Stay updated with breaking news from At atascadero. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
Offenders or mdos. they make up the largest population of patients at atascadero, and they have a long history of mental illness and violent criminal behavior. i hurt my girlfriend. i hurt my mother. she claims that i knocked her eye out. these patients are here on parole. they have already served out their prison sentences, but they are here because they are considered too dangerous to be released back into society. it is male and female voices that know what i know and they bother me and needle me and push me and sometimes i can handle it, and sometimes i can t. doctors and therapists know for many of these patients, there is no cure for their illness. for these patients, their only chance at a so-called normal life here at atascadero or on the outside is staying on medication. i have been on every medication that they have and hear voices since 1978. ....
Atascadero state hospital, california s hospital for the criminally insane, is now overflowing with mentally ill will prison inmates and people found incompetent to stand trial. this is where the patients who were deemed incompetent to stand trial live when they re sent to atascadero. they re referred to as the 1370s after the state penal code that describes their commitment. the average stay for a patient on this ward is 63 days. good morning. how are you? this man is undergoing evaluation and treatment for his competency to stand trial for sexual abuse of a child. you you understand the reason that you re here at the hospital? yeah. how are you doing along the lines of your competency? i have no idea. do you know what competency for court is? ....
Once the orders are validated, they become part of the patient profile and then it is downloaded to the machine and then the machine dispenses the medication. each one of these machines costs approximately $180,000 and holds 248 different kinds of medication. they are called automated medication dispensing systems, and what they do is to spit out a prescribed dose of medication into these individual pacts for patients. without them, the job of dispensing medication at atascadero would be virtually impossible. as it is, each time a canister becomes empty, a technician will refill it, but a pharmacist has to inspect the technician s work, verifying the lot number, the expiration date and checking that the right medication is put in the right canister. ....
Patients behavior. i m not here to judge their past. and i m not here to punish them for what they ve done. i m here to treat them. i never asked to be the way i am. i don t ever remember standing in a line anywhere saying, oh, i want to be a child molester. harry chase, age 37, has been in the sexually violent predator program in atascadero for only two weeks. the legalistic crime is called gross sexual misconduct and also unlawful sexual contact with a minor. i had two victims. both boys. my particular interest is mostly in latchkey kids. i look for the kids that carry the keys in their pocket. i look for the kids that have a scruffy hairdo and may not bathe all of the time. maybe in second-hand, hand-me-down clothes. ....
The whole nation wants to come up and lash out. in many ways it s like spiritual warfare. it s like our deliberate attempt to take fundamentally right behaviors, passion and care, and cultivate them in an environment that can then override the dark side of human nature. when we come back, we will meet the fastest growing and perhaps the most violent and controversial population in atascadero, the sexually violent predator. ....