[Report file] “About one before bed…the next day, he was hidden next to me”

"After the gallstone removal operation, I had a lot of trouble because of the inability to defecate, and what my mother told me was that she gave me one pill every day before going to bed.

Oh Chung-bin still remembers waving his hand to his mother on the way to work in the summer of 1983.

After not returning to her home, her mother was found in a detention facility after 24 years.

When she returned to her family, she was full of revenge, and she had only three or four teeth left.

Her mother complained of a breakdown in her digestive system and difficulties with her bowel movements, and she died three years later.

Oh believes that a side effect of a psychiatric drug took her mother's life, but she has no way of knowing which medication she was prescribed and how much.

This is because there is no way to look into the records inside the former detention facility.

Documented drug abuse...

mysterious death record

In order to confirm the prescribing status of mental illness drugs inside the prison facilities, which had been veiled in the meantime, we looked at the final research results of the <Group Facility Human Rights Violation Research Service Project>, which the SBS 'Panda to the End' team obtained exclusively.

As a result of analyzing the medical records obtained from the five prison facilities in the metropolitan area and Gangwon area, the researchers point out that the diagnosis of mental illness or drug prescription was a structure that could easily be abused.

A representative example is a 24-year-old man who was arrested by the police as a criminal in August 1989 and entered a prison facility.

There were no other abnormal findings other than intellectual disability, but he was immediately

.

This man, who had been evaluated as "taking care of what he had to do on his own" at the beginning of his enlistment, showed symptoms of schizophrenia and was sent to a psychiatric hospital within the foundation in March of the following year, and his health deteriorated as he received medication.

Looking at the records, in May, "I spend most of my life lying down in the hospital room, receiving help from others, such as eating and urinating", in October, "I lie in bed almost motionless, there is no answer to my questions, and my eyes are half-closed." I did.

A young man in his 20s, who was able to do his own job, was lying in bed and unable to move after a year.

Researchers suspect there may have been a problem with drug treatment and management of inmates with mental illness.

“When chlorpromazine was admitted to the facility, it was known as a good drug to put to sleep in a stable way for those who were unable to adapt and protest. Drugs are easy to manage, and it seems that there have been many cases of continuous and repeated prescriptions because proper management and follow-up measures were not performed.”

There's something odd about this man's death record as well.

He died in a psychiatric hospital in January 1991, one year and five months after entering the hospital, and the death certificate included the direct cause of 'cardiopulmonary arrest', the intermediate cause of 'sepsis', and the preceding cause 'organic brain syndrome' along with 'schizophrenia (schizophrenia)'. )' is written.

The researchers point out that organic brain syndrome, which was not shown in medical records, suddenly appeared, and that the cause of the infection and sepsis is not disclosed.

It is possible to estimate the possibility that food or saliva may have entered the airways and caused pneumonia while lying in bed, but it is difficult to pinpoint the specific cause as there are no other records remaining.

The only symptom is constipation...

Died two days after discharge

Gwan-wook Kim, a doctor and medical anthropologist, professor of cultural anthropology at Duksung Women's University, presents a new point of view based on the records of the prison facilities and the testimonies of victims.

It is possible that the side effects of psychiatric drugs led to death.

Chlorpromazine, prescribed at the time for schizophrenia patients, can lead to intestinal necrosis by reducing physical activity and exacerbating chronic constipation if abused.

In fact, recently, psychiatry is paying attention to the bowel movements of patients, such as taking regular abdominal X-rays to prevent constipation caused by long-term use of the drug from leading to intestinal necrosis, sepsis, and shock death.

"According to the interview testimony from the facility, we often hear expressions like 'you die from poop'. In fact, it is judged that it is not uncommon to report cases of constipation caused by the drug in psychiatric hospitals and death from intestinal necrosis due to constipation. If so, wouldn't it be possible that the side effects from this drug could be linked to death from poop?"

Even more dramatic is the case of a 57-year-old female prisoner who died in August 1990.

She complained of abdominal pain, and she was taken to the hospital, where she was discharged, saying, "She did not show any symptoms and was only causing more severe abdominal pain than nailing her stool." died in the bay.

Considering the facility behavior where chlorpromazine was repeatedly prescribed, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that this case is also due to the side effects of the drug.

Schizophrenia, which cannot be a cause of death...

why it was signed

Schizophrenia cannot be a direct cause of death.

Nevertheless, schizophrenia often appears in the death records inside the prison.

In the direct sign, 'cardiopulmonary arrest', which is the actual result of death, is written, and then 'death of shock' and 'schizophrenia' are written on the intermediate and antecedent signs, respectively.

In this case, all we know is that the schizophrenic patient died suddenly of shock, and there is no way to know why the shock occurred.

The possibility that the cause of death, such as physical violence, was concealed cannot be ruled out.

In fact, victims of detention facilities in Seoul say that "those with a slight mental disorder" were subjected to unprovoked cheers and beatings.

It is also said that in the room where people with disabilities live, even if someone pooped on the floor, they left it there, and there was no one to take care of them.

The death of the prisoners is virtually neglected.

"The disabled room is a bit big. This is because it's so right and wrong, and there are so many patients. Even if you get sick here, or you get sick, you have to get treatment. There was nothing like that at all. I guess?) I was lying on the bed and just passed out of breath due to epilepsy. What, if I don't move, I'll watch them take them outside like this."

For other facilities, the situation does not appear to have been significantly different.

In the case of one accommodation facility in the metropolitan area, a whopping 80 people were gathered in one room.

It is said that even those without mental illness suffered from the so-called 'institutional disease', in which the will to live was extremely low.

The co-operated psychiatric hospital housed 40 patients in one ward, but only one staff member supervised them.

It is difficult to expect that patient management will be correct.

How much of these poor conditions accelerated the deaths of those imprisoned in the detention facilities can be estimated from the death records.

The death rate inside

, and male prisoners

.

How could such a 'silent murder' be possible?

"In addition to violence, it seems that they are not asking whether they are responsible for such aspects as to whether proper management of nutritional status, medical treatment, and prescription has been performed other than violence within the facility. The fact that there are people who died in vain without anyone taking responsibility is a problem that the state must take a look at and solve so that it does not happen again."

※ This article was written based on the final research results of the <Research Service for Human Rights Violations in Collective Facilities> commissioned by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee and an interview with Professor Kim Gwan-wook, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duksung Women's University.

Professors Jaehyung Kim, Jihyeon Chu, and Kwanwook Kim, activists Junmin Yeo and Myorang Lee, Dr. Ilhwan Kim and Jisung Hwang, and PhD student Gukbo Shim participated in the study.

▶ [Sold to the End] "They're Demons" Still vivid memories of that place (full video) ▶ [Report file]

①This

may be a window rather than a cruel painting (Interviewer: Jeong Ban-seok, Won Jong-jin, PD: Kim Do-kyun, Video coverage:

Tae-Hoon Kim, VJ: Jun-Ho Kim, Producer: D Content Planning Department)