3,181 Comments Posted by Lynne

Do you think the patients didn't deserve it or are you surprised the hospital was thoughtful enough to provide recreational opportunities? I am not sure which one you mean.

A developmental center is not the same as a psychiatric facility.

Amanda,

Parents didn't "dump" their children in state facilities because they didn't understand what they had. There was a lot of cultural push at the time and no community supports available for parents who had children at home with challenging needs. The parents who placed their children in facilities such as this did it because they believed at the time it was the best thing to do for their child. Most of them felt guilty already, even though they were told it was the "right" thing to do. I have a lot of empathy for these families because of the position they were put in.

A developmental center is not the same thing as a mental health facility, which is a much nicer way of saying "insane asylum."

Em . . . . . . . . . . .

????

"Odasity"? Help me out here.

"Experiments on patients"?

Amanda, those tubs are quite large. An adult male could sit in one.

Not cold water - tepid water. That was the entire point of the treatment. With "true" cold water people die quickly from hypothermia. Some people called it cold because the temp is lower than that used in bathtubs, which is normally quite warm/hot.

"Many patients died from this form of treatment." Some people died, as always happens with any treatment, but from a review of all records and literature I could find, the majority of people appear to have died because the treatment was done incorrectly - i.e., the neck piece was not adjusted and the person slid in the water and drowned (especially if a seizure was involved) or someone actually did screw up and put cold water in. I see people saying "a lot of deaths" but I haven't seen any real numbers - just people quoting other people's reports.

"No fresh water." Also incorrect. The water circulated through continuously with fresh water coming in and old water draining out on a continual basis.

A large number of people benefitted from this form of therapy before psychotropic medications were developed.

Bravo! [applauds and thanks Mr. Mac for his work with others]

These are marvelous devices - hydrotherapy tubs. Here are some references:

http://www.lakeeriemed...erapy/whirlpool.html
http://www.fernoperfor...whirlpool_index.html
http://www.hehs.d211.o...erapy_Rehab/left.jpg
http://www.deaam.com/products-hydro.htm
http://www.anderson.ed...our/hydrotherapy.jpg

Here are several good references on CP:

http://www.marchofdime...sionals/681_1208.asp
http://www.ucp.org/ucp.../37/37-37/447#causes

http://www.allegromedi...ssists/shower_chairs
http://www.spinlife.co...h.cfm?categoryID=114
http://shopping.msn.co...shp/?itemId=22896060

The terms used to be interchangeable. "Asylum" means a haven or a sanctuary and "sanitarium" or "sanitorium" is a place where a person is to be restored to health, either mentally or physically. These days most people think of asylum more negatively, as in "lunatic asylum" or "mental asylum," and they are put in mind of physical diseases with the term sanitarium, since there were so many TB sanitariums.