OVERWHELMED: Autistic patients say conditions at Arizona State Hospital are making them worse

KJZZ by Amy Silverman and Athena Ankrah, February 18, 2025.

Matt Solan is overwhelmed.

Solan has been a patient at the Arizona State Hospital since April 2020, found guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Because he was found to be “guilty but insane,” a special designation in Arizona law, Solan was sent to ASH, as it’s often known, instead of prison.

The idea is to rehabilitate, rather than punish, so that patients can someday rejoin society and lead fulfilling, safe, productive lives.

Instead, Solan and other patients say ASH is making them worse.

According to state hospital medical records Solan provided to KJZZ, the 35-year-old has been diagnosed with anti-social and narcissistic personality disorders. As a child, he was also diagnosed with autism.

It’s the lack of accommodations for his autism, Solan says, that is causing him distress.

“Well, if I could sum it up in one word, I would use the word torture,” he told KJZZ in a phone call last fall.

It took weeks to arrange the timing of the call with Solan’s lawyer — and on the phone, the background sound makes it easy to hear what he means when he talks about sensory overload.

“Every single room and the hallway and corridor from the day room to the treatment rooms, to the bedrooms, to the bathrooms, they just amplify noise. And the echo here is horrible … So no matter where I go in here, I can’t escape the sensory overstimulation that all this noise and motion and commotion causes.”

Between patients, staff, walkie-talkies and TVs, the place is so loud, he says, that Solan has willed himself nocturnal — sleeping through the day and waking up at night when it’s quiet and there’s less stimulation.

“On the average day when my sleep schedule’s not interrupted for one reason or another, I would sleep all day. I would wake up around dinner. And then I would get on the computer and I would stay on the computer and do paperwork and research. I spend probably 12, 13 hours a day studying, reading and practicing drafting documents and writing computer code to the extent that I can … And I just do that all night until the sun comes up.

Read more from KJZZ.

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This story is one of a four-part special report. Below is the audio from each special report.