3,181 Comments Posted by Lynne

All right, Bri! :-)

Yes, they are handrails for people to lean on or use for support while walking in case their balance is off or they have other difficulties ambulating independently.

I take it you are unaware of what exactly is in Dr. Sketch's playroom or you wouldn't ask . . . . =8-o

Got it! :-)

But instead of the Mad Hatter & the March Hare you'll have to settle for Radical Ed in the background pouring his beer.

Of course he does - it's the only time it ever happened.

Excuse me, but I believe that was the medical director.

Renee,

I was skeptical at first as well. Then I took the pic and enlarged it and tinkered with the contrast and such and, by God, I think I DO see something in there. Yaggy's head in the sink scares me the most, and the person whose head is being weighed in the scale is almost as eerie, but look at that maniacal doctor staring out from the wall . . . . . =8-o
http://i47.photobucket...elle/AutopsyRoomA.jpg

http://freenet.buffalo...orest/400/index.html
http://preserve.bfn.or...atekowsky/index.html

Now THAT'S an interpretation I can get behind! 8`-)

Man, that breaks my heart. Danvers is the architectural grand-daddy of them, even surpassing the Michigan facilities, in my eyes. :-(

It's great to hear from someone who had the experience of working there. It's strange that so many people who have come to this site have acted as if no one was monitoring these boards. It becomes easier and easier to see why UE folks work the way they do, and sad for all of us when people come onto these web sites bragging about destroying parts of these fabulous structures.

I know eveyone would be interested to hear what you think about when you see some of these pix.

Pain in the butt, mostly. :-)

I am a licensed clinical psychologist with a Ph.D. I have a dual emphasis in mental retardation and clinical child psychology. I've worked for many a long year in this field and prefer "hands on" the most because of the incredible nature of the folks I work with (or who work with me, as they often let me know).

Over the most recent 21 years I have worked in 5 different large residential facilities for people with intellectual disabilities. Two of these facilities have subsequently closed after I left and the other three have downsized significantly over the past 20 years. Between 1972 and the present I have also worked in various outpatient clinics, hospitals, group homes, schools, community settings, etc., and consulted with nursing homes and school districts, etc. I was also able to spend some time with the families at the Oklahoma City bombing site and spent several weeks doing Red Cross disaster work at the Pentagon in September, 2001.

I mentioned elsewhere that I have done a lot of investigation and research on the history of the field of mental health, and more specifically, in the areas of intellectual and developmental disabilities. That's what brought me to this site. I was looking up websites that dealt with various facilities such as these across the country when I found Opacity.

I have been a huge fan of Motts' work since I first came here, and I admire him for how hard he has worked to learn about the various workings of the field - the various and sundry exotic pieces of adaptive equipment that are used, the policies and practices that used to exist in the field, and the dramatic changes that have overhauled the entire system the past 20 years. He looks things through and analyzes them - not just condemning with a broad brush, and I especially admire him for this because it would be easy to make all abandoned facilities look like Frankenstein's lab and torture chambers after years of disuse. He doesn't fall for the bathos that so many people seem to enjoy - the pity and horror and fear that they have in themselves which I believe directly relates to how they are afraid they would treat other people in the same circumstances or how they secretly feel about these folks.

I didn't start commenting for a while after I found this site until I saw that many people had done too little reality checking and had learned all their "facts" from the newspaper headlines, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and "The Snake Pit." Not that there isn't some powerful and accurate information in each of these, but the hideously skewed viewpoint they have taints the popular view until it isn't safe to walk down the street admitting you ever had mental health issues ("You must be homicidal") or worked in a residential facility ("You must beat all the patients").

Because I have made my living, in essence, off the suffering and problems of others, I believe I owe a debt back to them and the people who work with them. One way of doing that is to explain what really happens when comments are made publicly or issues are raised, such as occurs at this site. That doesn't mean to excuse it or cover it up, but to ask people to look at it from all sides of the picture.

Motts has been extremely gracious and allowed me to make these comments, and I am forever grateful to him for allowing me to say the things I have said, even though I have not always been particularly gracious in the way I have said them.

How's that? :-)

The woman who actually drew this picture writes in to this list under the name "Black Sheep Marcia." Ask her directly.

