BRIDGEWATER — Bradley Burns let out a gut-wrenching howl as he lay strapped hand and foot to a small bed, his torso bound by a tightly wound sheet, his head and eyes covered with a helmet and goggles.
Burns had spent 23 hours a day like that — almost completely immobilized — for 16 months because medical staff at Bridgewater State Hospital felt it was the best way to prevent the sometimes-violent patient with paranoid schizophrenia from hurting himself, or others, as he had in the past. Even for visitors, he was placed in a tiny cell with barely enough room to stand or sit....[
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