Just a “Psych Patient”?
Stigma in the ER
A recent story on CBC GoPublic recently caught my eye. It was about a man who was written off because he was just a psych patient.
In April 2018, David Pontone went to the emergency department at Humber River Hospital in Toronto, Canada. He was experiencing severe leg pain. He also happened to have bipolar disorder, which was stable. The ER doc ordered an MRI and also referred him to the on-call psychiatrist. Notes from his chart state the reason for his visit was bipolar, and the psychiatrist wrote that his main symptom was anxiety.
Come on, big boy
When nothing showed up on the MRI, Mr. Pontone was given the boot. The fact that he was in too much pain to walk was apparently not a problem for them. The video linked to below shows Mr. Pontone falling and then part crawling, part dragging himself along the floor towards the exit.
A staff member is standing over him the whole time; the CBC story says it’s a nurse, but it would be very unusual for an ER nurse to be in street clothes, so I wonder if perhaps it was a social worker. Regardless, Mr. Pontone is quoted as saying the staff member told him:
“You’re a big boy! You’re strong! Come on, big boy, stand up!”
A few days later, he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks the nerves. Serious stuff.
While this happened almost three years ago, it’s only being made public now because it was quite the production for the family to get a copy of the video, due to the hospital’s privacy concerns regarding other people who appear in it. Apparently, the twit standing over him in the video was fired.
All too common
This is gross. Sadly, it’s not surprising, but still gross. It reminds me of an ER encounter I had a couple of years ago. I went in because I’d been having problems breathing, my blood pressure was really high, and I was so dizzy I could barely walk. They decided I was 100% psych because I have depression.
I called them out on their stigma, and the nurse who had triaged me insisted it couldn’t possibly be stigma, because she had a friend with a mental illness. Oh, well that changes everything! That friend needed to ditch this beeyotch pronto.
This isn’t just the odd instance here and there. People with mental illnesses are less likely to have their physical health concerns taken seriously, as care providers blame it all on their mental illness and punt them over to psychiatry. If two people go into ER with identical symptoms consistent with a heart attack, and one has a history of mental illness and the other doesn’t, who do you think is going to the cardiac cath lab and who’s getting a psych consult and perhaps, begrudgingly, an Ativan? If you guessed that the “psych patient” is less likely to be sent for cardiac catheterization, research would say you’re right.
You’d think health professionals should know enough to not be this stupid, but that’s clearly not the case. It’s a weird blind spot to have, but I think it’s pretty pervasive, even when it’s not malicious. I remember when my partner at the time was in ICU and I was spending a lot of time there, and they were so impressed that I worked in psychiatry because it must be so hard. For all their knowledge dealing with serious physical health stuff, mental illness was totally outside their sphere of familiarity.
What next?
I don’t know what needs to happen to change this kind of thing. I think it could help if there was staff in-service training where patients with different conditions came in and talked about what their journey through ER had been like. That’s probably not going to do anything about the really entrenched stigma, but it might do some good where it’s more of a blind spot issue.
As for dumbasses like the woman shown in the video, perhaps we need to wait for brain transplants to come along. Until then, I hope she stays far, far away from me and anyone else who is “just a psych patient”.
Originally published at https://mentalhealthathome.org on January 25, 2021.
