6(B)(iii). Dobřany Psychiatric Hospital
International focus on Dobřany
As noted above, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) carried out a visit to the Czech Republic in mid-2006. During its visit, the CPT delegation found fifteen cage beds, which were used often.66
In early 2012 a woman was found dead in a cage bed at this hospital,67 but no investigation was carried out. Cage beds were removed at the end of that year, following this death. Non-governmental organisations including MDAC raised this case to the Committee against Torture. As a direct result, the Committee expressed concerns about “the absence of investigations into the ill-treatment and deaths of institutionalized persons confined to cage and net-beds, including suicides”.68
The director told MDAC that at one time the hospital had 140 cage beds,69 a claim MDAC was unable to verify. The director went on to say that they had been replaced with increased usage of isolation rooms and straps. A psychiatrist told MDAC that cage beds were better than isolation rooms, because patients could not fall out of them. He explained how elderly patients were placed in seclusion rooms if they were agitated at night, compared to a year previously when no-one over the age of 60 was secluded. MDAC was shown no documentation confirming this assertion. It seems that after the removal of cage beds, the seclusion rooms in unit 13B (an acute ward) were used for patients from all other units of the hospital, including the units for women. Staff said that seclusion rooms were used, “to protect the patients from other patients.” Another psychiatrist confirmed that using restraints was “a necessary evil” following the removal of cage beds.
66 European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, Report to the Czech Government on the visit to the Czech Republic carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) from 27 March to 7 April 2006 and from 21 to 24 June 2006
67 ‘Právo: Mental hospital patient strangles herself in caged bed’, (Prague: Prague Daily Monitor, 26 January 2012), available online at: http://praguemonitor. com/2012/01/26/pr%C3%A1vo-mental-hospital-patient-strangles-herself-caged-bed (last accessed: 15.06.2014).
68 Committee against Torture, Concluding Observations: Czech Republic, (UN: Committee against Torture, CAT/C/CZE/CO/405, 13 July 2012), at para. 21.
69 A BBC article from 2004 states that the hospital had 1,300 beds, ten percent of which were caged: Rosie Goldsmith, ‘Czech man’s week in a cage’, (BBC News Online, 7 July 2004), available online at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/3873123.stm (last accessed: 15.06.2014).