Strapped down: A Times investigation into the high use of restraints at L.A. General Medical Center - Los Angeles Times
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Strapped down: A Times investigation into the high use of restraints at L.A. General Medical Center

collage illustration of L.A. General hospital with red vertical stripes
(Anthony Gerace / For The Times; Photo by Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
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Hospitals are forbidden under federal law from restraining psychiatric patients except to prevent them from harming themselves or others. Restraints can be used only when other steps have failed and are widely discouraged by psychiatric professionals, who see them as a measure of last resort that frays trust and can traumatize patients.

At Los Angeles General Medical Center — a public hospital formerly known as L.A. County-USC Medical Center that serves some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the nation’s largest county — the inpatient psychiatric unit has restrained patients at a higher rate than in any other in California, a Times analysis has found.

Federal records show that over a recent four-year period, L.A. General’s Augustus F. Hawkins Mental Health Center has reported a restraint rate more than 50 times higher than the national average for inpatient psychiatric facilities, ranking it among the highest in the country.

A Times investigation dug into what is driving the high use of restraints at the hospital.

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