All Abrianna McClintic’s parents wanted was for her to get the help she needed.
The 19-year-old had spent the second half of her life in and out of psychiatric facilities, receiving treatment for PTSD, schizophrenia and other mental-health issues, her mother, Cynthia Lewandowski, said.
When a bed opened up at a facility in the Poconos, the North Carolina native boarded a bus for the hours-long ride, her mother said. She later transferred to Provive, a mental-health treatment center in King of Prussia, in January.
That was the last update Lewandowski had received. A week later, she said, McClintic’s biological father told her that their daughter hung herself at Montgomery County Emergency Service, a psychiatric hospital in West Norriton. McClintic, who was involuntarily committed to MCES after jumping out of a window at Provive, harmed herself while unsupervised, when she should have been closely monitored, her family said.
Six days later, McClintic died from her injuries at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Center City.
Now, McClintic’s mother and stepfather have sued Montgomery County Emergency Service and the nurses and doctors who cared for her in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas, asserting they “weakened the safeguards designed to keep her alive.”
“Abrianna’s death was not the result of a danger that defendants failed to anticipate,” according to the lawsuit, filed recently on the family’s behalf by Center City attorney Jordan Strokovsky. ”It was the realization of the precise danger they had already identified and undertaken to prevent.
“Abrianna paid for each of those failures with her life.”
Lawyers for MCES and the individuals named in the lawsuit did not return requests for comment.
Meanwhile, her family is left mourning. McClintic’s stepfather, Stephen Lewandowski, said the people she entrusted to keep her daughter safe could not have been more negligent.
“In that moment, their complacency, their lack of wanting to do their job, whatever the hell it was, is why my daughter’s not here anymore,” he said.
The lawsuit asserts that the nurse responsible for McClintic who failed to check on her later altered her logs to falsely show McClintic was only out of her sight for five minutes.
Instead, the lawsuit said, she was left alone for more than 30 minutes before being found hanging in her room’s attached bathroom.
Records from the state Department of Human Services show the facility had its license to operate as a psychiatric facility temporarily revoked for “gross incompetence, negligence or misconduct” after McClintic’s death.
A state auditor found staff at the facility “did not check with the patient to ensure safety,” despite being required to do so every 10 minutes.
Months later, the state reinstated the facility’s license, finding it had corrected the issue it had previously flagged.
But McClintic’s family believes, even though state auditors reapproved the facility to treat patients, pervasive issues remain: Medical staff ignored clear warning signs, they said, that their daughter was a danger to herself.
The doctor who performed McClintic’s intake interview at the facility said she posed only a “moderate suicide risk,” the lawsuit said, despite her suicide attempt at a different facility hours earlier.
Another doctor ordered a change to the psychiatric medication McClintic had been taking without tapering her off or observing the effects of that change. That decision increased her risk for “rapid psychiatric deterioration,” according to the lawsuit.
A nurse later elevated McClintic’s suicide risk designation, which required her to have a constant aide, after the teen appeared disheveled and withdrawn and told her she was hearing voices telling her to kill herself.
But the doctor who changed her medication later lowered her risk designation again, which only required that a nurse be “within eyesight of McClintic,” the lawsuit said.
The next day, Jan. 29, McClintic asked a nurse to unlock the bathroom attached to her bedroom, and then closed the door to her room, violating the direct-eyesight rule.
A half-hour later, staff at the facility found her with a bedsheet tied around her neck.
In life, when she was feeling like herself, McClintic was “the human SpongeBob,” a bubbly, innocent soul who loved to draw and dreamed one day of sharing her art with the world, according to her family.
They hope their lawsuit brings about change for what they described as a deficit of treatment options for children dealing with mental-health issues.
“I could drive almost anywhere, and I can find a therapist for an adult,” Stephen Lewandowski said. “But there’s not very many for kids, and when [there] is, a lot of insurances don’t cover” the treatment.
And he said teenagers were especially vulnerable even when they do find treatment.
”As they get older, like in Abriana’s case, facilities tend to think, ‘Oh, well, they’ve been doing this so long, there ain’t no help for them,“he said. ”We’ll just medicate them and stick them in a corner somewhere.’”
You are not alone
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, help is available:
- The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline offers help in more than 150 languages. Call or text 988. En Español, marca al 1-888-628-9454. If you’re deaf or hard of hearing, call 1-800-799-4889.
- The Philadelphia Suicide and Crisis Center offers guidance and assessment about depression, self harm, hopelessness, anger, addiction, and relationship problems, at 215-686-4420.
- Veterans Crisis Chat is available at 1-800-273-8255 or by text at 838255.
- The Trevor Project offers crisis support to LGBTQ youth. Call 1-866-488-7386, text START to 678678, or start a chat.