Doctors Abandon a Diagnosis Used to Justify Police Custody Deaths. It Might Live On, Anyway.
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on October 16, 2023
Brooks Walsh hadn’t questioned whether “excited delirium syndrome” was a legitimate medical diagnosis before the high-profile police killings of Elijah McClain in Colorado in 2019 and George Floyd in Minnesota in 2020.
The emergency physician in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was familiar with the term from treating patients who were so severely agitated and combative that they needed medication just to be evaluated.
But it gave him pause when excited delirium — and not the restraint tactics used by arresting police officers — was mentioned as a . . .