Guess we'll jes' have to be misguided ignorant torturing asshats all by our ownselves, eh? ;-)

Long Island,

Yes, I have seen that film. I have been in this field since 1972, I have worked in multiple settings, both community and institutional, and my doctorate is in mental retardation and clinical child psychology. There is nothing new in that video that I haven't seen in many other videos, many other books & photographs, and, more importantly, in person up close and personal. While working directly with people with various "challenging" conditions I have been attacked physically, called names I had never even heard before, and smeared with excrement and saliva, but I wouldn't stop working in this field for anything in the world because it is my life and these people are my life. I have also been valued and appreciated more than almost any of the rest of you because I have tried to help folks who thrive when they are treated well and appreciated. I don't care what anyone in the entire universe thinks of me personally because I see myself reflected back so positively in the eyes of these people when I walk up to them and know that we each know who the other person TRULY is, all handicaps and diplomas and B.S. aside.

If anyone thinks that I am blindly defending the horrors that were often part and parcel of institutional life, then they haven't read what I have been writing. So rather than bore everyone else who has read this schpiel the 1,000+ times I've written it, let me cover the key points:

1. Society didn't like people who were different and, frankly, still doesn't.
2. Society (the people who vote and pay taxes) wanted these people elsewhere, hidden from sight, and *IN HALF OF THE STATES IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA* the people voted for the involuntary sterilization of these people. This was heard in the U.S. Supreme Court by no less famous and respected a jurist as Oliver Wendell Holmes, and he and the court AGREED.
3. The voting portion of the United States did not elect to give much in the way of money to these places to take care of the people who were sent there.
4. These places were built to take care of a certain number of people.
5. These places were ALL filled WAY past the point of intended capacity, sometimes double their capacity, because the voting people of the United States did not want to look at these people, and in a number of places, tried to enact legislation to kill these people. They usually settled for segregation and involuntarily sterilization, and since they didn't vote for enough money for decent housing, care, and/or medical services, they inadvertently sentenced many of these people to a VERY short life.
6. The wages paid to the people who worked (and still work) in these places has always been abominably low because the people of each state vote for the taxes that constitute the wages that are paid to these people. If you don't value the people who live somewhere, you don't bother to pay a lot to the people who take care of them.
7. The industry of direct care workers across the United States has the highest injury rate of any profession, bar none.
8. Not only were the wages terrible, but the number of staff hired was always inadequate because few people could get by on the meager salaries paid unless they worked overtime or in a second job.
9. Subsequently, mandatory overtime was (and is) atrocious, the turnover rate is an embarrassment to any civilized nation, and the lack of respect that most of you give to the people who were brave enough, tenacious enough, and caring enough to work here would make most people commit suicide, much less go back to work for yet another 16-hour shift.
10. The people who were sent here to live were an amalgamation of all the people who society thought were bad, evil, or just plain "different". Few of them wanted to live in these places, often families didn't want to send their loved ones here, but the truth is, the voting portion of the United States of America did not care enough about these people to pay the taxes it took to keep them at home, and in most places, the voters worked very hard (and continue to work hard TO THIS VERY DAY) to keep "people like this" out of THEIR schools and THEIR neighborhoods.

When I teach the yearly risk management refresher course to the people at the facility where I work, I ask them all to give themselves a pat on the back for the incredible job they do keeping alive the sort of people that the rest of you only have strange, uneasy dreams about. I tell them that if they were to, as a group, get wiped out one day, the people who live where we work would be dead in a week because most of the rest of society wouldn't have the first clue how to take care of folks who are this complicated medically, behaviorally, and physically.

Were these places hellholes at times? You bet they were. And given that every state had a place like this that fell on to similar hard times, it was pretty much only by the grace of the dedicated facility staff that so many of these people are still alive.

When I see people taking potshots at these staff my blood boils. I have to say, I truly scorn anyone who dares criticize these folks without working several shifts, lifting the stiff, misshapen bodies of people who can barely move a limb, helping take care of the very people who may have physically attacked them not an hour before, helping people who are blind and deaf and physically handicapped to get some recreational experiences, sitting with people who are in the midst of status epilepticus and not knowing whether they are ever going to come out of the seizure, and/or lifting someone with severe osteoporosis resulting from years of anticonvulsant medications only to hear that sickening "snap" sound that means that a bone has broken and knowing that they will then have to undergo an investigation because of the injury, even though they were as gentle and as careful as anyone could be.

THAT'S how I can defend this place and revile it at the same time. It's by holding two truths together at once - truths that on the surface look discrepant but aren't when you really look at them and consider them.

*****

:-) End of rant :-)