97 Comments Posted by kate

MJ- Care to share any of your stories with me for a book???? Email me if you're interested. plumperfect415@aol.com

Venessa, I agree. Instead we're going to get another batch of "high rise luxury apartments". As the construction company described them they have like 8 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms each, cathedral ceilings, fireplaces, blah blah blah. Talk about 6% of the wealth controlling 94% of the poor!

Twug- There's no way you CAN'T get attached. I love these kids like they're my own. My first kid that got discharged, I took over as her visiting resource and she's coming home with me for XMas! You have to love them to be able to do anything for them.

I'll keep everyone posted on the progress of the book. So far so good!

Occupational Therapy is for people with motor issues like not being able to hold a pen correctly or not having any coordination. It's not career counseling! =)

A lot of times shower rooms and baths need to be accessible for kids who never learned how to bathe correctly. Many of my kids were so severely abused that they have no idea how to care for themselves and staff need to show them how to shower and do basic hygiene. Unfortunately there are many times when we need to invade their privacy in order to teach them what they weren't able to learn from their parents. And Lynne makes a great point about those with suicidal tendencies. I have a 13 year old headbanger/cutter who could probably find 80 different ways to hurt himself if left unattended in the shower. Ways that you or I would never even dream of! Sometimes I think a kid desperate enough could kill himself with a tube of toothpaste- and I'm not saying that with even a hint of joking. I guess you have to imagine a small trade- a little bit of dignity for a lot of safety.

I'm going to jump on the bandwagon here only because these are the images that frighten me the most and I have to just share...While places like Pennhurst with the overt abuse and mistreatment no longer exist, everyday I see adults abusing kids that we're meant to take care of. Some of these kids have psychiatric disorders that cause them to have frightening flashbacks and instead of comforting them, I frequently watch staff downgrade them or, worse yet, put their hands on them. In fact there was an incident a few days ago where a staff member was let go for child abuse. Somehow it seems that Human Services attracts a lot of people with power and control and THAT is what makes these pictures so haunting. To know that adults took advantage of these kids.

State Schools frighten me even more than asylums do. Working at a residential facility, it's nothing more than a glorified state school. Sometimes I think snake pit characterizes my school better than it did Danvers!

Thanks to Lynne who was the only one who responded to a recent post of mine about the book I'm writing. Looking at these pictures can be so much more powerful when you know something about the system and how it works, or fails to work, for that matter. I work with kids who have psychiatric problems and it's heartbreaking to see them slip through the cracks, knowing that they will someday become the adults that no one will know how to care for.

Lynne's insight is priceless when it comes to these institutions and she has a wealth of knowledge and experience the rest of us can only hope to gain. Knowing what she knows makes it all that harder to see these places destroyed and to continue to smack our heads against the brick wall that is our failing mental health system. We continue to employ minimum wage, high school dropouts to care for our mentally ill and then wonder why our prisons are full.

Believe me, Lynne isn't the only one with plenty to rant about!!

Did anyone think to point out that occupational therapy has nothing to do with jobs??

Does anybody know how to get in touch with the photographer? I'm writing a book on abandoned asylums and would love his input. Or anyone else's for that matter! email me plumperfect415@aol.com

I think you people should grow up.

this set is prolly the best

are the people in the picture supposed to represent the patients?

it looks like my school....well my old school

thats what my old kitchen looked like......its creepy...maybe thats why we tore it down...