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Update: November 9, 2024

Joan Aufderheide says that her situation is improving. She has a court appointed attorney who is accumulating evidence for her discharge and a hearing has been scheduled for January 8, 2024. On her attorney’s advice, Joan asks Shield members to hold off taking any action on her behalf until the results of the hearing are known. She is grateful for your support and she is going to ask her attorney to provide a link to the virtual hearing in the hope that MindFreedom supporters will show up at her hearing in force to show solidarity.

October 11, 2024

Shield Alert for Joan Aufderheide in Farmington, Missouri, USA

 

Overview

Joan Aufderheide is an elderly person with disabilities and the only woman at a 22-person forensic ward at Southeast Missouri Mental Health Center (SMMHC) in Farmington, Missouri, where she has been forcibly incarcerated for the past two years and counting. Her therapist, licensed psychologist Dr. Daniel Levin, has made an on-the-record statement declaring that Joan is not a threat to herself or others and that there is absolutely no reason to psychiatrically imprison her.

Joan’s current situation is the result of an incident from twenty-five years ago in which she mistakenly took an unattended vehicle with keys left inside and her public defender urged her to plead Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI). Since that fateful incident, and due to legal incompetence, case workers have dominated every aspect of her life.

In March 2022 Joan’s conditional release was revoked because she had traveled without permission from her home in Park Hills, Missouri to Columbia, Missouri in order to have her service dog evaluated by a professional trainer. Neither she nor Dr. Levin was allowed to attend the court hearing where this decision was made.

Notably, having a service dog is a right protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and keeping the appointment in Columbia was vital for Joan to exercise this right. She has attempted to file a complaint about this with Missouri Protection and Advocacy Services to no avail.

Moreover, the ward where Joan is being forced to reside contains patients whom she and her support network report were convicted of violent crimes including murder and sexual assault—an especially traumatizing environment for Joan, who is a survivor of childhood physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. Joan reports having been physically assaulted by patients on four occasions and verbally threatened with murder. She lacks privacy and the ability to lock her room, as is the case with most psychiatric wards, and consequently lives in fear for her life.

Joan is also isolated from her support network. Staff members have ignored her repeated requests to add specific individuals to her approved phone list, resulting in unnecessary delays of up to two months in her ability to speak with family, friends, and therapists.

In addition, Joan is immunocompromised due to having asthma. Living in a congregated setting therefore puts her physical health at risk. For example, she has contracted COVID-19 twice since being incarcerated at SMMHC, whereas she had always been COVID-free when living independently.

 

Call to Action

Please contact the Chief Executive Officer of Southeast Missouri Mental Health Center, Donna Anderson, either by phone at 573-218-6792 or via email at donna.anderson@dmh.mo.gov. Key talking points to relay to Ms. Anderson include the following:

1. Joan Aufderheide (her last name is pronounced “off-dare-Heidi”) should be discharged immediately.

• Joan’s living conditions at SSMHC are inhumane and highly detrimental to her mental and physical health.

• An elderly trauma survivor with no history of violent crime does not belong in a forensic unit with individuals reported to have committed violent crimes such as murder and sexual assault.

• The unjustified segregation of people with disabilities is a form of unlawful discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1999 landmark decision in Olmstead v. L.C.

• SMMHC’s treatment of Joan is unethical not only to Joan herself, but also to the residents of Missouri whose tax money is being used to fund her wrongful institutionalization.

2. Dr. Daniel Levin should be allowed to be part of Joan’s treatment team.

Please share any actions that you have taken on behalf of Joan in the comments section below. Thank you for your support!

 

Note

When choosing your words, remember that Joan is at risk of retaliation and you are supporting her under the MindFreedom banner. MindFreedom International does not condone threats of violence or harm, and asks all Shield Alert participants to adhere to its mission statement:

In a spirit of mutual cooperation, MindFreedom International aims to lead a non-violent revolution of freedom, equality, truth, and human rights in mental health care by uniting psychiatric survivors, consumers, and allies through movements for justice everywhere.

2 Comments

2 Comments

  1. The following has been posted on Facebook’s “Damaged By Doctors – Exposing Big Pharma Corruption”, a forum on Facebook of which I am the Admin/Moderator. I apologize in advance for the length — but this literally and figuratively hits home for me.

