- Nurses at a facility in Illinois forced patients to dig through their feces, according to a watchdog.
- Patients with pica, a disorder in which they eat inedible objects, were made to search for items they had swallowed.
Nurses at a state-run facility in Illinois forced patients to dig through their own feces to look for objects they had swallowed, according to reports newly released by the Illinois Department of Human Services' watchdog.
Several nurses told an investigator that it was common for patients with pica, an eating disorder in which a person eats inedible objects such as coins and zippers, to be made to dig through their feces while wearing gloves or using a spatula to find the ingested items, the Lincoln Journal Star reported.
The treatment came to light when a complaint was made to the agency's abuse hotline by a facility monitor who said they had seen a patient leaving the bathroom while carrying a bag of feces.
The complaint, which was made last spring, led to an investigation, which uncovered the treatment, which patients told investigators made them feel disgusting and felt like a punishment.
The eight reports from the watchdog, obtained by the Lincoln Journal Star, detail extensive mistreatment, neglect, and abuse of patients with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities at Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center between 2017 and last spring.
The reports also say that two facility employees who broke a patient's arm in October 2017 boasted about how they could abuse patients without consequence by providing minimal information in reports and attributing any injuries to accidental falls by patients.
They also bragged about intimidating and bullying other staff members to prevent them from reporting the abuse and boasted about retaliating against anyone who spoke out.
In another incident in November 2021, a mental health technician was said to have mentally abused and punished a patient that wet himself after the tech did not allow him to use the bathroom.
Another report claimed that two nurses neglected a terminally ill patient the days before his death in July 2021, failing to report that he had lost 21 pounds in one week and not properly managing his pain.
Along with reported instances of neglect and abuse, news reports revealed a culture of cover-ups at the facility, according to the Lincoln Journal Star.
Workers colluded to lie to investigators and obstruct investigations to avoid facing the consequences, the paper said.
This week, while speaking to reporters, the IDHS listed some of the steps taken to address the circumstances at the facility, including enhanced staff training on responding to abuse and neglect allegations and campus safety assessments.