3 ms·

People with more severe autism can be really tricky to deal with. According to [0] the medical staff gave him medication he was known to be allergic to in order

• graphe 3y ago
  >If the staff had been given proper training into dealing with neuro-atypical patients, there would have been no need for sedation. If people are given anti violence courses would it certainly stop violence? Doesn't matter if they have autism or not, doctors in their panic with or without training may make medical misfortune occur.
  • fnordpiglet 3y ago
    It’s not about stopping violence it’s about managing and understanding situations that appear violent but are borne of anxiety or some other emotion. Violent rage or criminal violence is a lot different than anxiety, and can be dealt with through purely social mechanisms. Certainly resorting to heavy medication to cope with autism isn’t the right way to manage behavior induced through anxiety and fear, especially if they’re known and explicitly disclosed to be toxic to the individual.
    • strken 3y ago
      When you get right down to it, aren't most examples of violence from neurotypical people also "situations that appear violent but are [born] of anxiety or some other emotion"? Like, if a man turns up in emergency high as a kite and is worried the hospital will call the police so he shoves a doctor over and runs away, or a new mother grabs the scrubs of a nurse because nobody will tell her where her child is, it's not a great outcome to jam those patients full of antipsychotics either.
    • SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
      Is that certain? It's not a good solution, but it's also not a good solution to say that nurses just have to deal with agitated and combative patients for however long it takes to find or rule out non-pharmaceutical solutions. I'd question whether long-term use of forcible physical restraint is even better for the patient.
      • fnordpiglet 3y ago
        There are situations where it’s unclear what is happening and where it is clear. In situations like this where the family tells the hospital specifically what is going to happen and what to not do, it’s not alright to do the thing that’s known wrong. For someone severely autistic all you have to do is reduce stimulation. Sedating them isn’t the right way to handle them. Putting them in a quiet room is the right way to handle them. In situations where there’s no knowledge of what’s going on restraining them and getting a psychiatric nurse or doctor to evaluate them is probably a better outcome than sedating them. Sedation makes diagnosis impossible. The comeback is that there aren’t enough psych staff on hand to respond in emergencies. That’s just a pathetic state of things given the human mind is the most complex part of our being and illness of the mind is prevalent and largely untreated.
• uberman 3y ago
  Police cant/won't be trained on how to deal the neordiversity and mental crisis, why do we think that the assembly line health care system can be?
  • chimeracoder 3y ago
    > Police cant/won't be trained on how to deal the neordiversity and mental crisis, why do we think that the assembly line health care system can be? Why are you using police (who have no legal or ethical duty to care for or protect anyone) as a baseline for what we would expect of healthcare providers (who have both a legal and ethical duty to their patients)?
    • metabagel 3y ago
      The LAPD adopted the motto “To protect and to serve”, and it was subsequently widely copied across the U.S. Besides a general mandate to protect the public at large, police are responsible for the wellbeing of anyone in their custody.
      • dragonwriter 3y ago
        > The LAPD adopted the motto “To protect and to serve”, and it was subsequently widely copied across the U.S. AFAIK. it hasn't been copied in that form very widely, instead, it was popularized by TV (Dragnet specifically, IIRC), and so is culturally attached to police in general, despite the vast majority of departments with any motto having different mottos.
      • chimeracoder 3y ago
        > The LAPD adopted the motto “To protect and to serve”, and it was subsequently widely copied across the U.S. Besides a general mandate to protect the public at large, police are responsible for the wellbeing of anyone in their custody. That is a PR slogan. That's like trying to say Google can't be evil because their motto is "Don't be evil." The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that police do not have a duty to protect citizens, and that ruling has been reinforced consistently at lower courts throughout the country.
• viraptor 3y ago
  > rather than actually addressing the source of his anxiety. > If the staff had been given proper training into dealing with neuro-atypical patients, there would have been no need for sedation. You're making some serious assumptions here. 1. The source of anxiety could be dealt with at the time. 2. The training would be applicable at the time. 3. A different approach would require no sedation. 4. There was time for a calming approach given what had to be done at the time. Sure, we should improve things, but also when you end up in the ICU, the priorities are a bit different than during a routine doctor visit - we don't know whether that situation could be dealt with without any kind of restraints/sedatives.
  • whatshisface 3y ago
    5) they gave a patient a medication they were known to be allergic to and then they died.
    • viraptor 3y ago
      The parent was talking specifically about addressing the "source of anxiety". That's separate to the medication/allergy issue.
    • sudodudeo 3y ago
      Having a negative reaction to the meds is not the same as an allergy.
      • whatshisface 3y ago
        Allergies are the only place the US medical system has for repeatable negative reactions so all of them go in.