    ————————————————————————–

    Mind Freedom Shield Alert – Joan Aufderheide
    I am posting another Mind Freedom Shield Alert as this one strikes close to home on so many levels.
    I live in Southeast Missouri, in the Bootheel to be exact. Farmington, where this lady is psychiatrically incarcerated is about 100 miles from Kennett, where I am at. I am glad to see Mind Freedom takiing an interest in someone from this area. Hopefully it will open some eyes to what goes on here. Years and years ago I spoke with David Oaks, the founder of Mind Freedom. He reminesced about a time when he was in Southeast Missouri and an agency brought some clients in for some type of presentation or other. He said they shuffled in listlessly, and it was a depressing sight.
    His conclusion were then, and are now, accurate. The public mental health system in Missouri is….well, for one thing it has a lot of nerve to consider itself a part of “healthcare.” Because it has little to do with “health” or “care.” The text of the Shield Alert speaks of efforts being made to obtain assistance from Missouri Protection and Advocacy to no avail. This is not surprising at all. I have reached out to Missouri Protection and Advocacy numerous times for situations I was experiencing. Either they never responded, or if they did it was in the negative. The last time I reached out was because I had been ghosted by Adult Protective Services after being hotlined numerous times. The woman at Missouri Protection and Advocacy asked “Do you have anything in writing as to why they are not getting involved?
    As if. As if Adult Protective Services is going to send signed documentation that they are ghosting me.
    The MIssouri Department of Behavioral Health (MO-DBH) Office of Constituent Services is no better. I have had numerious email conversations with the Office of Constituent Services, as well as it’s Direction, Michelle Gerstner. It is nothing but an excuse and rejection shop. Recently, the MO-DBH has come under fire from the Federal Department of Justice for needlessly warehousing mentally disabled people in nursing homes instead of connecting them to community services. This is exactly the type of issue that the Office Of Constituent Services is supposed to guard against. But they didn’t and they don’t…and I predict in the future they won’t. It’s standard operating procedure. Do nothing.
    Rural and semi-rural MIssouri is the Wild West when it comes to mental health treatment. Might makes right and in the grand power imbalance inherent in mental health system, the vulnerable patient loses every time. Every time. Dissent or disagreement is not tolerated and go immediately to coercion and force if the patient does not quickly surrender.
    The last time I was forced into a hospital, I was depressed and morose. The police forced me down, handcuffed me and put me in the police cruiser. They would not even let me put on a pair of shoes! Then I was held at the police for hours until someone from the local “counseling center” (FCC Behavioral Health) evaluated me. He was not even man enough to say that I was going to be forced into the hospital himself.
    No, he had a cop come in and tell me that I had a choice. Go “voluntarily” or be held in jail under “protective custody” (read “suicide watch) and face a judge in the moring.
    That’s how it happens. That’s how you become a non-person in Missouri. I have numerous horrible experiences of my own with MIssouri’s police-state mental health system. I shudder to think of the stories Ms. Aufderheide could tell. I imagine they would exceed Dante’s Circles of Hell.
    Ms. Aufderheide is being held at the Southeast Missouri Mental Health Center in Farmington, Missouri. She is in an all-male unit, the only female. Furthermore, Southeast Missouri Mental Health Center is contractually attached to the nearby prison, so she is held in this hospital with people who have been convicted of violent crimes such as murder and sexaul assault. In point of fact, the Farmington Correctional Facility is where violent and high-tier sex offenders are sent from all corners of Missouri and Southeast Missouri Behavioral Health at Farmington is the provider of their treatment programs.
    Her only crime is that she took her service animal to a professional trainer in Columbia Missouri without permission. At the time, Ms. Aufderhiede lived in Park HIlls, which is just under 200 miles from Columbia. That was in 2022 and she has been in this “hosptial” ever since.
    It is so vile that she is in such a place…and it is so Missouri.
    Please, if you can spare the time and effort, please read the Mind Freedom Shield and consider contacting the people referenced in the Shield Alert. As if being coercively pushed into such a setting, there’s no doubt she’s being subjected to psychiatric drugging as well.
    Thank you for reading this and reaching out to improve this persons situation.
    Wishing you all the best, as always…
    John/Moderator

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