201 Comments Posted by dme

As unpalatable as it is now, the truth is that the eugenics movement began in the United States. To quote Edwin Black in his book "War Against the Weak:" "Using the power of money, prestige and international academic exchanges, American eugenicists exported their philosophy to nations throughout the world, including Germany. Decades after a eugenics campaign of mass sterilization and involuntary incarceration of 'defectives' was institutionalized in the United States, the American effort to create a super Nordic race came to the attention of Adolf Hitler. ...Only after the secrets of Nazi eugenics horrifed the world, only after Nuremburg declared compulsory sterilization a crime against humanity, did American eugenics recede, adopt an enlightened view and then resurface as 'genetics' and 'human engineering'."

Maybe the lower one is an emergency light that comes on in the event of a power outage? Or it could be a soap dispenser--you know how many germs there are from all those hands touching the railing.

It isn't so much that "they" wouldn't think about entertaining people with mental illnesses on this scale today, as it is the price of such entertainment. Most patients have very limited incomes, with even less money available for entertainment. They cannot afford to go out very often, even to the movies. We sometimes received free tickets to events, or were able to make arrangements for our patients to get in for student rates. Staff salaries are so low that it is hard for staff to come up with the money needed for their own tickets so they can accompany the patients. Most patients enjoyed movies, pretty much the same type of movies anybody else does (with some common sense, such as no pornography or slasher films). In general, everyone's behavior was socially appropriate. Doing normal things in normal settings seems to bring out normal behavior (what a novel thought--you get what you expect!)

A few notes on what it's like to work in a mental hospital:
--every day is different
--there's always more to learn
--don't take anything too personally
--every patient is first of all a person with a unique story and unique needs and gifts
--humor goes a *long* way
--tons of rules, and tons of paper work!

Are there really UNmental people?? What are they like? Where can I go to see them?

I wonder how many people with mental illness--the so-called "crazy" "insane" people-- a person who makes comments like this has known in real life.

I've seen plenty of "normal" people break things in anger. Tables tipped over, cupboard doors dented, cars kicked, telephones thrown, books ripped up, vases knocked down, even one or two television screens kicked in and numerous golf clubs smashed into the ground.

One Christmas in the early 70s stands out because my brother got an Atari game set with "Pong." We thought that was really something! We played it in the family room in the basement (freshly remodeled with dark wood panelling and shag carpet) on our parents' old black and white tv. Another aspect of the remodeling had been the purchase of the family's first color television. The first television I owned personally was a 10" black and white bought at a garage sale, for my first home outside the college dorm--a single rented room with shared bath down the hall.

The summer I moved there I took one summer session class. I selected it mainly because it was held in the afternoons in the computer building, one of the few campus buildings that had air conditioning back then. The mainframes took up an entire room. All printing was also done there, no matter where the computer you used was located on campus. You sent your file to the printer, then walked to the computer center, where there was a giant clock showing the "turnaround time"--how long it would take for your document to be printed after you sent it to the printer.

The first personal computer I used was a Tandy 1000. My husband got it via one of those "30-day free trial" offers. I used it to type his final project for his master's degree, then he returned it to the store because we had a new baby and couldn't afford to keep the computer.

Another present my brother got the same year as "Pong" was one of the first hand-held calculators. It was the size of a small notepad, did nothing other than add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and cost about $85.

How times have changed! I think about all the advances of technology I have seen in my life, but even those are nothing compared to what my grandmother saw. She was born in the days of the horse and buggy, when telephones, electricity, and indoor plumbing were novel luxuries. Airplanes, television, even radio were unheard of. When she died, we had been to the moon and back, had supersonic jets, satellite phones, nuclear power and weapons, organ transplants, 24-hour television and shopping, computers and the Internet...

to denny b and all others who worked in hospitals with psychiatric patients: thank you very much for your dedication and service to so many people who often had no one else to care about them. You did so much with so little.

It saddens me to hear so many people today condemn the hospitals and the treatment they provided, talking about patients being mistreated and staff being cruel. What seems to be forgotten or not realized is that the people who worked in the hospitals were the same people who lived in the towns where the hospitals were located. They were our neighbors, parents of classmates, fellow church members, shopped at the same stores, went to the same parades and holiday celebrations, etc. Yet too often some of us are ready to think that these neighbors and friends became sadistic abusive tormentors of patients with mental illness when they went to work at the hospital??

My problem isn't lost "soles" screaming, it's the darn socks that just won't stay with their partners. One runs off and I never do see it again. Its poor little partner is almost useless after that, relegated to being nothing more that a dusting rag for the rest its life. :-)

Guitorman, what kind of medals are given today? I know about the medals that Alcoholics Anonymous has for people celebrating milestones of sobriety, but is that what you mean?

