen vegetables, milk, fruit drinks,
ground meat and a few condiments, no yogurt.

In front of the kitchen is the toilet room. (There are) four toilets,
of
which one is locked and reserved for the personnel, and another is
blocked.
There's no toilet paper, no sinks. Toilet paper is supplied only on
demand,
staff tell us. We notice that though several people used the toilets,
only
one asked for paper. Next door is the locked washroom where the sinks
are.
The residents have to ask for the door to be unlocked if they want to
wash
their hands, we're told. Again, no one made the request.

It is clear that the workers aren't trained to interact with and
stimulate
this type of clientele. There's no warm contact, no touch, no
gentleness
toward the people housed at this residence. Perhaps the odd exchange
of
smiles, but nothing more.
*******************************************************************
http://www.canada.com/montreal/news/story.asp?id=3A0028F3-7778-4659-
B7FA-D0670A8856F9
Patients' boarding house a pigsty
Inspector shuts down Villeray home.
Rotting food, garbage, many pills found, but heat and electricity
lacking

DEBBIE PARKES and RICKY LEONG
The Gazette
Sunday, December 07, 2003

Montreal hospitals are being asked to verify conditions at homes to
which
they refer psychiatric patients following the discovery of disgusting
living conditions in an east-end boarding house. Authorities say
they were
alarmed to learn of the conditions at the residence on Tillemont St.
in the
Villeray district. It was shut by a city building inspector Friday.

Three of the six residents were being monitored by Jean Talon
Hospital and
were referred to the residence by its out-patient clinic.

"We are shocked and appalled by this situation," an embarrassed-
looking
Francine Lortie, the hospital's general manager, told reporters at a
hastily organized news conference yesterday at the regional health
board
offices. She stressed that the home has no official affiliation with
the
hospital but was merely trying to help patients.

Finding a place to live can be difficult, so the hospital had a
private
nurse draw up a list of places to which patients could be referred,
Lortie
explained. Evidently, the list - which had the names of about 30
homes on
it - was "lacking information," she said. Yesterday afternoon, Michel
d'Orsonnens, the building inspector who closed the place, took
reporters on
a tour of the residence, contained on two floors of a duplex.

A putrid odour of rotting food and garbage permeated throughout. Bulk
quantities of bread, rice and other food items were scattered in
hallways
and common areas. There were boxes of rotting fruit and vegetables on
a
back balcony. In the kitchen, pizza left atop a freezer chest was
festering in its original cellophane packaging. The garage contained
what
looked like weeks' worth of bagged garbage. Electricity had been cut
to the
second floor due to unpaid bills, so electricity was brought upstairs
via
extension cords. One of them was plugged into a baseboard heating
unit,
apparently the only heat source upstairs.

D'Orsonnens said the woman who ran the home, Yanick Antony, who slept
in
the basement, didn't have the required business permit and could face
a
fine.

He also said that a large quantity of pills were found on the
premises, but
were removed by ambulance technicians. The pills - supposedly
prescribed by
the residents' physicians - were kept and distributed to the
residents by
the people who worked there. Is such a practice proper for a home
with no
official links to the health system? Lortie was asked. Anyone can ask
a
person to help them manage their medication for them, she responded.

Chantale Lapointe, the regional board official in charge of mental-
health
services, said naturally the health board is concerned that similar
deplorable homes could also be operating, and will be contacting other
hospitals. Officials were alerted to the situation at the Villeray
home on
Friday after a Hydro-Québec employee who had gone to look into the
unpaid
electricity bills discovered the appalling conditions. Lapointe said
five
of the residents agreed to go back to the hospital for a medical
check-up,
and the one who didn't was taken in by his son. Of the other five,
four
residents have been put up in emergency shelters until a new place
can be
found for them, and one was taken in by a friend, she said. The case
is the
third involving allegations of abusive patient care to come out in
recent
weeks.

Conditions at St. Charles Borromée chronic-care hospital were
exposed
after
a patient's family made audio tapes of staff verbally abusing and
taunting
her. And last week a Mascouche residence under contract with the
Douglas
Hospital made headlines for appalling conditions. The situation had
gone on
for months, despite complaints.
The hospital finally shut the place down at the end of October, after
intervention by the Public Curator's office.

dparkes@...
rleong@...