Suspension upheld for ignoring suicide threat

Friday, March 21, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A three-day suspension has been upheld for a state mental-health technician for refusing to handle a threatened suicide case at the crisis center in Las Vegas.

State Hearing Officer John Graves said Stanley Bowditch is getting off light after declining to take action on two telephone calls about a woman who was distraught after losing all her money at the Showboat hotel-casino in June last year.

Graves, in a decision released Wednesday, said the conduct of Bowditch "borders on the unforgivable."

Agents from the State Gaming Control Board phoned the crisis unit in the Southern Nevada Mental Health Services twice in June 1996 to ask that somebody call the woman, whom they believed to be a threatened suicide. Both times Bowditch told them it was the policy not to make calls out of the unit. Angry words followed and Bowditch hung up the phone on the second call.

Bowditch told the agents the woman would have to call the unit. One of the gaming agents then called the director of the crisis unit and was transferred to a nurse. Bowditch answered that call and said no nurse was available. But a nurse was only 20 feet away in another room.

Bowditch told the gaming agent that the woman would have to call in herself and then he would notify police to conduct a check.

He was suspended for three days for his conduct and he appealed. He told Hearing Officer Graves that there is a policy of not making calls outside the unit and that he had never been trained to handle suicide cases.

Graves found there was no policy prohibiting a worker from making a call to contact a threatened suicide victim. But he agreed that Bowditch had not been trained in handling suicide cases.

"Employee's failure to render some type of aid to the citizen in need is astonishing," said Graves, who added he would have upheld a stiffer penalty against Bowditch. Even if the employee was not trained in suicide prevention, Graves said Bowditch should have referred the call to a nurse who was.

Graves also criticized the telephone "bickering" between the gaming agents, Max Sims and Joseph Callo Jr., and Bowditch. While some of the comments of the agents were hostile, Graves said, Bowditch should have never hung up on them.

Graves said Bowditch, who had been reprimanded once before for failing to report a suicide attempt, "must never forget that the citizens of the state of Nevada do pay taxes from which his own income is earned and common courtesy is expected by these citizens of state employees."