Mental Anguish at Texas West Oaks Hospital

Aziz, of Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Sorrels & Friend, has just become involved in another case against West Oaks. He is representing Alma and Alveh Chambers, parents of Alan Chambers. Brought to West Oaks after trying to kill himself, Alan was allowed to go into his room, slamming the door behind him, and remain there undisturbed long enough to tear up and braid the bed linen he used to hang himself with.

Cynthia Pickett, attorney with the firm of Doyle Restrepo Harvin & Robbins, is representing Alan Chambers's wife Linda and the couple's three children, ranging in age from ten to 17, in a similar action against West Oaks.

Both attorneys make the same point: Why was an obviously disturbed and agitated man, who'd just been brought in after attempting to kill himself, left to his own devices?

His twin brother Greg says Alan started going in and out of depression when he was about 38. He'd get treatment for around three months and then would be good for another year and a half. Eventually, the bouts of depression took their toll and Alan moved out of his home, taking a garage apartment.

On the day of his suicide attempt, he'd gone to his wife's office and slit his wrists in what everyone described as superficial cuts. From there, he returned to his apartment, where he took every pill he had and then tried to assemble a pipe gun just as EMTs broke into his apartment, Pickett says.

Greg says his groggy brother was taken first to Cy Fair Hospital off Jones and 1960 and then on to West Oaks, arriving there at about 3 a.m. on March 21, 2007. Alan had been treated there on an outpatient basis for his deepening depression over the Christmas holidays, Pickett says.

At West Oaks, Alan was initially assigned to Unit 2. At all times he was under suicide watch. He promptly tried to leave the floor and was reassigned to Unit 1, where they could allegedly tighten the suicide precautions and the watch on him. When his medications wore off, he got violent. It was noted on the charts that he should be monitored very, very closely, Pickett says.

Later that same day, in the afternoon, Greg came to see his brother, but Alan was in a bad mood and they talked for only ten to 15 minutes in the TV room before Greg thought it best to go. The next day, Alan's parents came to see him about 4:30 p.m. Alan still had on his bloody work shirt and became upset when his mother tried to persuade him to change it, Greg says. Greg's wife had brought over clothes for Alan earlier. Instead, Alan asked his mother to get him out of there, and when she told him she thought he should stay, he went in his room and slammed the door, Greg says.

By the time Greg and his wife got there, at about 5:15 p.m., their parents were gone. He asked to see his brother, but was stopped at the nursing desk and told his brother might not want to see them. While they waited, an orderly went to Alan's room to check on him, opened the door, hesitated a moment and then said, "He hung himself."

A nurse went in the room, and Greg and his wife were close behind. Alan had looped his makeshift rope over a closet door. They pushed the beds back, and Greg and a nurse began alternating CPR. Greg remembers that his twin's hands were still warm.

As he stayed in the room with his brother, Greg, an engineer with training in emergency trauma at offshore rigs, says the scene was chaotic. One or two of the staff members appeared to know what they were doing, but the rest, he says, didn't. An ambulance finally arrived and took Alan to Memorial Hermann Southwest. Over the next several days his family, including Alan's wife, remained at his side, optimistic that their vigil would have a positive outcome.

That night, as Greg tried to compose himself in the wake of trying to save his brother, he and his wife were pulled into a room with a West Oaks director and another person. "They were saying if people are suicidal, they're going to do it anyway. I couldn't believe they were telling me they have no control."

"What is particularly tragic about this is that he was still in the bloody clothes that he'd appeared in," Pickett says. "They had not changed him into any hospital gowns. Somebody's in a hospital in which they're there for over 24 hours in bloody clothes. Who's paying attention?

"They just absolutely ignored him."

At the time of his hanging on March 22, 2007, Alan Chambers had been at West Oaks for about 38 hours. He died about five days later at Memorial Hermann Southwest, three hours after the family took him off life support.
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At least every 15 days for more than two years now, Loretta Lilley has carefully saved the same message on her cell phone. It is her one bit of proof that West Oaks administrators knew her daughter had not been cared for correctly.