The UK Health Secretary has ordered a probe into the care system for autistic patients, after several damning reports describing the horror of specialized facilities, known as Assessment and Treatment Units(ATU). [The most recent figures speak of more than 2500 people practically incarcerated in ATUs.} Among them, over 230 are children, some as young as 13, held in padded cells, restrained, drugged out of their minds. The families are not allowed to visit the rooms to ascertain the conditions their children are kept in and if they voice their disagreement they are immediately threatened with losing legal guardianship. Those familiar with the stories of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans know how easy it is in the UK to lose parental rights once the doctors go to court.
Why? Money, of course. A whole lot of money. In 2016, the UK NHS spent over 477 million pounds on ATUs, that is $620 million.
Matthew Garnett was sectioned at the age of 15 after a meltdown at school. His family was told he was going to be away for 12 weeks, but he ended up spending two years locked in an ATU, where he was restrained and pumped-full of anti-psychotic drugs. The boy became depressed, spent all time in bed and tore out clumps of hair. When he was finally released, he went off drugs and with the care and love of his family he is now way better - he doesn’t need restraints and even helps out at the local football club.
Most of the patients who end up in ATUs go there voluntarily, being promised specialized care. However, very soon, in a matter of days actually, they are sectioned under the mental health act, so there’s no question of leaving without doctors’ approval. Even the sanest person would become agitated or even violent once deprived of their freedom and autistic persons even more so. One incident described six adults forcibly restraining a teenager in an ATU. An adult voluntary patient told how she was denied permission to go for a walk, which was one of her coping mechanisms. When she protested against the abuse, she was sectioned and placed at the mercy of the doctors.
Stephen Andrade, who first walked into an ATU six years ago at the age of 17. At the time he was a fit teenager who enjoyed long walks, but now he ‘drags his feet and can hardly move’, because of the medication he was put on. According to his mother, Leo Andrade, at one of these facilities, Stephen was not allowed to go outside for over a year and was left unwashed for months. The mother has mounted a legal campaign to have her son released from the facility.
Another patient, Beth (17) has spent 21 months in a facility where she was kept in solitary confinement and fed through a hatch in the door. Her condition deteriorated to the point where she started to harm herself. She was released last October after her family has managed to have her case raised up in Parliament.
AT present, over half of the ATUs in England are under private management and the profits to be made are exceptional. The NHS pay 1000 pounds a day per patient and in some facilities the sums are even higher, up to 13,000 pounds a week. All the ‘care’ a patient receives for that kind of money are drugs and padded cells where they can bang their heads against the wall all day long. One thing there is in abundance though - surveillance. There is a great need for guards to make sure the patients do not succeed in killing themselves, depriving the private management of considerable revenue.
One woman told how she was permanently followed by two ‘nurses’, even to the toilet. Alexis Quinn has recently published a book recounting her harrowing experience, during the two years spent in ATUs. When her father complained of the treatment she was receiving he was threatened he will be replaced as next of kin in the woman’s file. With help from the family, Alexis staged a movie-like escape, with the get-away car never stopping until they reached Paris. She now lives as teacher in Nigeria and is afraid to return to the UK for fear she might be sanctioned again.
Even after so many horrific stories became public, non-profit organizations in England remain skeptical of the official inquiry’s findings. The facts, they say, have been known for a long time, there have been similar demands for inquests six years ago, yet nothing changed. On the contrary, besides autistic patients, more and more children with 'learning disabilities' are being sectioned. As if this was not enough, there are now calls that all children over the age of 12 be tested for mental disorders.
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