Brutalism in Fall River

How to describe the Corrigan IPU? It’s in Fall River, MA. It’s run by DMH. Think of it as a very small psychiatric hospital (16 beds) with a very large staff. Its first notable characteristic is the mismatch between its staff size and its patient size. To get a sense, if we look only at the day shift (one of three shifts) and only at the professional staff (let’s say “professional” = “has a graduate degree”), we find that daytime, professional staff alone, outnumber patients.

A second thing to note is that this very small hospital is so small that it occupies only part of only one floor of the eponymous building at 49 Hillside Ave. That 1965 building, pictured at left, exemplifies the architectural style so admired worldwide for its perfectly descriptive name: Brutalism.

The third thing to know is the propositional statement that motivates this website:

Corrigan deprives approximately half its patients of a legislated Human Right

viz., the right of daily access to the outdoors

This has been illegal since 2015

(Mass. law requires daily access).

Mass. law requires each patient have a reasonable opportunity to go outside every day.

Corrigan patients go weeks and months without ever going outside.

We cannot say precisely how long patients go without ever going outside. The reason is that Corrigan IPU does not track patient by patient when their last outside access was. They could track it. Each time there is an rec. break, they track who goes outside. But they never then take a look at the data and ask, “When was the last time patient X went outside on a rec. break? Or even better, “Has patient on a rec. break. but they choose not to. They track who does go outside, but they don’t then sit back and ask who has not been outside.

Corrigan simply has very little interest on the Fresh Air law. Not only do they not track when patients went outside. In addition, not one member of Corrigan management even once acknowledged the written Human Rights complaints we sent them. And finally, in the ten years since Gov. Deval Patrick signed the Fresh Air Act into law, Corrigan not even once prepared a 6f5 Plan (See here).

Our Complaint: here. Patient stories: here. Timeline: here.

The key to understanding the Fresh Air law is its enforcement mechanism: facilities have to make a plan for how they will comply with the law. They have to submit it to DMH for approval and then resubmit it every year for licensure. See here. The amazing thing is that Corrigan IPU never once completed such a plan.

(We have asked repeatedly for a Corrigan 6f5 Plan. The Corrigan employees ignore us. DMH was unable to find one. See here.)

Philosophy: that is, how did this happen? How was this possible?

Corrigan may very well be per capita the most expensive psychiatric hospital ever, anywhere. (This is because it operates at significant diseconomies of scale. It has a very large and highly-paid staff—but only sixteen beds [i.e., those costs are spread across at most sixteen patients at a time]) With all the public money spent on Corrigan IPU, how is it possible that the facility simply ignores a state law for 10 years?

The United Nations’ Nelson Mandela rules require a minimum of one hour outside each day for prisoners. Withholding daily access to the outdoors is considered torture by the Association for the Prevention of Torture. How can we understand highly compensated professionals simply turning a blind eye to the fact that some of their patients never go outside.

. How is it possible that that they don is a facility where if we just consider the daytime highly-paid staff, there are more staff than patients with more daytime professional staff than patientsa highly paid professional staff all the professionals at Corrigan IPU, how can we understand their not even following the law? Presumably, for any member of the Corrigan staff, if it were their brother, their mother, or their friend who was an inpatient on the unit, they would surely make sure that their loved one gets outside every day. So how can we understand this? Some possible philosophical explanations are here