Should Dead Mental Patients Names' Be Publicized?

Dec. 11, 2007 — -- An Adams County District Court judge isconsidering an historical society's request to make public thenames of patients buried in a former state psychiatric hospitalcemetery.

The state Health and Human Services System, which administersthe Hastings Regional Center, argues that opening the burial logswould violate privacy statutes.

A two-hour trial before Judge Terri Harder was held last week inHastings.

The Adams County Historical Society filed a lawsuit in Augustasking the regional center to open records revealing the identitiesof 957 people buried in the hospital cemetery from 1888 to 1959.The small gravestones are distinguished only by patient numbers.

The historical society contends that burial logs are publicrecords and should be available for viewing.

San Francisco attorney Thomas Burke, who represents thehistorical society, told Harder that burial records have beenpublic for decades for mental patients interred at former statehospitals in Lincoln and Norfolk from the late 1800s to the 1950s.

Assistant Attorney General David McGath, who is handling thecase for the state, said Monday he would have no comment while thematter is pending.

In court papers, McGath wrote the "unrestricted release ofmedical information can subject a person and their families toridicule, scorn, loss of employment and other harm" and that thereis nothing in the public record laws "that limit the medicalrecords exception to a passage of time or the death of theperson."

Burke said the right to privacy dies with the person and thatstate law allows public access to death records, including burialinformation.

Burke said it's surprising that an agency such as Health andHuman Services to assert there could be a stigma attached tofamilies whose loved one might have had mental illness.

Burke said the historical society doesn't want access to fullpatient records, only the names and dates of deaths.