The word "senile" makes me think of an elderly person whose memory and ability to live independently are failing due to an organic process in their brain. But "deranged" and "demented" conjure images of sociopaths, serial killers, mass murderers. I know that "demented" derives from "dementia" and refers to the loss of abilities many elderly people experience, especially after the age of 80-85. But I think in common usage, "demented" has a connotation of evil that "dementia" doesn't have. If I'm remembering correctly, there is a type of dementia caused by long-term alcohol abuse (Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome). I'd be interested to hear what others think of when they hear the various words used to describe mental problems.

Thanks, old timer. Your voice of wisdom and truth, as well as your past service, is very much appreciated. I'm sure the patients did pray that their condition would improve so they could return home, escaping not the hospital, but the problems caused by their illness. A person who believes in God knows that there is no "god forsaken" place or person. A person may turn away from God, but not the other way around.

Hopefully the police, the governor, the protective service agency, etc. were called whenever the screams of the patients were heard. If people really thought the patients were being tortured and just sat back and let it happen....at least the residents of the towns around the Nazi death camps claimed to have never had any idea of what was going on.

But I'd probably scream too, if someone tried to do any "expire-mnts" on me. I'd like to live a few more years. :-)

I'm sure the escape attempt made the local paper. How about a citation for the article so the rest of us can also be enlightened? (even the most psychotic person I've ever known would know that jumping off the roof of the hospital building would only result in landing at the base of the same building!) Not everything has to be a horror story. All the sensationalizing diminishes the truth of the lives of the people who lived and worked here.

I don't find the morgue shots at all disturbing, aside from the knowledge that they mean a life in this world has ended and there is sadness associated with that. On the practical side, they are nothing more than a temporary and necessary storage space pending transfer of the body to a funeral home. From a medical perspective, the autopsies help further our knowledge and hopefully lead to advances in treatment that prevent deaths in the future. I don't associate them with evil or patients having been tortured or bodies being forgotten in them. People go to hospitals because they are sick, some sick people die, therefore hospitals have morgues. In the rare event that abuse or neglect did cause or contribute to the patient's death, the autopsy can reveal that and the person responsible can be prosecuted.

Really now...if they stored bodies in that safe, they would have had to miniaturize them first, with that invention from "Honey, I Shrank the Kids." If the results of the experimentation were really such a road to scientific fame, we would all know about it by now. So I have to conclude that this insistence on the reality of non-existent experiments is an example of what "they" call a fixed delusion.

Several of the comments on this photo brilliantly illustrate the axiom "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing." People who choose to become doctors, psychologists, nurses, social workers, therapists, aides, etc. and to specialize in work with individuals with mental illness/developmental disabilities do it precisely *because* they believe those individuals are valuable, worthy of assistance and care, and have much to contribute to the world. The jobs are too hard unless you have those beliefs. This erroneous assumption that "they" considered the patients "useless to the world" may reflect a great deal more about the beliefs of the one who makes such an accusation than it does about "they" who are accused.

Autism is manifested in many different ways in different people. That's why there is not one simple picture of "autism." Instead, we have "autism spectrum disorders." Some people with this diagnosis may show evidence of it only in specific situations and need only a little support. Others have much more severe symptoms that seriously impair every facet of their lives, all day, every day, in ways that are almost impossible to imagine except by personal experience. It stresses the entire family, and parents of a child with an autism spectrum disorder have a much higher than average rate of divorce.

It takes far more than "just a few problems" to result in admission to a state psychiatric hospital. The decision to pursue commitment is only made when there are no other alternatives available or when the other, less restrictive options have been tried without success. "Insane" is not a blanket label given to someone who is a bit eccentric. Each disorder has specific criteria that must be present for the diagnosis to be made. I would be interested to learn what "insane" means to those who think the patients "were not really insane."

Lobotomies were an attempt to find some form of treatment that would help the patients who had not improved with the other treatment modalities available at the time. Some patients were helped. Others deteriorated further. When modern medications first became available, lobotomies were no longer done. As awful as we think they were, with our 20/20 hindsight, at the time they were seen as a last chance for someone who had not been helped by anything else available at the time. Just as today, there are people who seek out experimental treatments in the hope of finding some way to cure their cancer or halt the progression of dementia.

The idea of the Russian steam bath makes sense to me. When I go into a steam room, I feel like I am suffocating. I think I would like something like this, that kept my head in cooler, drier air and let my body benefit from the steam (and NO, this is NOT what is called waterboarding today!).

When people in town found out about what was happening in the hospital, what did they do?