3,181 Comments Posted by Lynne

I am thinking you are being overly optimistic, my dear friend and fellow sadist. To quote Ashleigh Brilliant, "I did not see it until I believed it." ;-)

P.S. What do you give a person for Christmas who wants to make every place into hell? Do you tell them they are right just to make them happy, or do you try to enlighten them? What an unusual dilemma! :-)

And I am beginning to feel sorry for myself having to sift through such one-sided silliness from someone who never went there or any other residential facility and only has seen/heard a biased view and appears to be unwilling or incapable of processing additional information that doesn't support what this person wants so desperately to believe - that everything can be labeled "right" or "wrong," that everything is/was "black" or "white." Some people may be colorblind, but the rest of us know that the world has more than 2 hues, and even if a person IS totally colorblind, most people have the ability to at least see different shades of gray. What a small angry world to live in, having to see "yes" or "no", not multiple pieces of life as it really plays out. All heroes or villains - no room for the villain to do a good deed or a heroine to stumble a time or two. However, it is certainly a more comfortable way to live, isn't it? No worries, no guesses, just always being right.

Thank God I am a simple fool and can admit that I don't know what the heck I am talking about much of the time. At the same time, I can honestly say I have walked the walk in many, many different places and have a bit of experience about which I can speak, as wrong-headed as that makes me to some people. If all that ever happened in this place was torture and abuse you can bet I'd be the first person to speak out about it. But that would be a lie and I admit that I am a fool but I am NOT much of a liar. :-)

:-)

Each and every one of us lives in a glass house at some time or another. And if someone is so pure and decent as to be above the common level of the rest of us, thus avoiding a glass house, that person is very likely going to be too decent to throw stones at other people anyway. That sort of a person would be more likely to extend a hand, to build rather than to tear down.

In my humble opinion. :-)

It documents SOME activities that happened at Pennhurst. When an audit or survey occurs, the auditor's job is NOT to look for the good things that happen; only the violations or failures that can be seen. I know this because I myself do surveys at a state residential facility plus I have been under many surveys personally (in many different states) and I know how they work. Remember too, when lawyers are making a case to close a facility, they do not go out and take pix of the good things that they see. They also don't discuss what happens to a percentage of the children who had to stay at home because the waiting lists were too long and their parents became frustrated and, as the child grew older and exhibited more behavioral challenges, abuse understandably occurred. Marcia is saying that not every person who lived at Pennhurst (or any other state school) was abused and not every person who worked at Pennhurst (or any other state school) was an abuser.

"Parent" is tarring everyone with the same brush because of what s/he heard from a friend and read on a website that describes the bad things that happened at Pennhurst, not the good things that happened - of which there were many.

Most of us are just plain tired of hearing the accusing and blaming of people who didn't do anything to make things better for people who lived in institutional settings at the time (or even today, for that matter, because - believe it or not - there are still a bunch of institutions out there, and I am guessing that those of you who are complaining haven't been to one recently to see just what is or isn't happening there); they just want to blame those few of us who had the courage (stupidity, it appears now) to work in the field because at least that way there's someone else to put the blame on. We were the people who took care of these folks when no one else would/could. And sometimes we did a pretty terrible job when there was minimal pay, minimal training, triple overtime, and horrendously bad staffing ratios.

"Parent" doesn't want to look in the mirror and see whether or not s/he has called all local and state reps to push for more funding, nor has "Parent" stated whether s/he has done much in the way of supporting people with disabilities instead of just his/her own child. Rather than talking about how to make things better or empathizing with the staff who actually kept these very difficult and fragile folks alive, "Parent" is just lobbing stones. And after awhile we get a little unhappy having stones lobbed at us when we did a heck of a service to a group of people that few of y'all even look at today, much less help.

If you haven't walked the walk, don't pretend to talk the talk, and certainly get your dang hands off the pile of stones many of you seem to have at your fingertips that you are just itching to lob because - guess what? Most of y'all live in glass houses. :-)

After being in this field since the day the Ark landed on Mount Ararat (or shortly thereafter, most would agree), I think I can safely say that there are few physical/developmental/psychiatric disabilities with which I haven't had some experience or exposure. "Disfigurements" are just part of the external side of a human being. The person is still a human being on the inside. There is nothing inherently scary about looking different, and it hurts people who look different than what most other people look like when they are responded to in such a manner.

The same with psychiatric issues. Having a psychiatric illness doesn't make you contagious or make you change others by your mere presence or look. People don't catch "insanity" by being near others who have psychiatric problems. People who get frightened by looking at those who are different already had their own problems in the first place.

The cruelest and loneliest part of a disability isn't the disability itself - it's how others react to you with their prejudices, fears, and misconceptions. I have worked with people who have had extremely severe craniofacial "abnormalities", and they were some of the gentlest and most loving people with whom I have ever had the pleasure of working.

Many years ago people used to believe that birth defects were caused by the mother looking at something frightening while she was pregnant. I guess I had hoped we had moved beyond that sort of superstitious thinking by now. People with psychiatric illnesses and intellectual disabilities often have enough of their own problems without having to be blamed for causing emotional illness in others.

Oh, Jesus, what an utter horse's ass! =8-o

P.S. If this is flaming, I plead guilty.

Remember the story with this one?

http://info.detnews.co...p;category=locations

Wouldn't THAT be one heck of a find! =8-o

=8-o

Em, us old gals would shock some of you people with the seriously short lengths of our dresses back in the days. 8`-)

Well, why the heck would they write in here if they are the people doing the demolition? Do they think people who read this will believe there is a large groundswell of outside support for their techniques and jump on the bandwagon? That's just a little embarrassing, to me. Oh well, I guess the business world is a weird one. That's why I prefer to work with people in MR/MH/ID. At least they are generally honest about who they are and what they want.

Who are the Geppert Brothers?

It is not that unusual for people with no family members to end up having their bodies used after death for teaching purposes, such as you have described. There is no shame in this and no disrespect to the deceased person. I for one am grateful that there are people who do this so that science (including the practice of embalming) can progress and people can have the ability to learn how to work on real bodies, not just models. Actually, there are a lot of people WITH families who donate their bodies after death for similar teaching purposes, including being used at the "Body Farm" in Tennessee. People who are afraid of mental illness and/or death generally seem to have a hard time with this concept, for some reason. Again, there is no shame, dishonor, disrespect, or horror involved unless you make the association personally.

I've been working in this field for many a long year and see these people on a daily basis, but I can't say it's done much to impact my psychiatric health status one way or t'other. Are you saying that just by looking at and living near people with severe psychiatric illnesses that you have somehow become "blighted"? Normally it takes a tad more than meeting people with psychiatric illnesses to get one. It's not catching like "cooties." If I were someone with psychiatric issues I would be more than a little put out at your comment, I have to say.

Heya CSA,

Motts is on the road for several days, but yes, the phrase "criminally insane" was replaced by "forensic psychiatry" or "forensic psychology."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensics