Last week, psychotherapist Imamu Baraka literally walked into a potential tragedy. He noticed several security guards from the University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus transporting a woman in a wheelchair to a bus stop.
It was late at night and temperatures frigid, but she was dressed in a hospital gown. Immediately, he began recording the incident with his phone.
Baraka questioned the guards who offered no satisfactory reply.
The woman by that time was shaking and disoriented. Eventually, Baraka phoned 911 emergency operators. The discarded hospital patient ended up back at the hospital that kicked her out.
Baraka loaded the video onto Facebook, and it has now gone viral.
As a reponse, Dr. Mohan Suntha, the CEO and president of the hospital issued an apology.
The patient’s mother, identified as Cheryl, said that the actions of the hospital were heartless. Her daughter, Rebecca, now known, is a 22-year-old who suffers from mental illness. In an interview with CBS news the mother says:
“There are people who are saying that my daughter is a drug addict, my daughter’s a prostitute, that she’s deaf … she’s not deaf, not a prostitute, not a drug addict. My daughter has mental illness.”
