"Save Me," SOS Note Thrown From Iron Bars... Four Patients Die Consecutively

It has been revealed that a patient at a psychiatric hospital in Incheon, where four hospitalized patients died this year alone, threw a note out of the window last year pleading for rescue with the message "Save me."

According to the office of Representative Huh Jong-sik of the Democratic Party of Korea, a member of the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee, an inpatient at Won Hospital in Michuhol-gu, Incheon, threw a note asking for rescue out of a barred window last winter.

The hospital is a psychiatric medical institution with 108 patients admitted across 143 beds. All windows are blocked with iron bars, and outsiders can only enter and exit through a passageway beneath the building.

It was revealed that at this hospital, four hospitalized patients were found in cardiac or respiratory arrest between January and June of this year, and died either on the same day or three days later.

At the time, medical staff were reportedly not stationed in the wards, and patient monitoring was not properly conducted.

The hospital management reportedly ordered nursing assistants and caregivers to isolate and restrain patients without medical staff present from 10:00 PM every night until 7:00 AM the following morning, while also restricting the patients' freedom of communication.

It was also reported that a patient with autism spectrum disorder was isolated for 200 days in a ward equipped with a locking device simply for stealing another patient's coffee.

However, the competent Michuhol-gu Health Center has only issued four corrective orders to this hospital from 2024 to this year.

In connection with this, a complaint has been filed with the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, and the Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency also received a complaint from the bereaved family of one of the deceased patients, leading to a search and seizure operation at Won Hospital on the 6th.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to conduct a joint on-site inspection of the hospital next week alongside Incheon City and the Michuhol-gu Health Center.

Representative Huh stated, "We must closely inspect the hospitalization conditions at psychiatric medical institutions nationwide to ensure that patients who have difficulty speaking up for themselves are not left in human rights blind spots."

Reported by Park Se-won | Video by Lee Eui-sun | Graphics by Lee Su-min | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.