1 Comments Posted by Hugh W. Ridlehuber, MD

In 1964, I attended a summer training program at Letchworth Village conducted by Howard Potter, MD a well known and highly respected child psychiatrist. At the time I was in my fourth year of training to be a child psychiatrist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Potter’s training program was focused on developmental disabilities including epilepsy and mental retardation addressing the great need these individuals had for professional understanding and help with adapting to life outside of an institution. We interviewed patients and in a clinical case conference discussed each patient’s history, diagnosis, and the impact of institutionalization on their lives and the effects of being separated from family and community. One of the things that impressed me about the experience was how eager these institutionalized patients were to talk with someone who was empathetic and interested in understanding their life experiences. The program had a big effect on the rest of my professional career as a child and adolescent psychiatrist and developmental disabilities became a major focus of my practice over the next forty years.
In 1964 Letchworth Village was a beautiful place with well-kept and maintained buildings and grassy lawns and wooded areas. The food was equal to what I had in college cafeterias and military mess halls. The professional staff there seemed to be competent and caring. In my opinion the harm to patients was a result of being institutionalized and separated from family and community and having limited freedom to make choices about their lives. In the 1960’s and ‘70’s, there was tremendous change in the field of psychiatry and the focus shifted to avoiding institutionalization and keeping individuals with these types of disorders at home and connected with family and loved ones while being treated in community mental health centers close to home. In California where I practiced for thirty-eight years, the state hospitals discharged institutionalized patients sending them back to the community, but unfortunately the legislature did not adequately fund the mental health programs which resulted in a drastic increase of mentally disturbed individuals being homeless. We are still dealing with this large population of homeless individuals in California. I assume a similar phenomena developed in New York after they closed their state hospitals and would be interested in learning what did happen there and would welcome hearing from former patients at Letchworth Village.