A Syracuse University student with a bad cold was locked in a hospital psych ward for six days and treated like a patient in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” she alleges in a shocking lawsuit.
Sophomore Kaitlin Taylor says she went to the campus health center in September 2013 complaining of flu-like symptoms — fever, phlegm, chest congestion, coughing.
That spiraled into a bizarre weeklong nightmare.
While waiting for care, Taylor chatted with a counselor, saying she wanted to change her arts major and take a leave of absence that semester, but missed a deadline because her computer was stolen.
Finally, told that no one could write her a prescription, she was driven to nearby St. Joseph’s Hospital, and dumped on the sidewalk in front of the emergency room.
Taylor waited in the ER, feeling sicker by the minute.
“I was getting stressed by the circumstances and the surroundings,” she said in a written account for The Post. “I thought I’d only be there for an hour or two.”
She was led into an office where a psychiatrist spent 15 minutes speaking with her. Taylor explained she had been sick, not sleeping well, struggling to keep up with classwork and afraid to lose her scholarship.
The doctor told Taylor she would be kept for observation “just for the night.”
The shrink’s intake form cites the need for “involuntary treatment.” His scribbled notes give these reasons: “insomnia, pressured speech, disorganized, declining grades.”
Taylor was then ushered into an “observation room” with four other patients, some who fidgeted and stared at her. Two staffers, separated from the patients by a low wall, watched the group, but she still got no treatment.
“They hadn’t done anything for me or my cold. They didn’t take my blood pressure or even my temperature,” she said.
Taylor’s cellphone had died and the hospital refused to give her a recharger, she said.
A nurse told her “the more I cooperated the sooner they’d let me out, that I should take their pills and go along with whatever they told me to do,” she said.
Taylor said she was given powerful drugs: Risperdal, which is used to treat schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and Klonopin, used to treat panic disorder.
“They made us line up in front of a window and they gave out the pills, just like in the movie ‘Cuckoo’s Nest.’”
She finally called her mom, who rushed up with an uncle to get her out.
Her lawyer, Marc Held, who filed the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court, called her treatment “unfathomable.”
Taylor, who lives in Union County, NJ, has since transferred to Rutgers University.
A St. Joseph’s spokeswoman declined to comment, citing patient privacy and the pending litigation.
Syracuse attorney Matthew Larkin said the university “denies that it acted inappropriately in any way.”