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nice pic

That's my Bri! :-)

Yes, I hate to admit my age here, but the Rosenhan study came out while I was in my first year as an undergraduate, and the reverberations were felt widely throughout the field. It was a brilliant study and remains one of the most powerful pieces of work I have ever read. Unfortunately, sometimes people somehow make it into the field without knowing about this incredibly key study.

We had something happen recently in the field (OK, recently to ME - 15 to 20 years ago is a lifetime for many of y'all ) where everyone was being taught that if you couldn't remember being sexually abused by your family, it meant you were obviously sexually abused by your family (but it was too traumatic for you to remember). A lot of well-meaning advocates and mental health personnel caused irreparable harm with that one until the very courageous researcher, Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, published her studies on the fallibility of human memory and the power of suggestion. She and others in the field discussed looking at events without preconception and entering a situation without a preconceived bias, as that skews your results in the manner you expect to see. Ironically, although this has always been the basis of the scientific method, far too many people in the mental health field don't like to be encumbered by the "cold sterile clinical" approach of being neutral until you get all the facts. Pity, isn't it?

When I assist with investigations now (and in the past), the cardinal rule you enter with is NOT to make any assumptions and NOT to lead people. It is remarkably easy to lead people (especially vulnerable people) into saying what they think you want to hear, so you have to be deadly accurate in your interviewing techniques or someone who is innocent will end up wrongly accused or someone who is guilty will walk away free.

If you assume that everyone is an abuser the research is out there (for anyone who cares to look for it) that you will find it everywhere. Conversely, if you don't believe it happens you can't find it, even with piles of evidence staring you in the face.

In my current job as a risk management liaison we spend lots (and lots and lots and lots) of time looking at patterns of injuries - time of day, type of injury, number of injuries, concomitant medical issues, history of injuries - and after a while it is not that hard to see some things that some folks would automatically assume was abuse actually turning out not to be abuse, or vice versa.

Ironically, we are usually jumped more by the people we investigate, because the onus always has to be on protecting the clients. Often staff feel as if an automatic assumption of guilt is made if they are investigated, but the process in all state institutions at this point is that we have to investigate all injuries or unusual events - it's as simple as that. Because the consequences of accusing someone of abuse are also so major, we walk a tight rope of making sure that accusations are not made without a LOT of attempts at getting it right.

If you accuse the wrong person of abuse you sometimes do more damage to the client, who may know full well that this person didn't hurt them, but they lose the relationship they had with this person through an improper accusation. You also may lose a staff person who was the best thing ever to come along for a lot of folks. However, we always have to go with protecting the clients first.

That does not occur when we assume they are abusing people without checking it out first, and it's an insult to staff everywhere.

One additional point that I have to keep coming back to is this - why do we like to heap scorn and ridicule on the people who did what they did with no money and no resources and some of them in frustration became abusive - and we don't heap scorn on ourselves for not demanding better conditions for the clients and their staff? It is because it is cleaner (and we can feel holier) if we act like abuse is solely an internal, personal characteristic rather a reflection of how systems go wrong and how it degrades the people who have to work under these conditions, as well as how society looks at the people who often end up in institutions as being less than human.

I still say that those who act outraged about abuse in institutions need to look around first, because abuse happens everywhere. There are many, many, many of us right now whose entire lives are dedicated to keeping these folks safe. Please go police your own community before you heap your scorn on those of us who actually are doing something about it.

looks like were gettin ready for a game of pool

lol... good one - maypost

well composed shot

i've had nitemares that looked just like this. holy crap.

excellent... i love this dirty, scaggy, old, crusty view of what was once "state of the art". i like the close-ups.

yea me and my boys just saw that today it was crazy

creepy cool

Oh, and for those of you who don't know about Rosenhan's experiment you can visit this site and read up on the primary study.

http://www.garysturt.f...e.co.uk/rosenhan.htm

Lynne, one of your points brings to mind the secondary study of Rosenhan's experiment...staff of a teaching and research hospital, which was aware of the first study, was falsely informed that during the next three months one or more pseudo patients would attempt to be admitted into their hospital. Of course, they identified some people as being Rosenhan's pseudo patients...the thing is, Rosenhan didn't send ANY pseudo patients!

Ergo, if you're looking for something you're going to find it whether or not it's really there. That's when you have to be careful. When working in the advocacy career you have to be sure you have the ability to distinguish the facts as to how what you perceive those facts to mean. It becomes very dangerous if you aren't able to do that.

The texture is great.

I always love the solarium shots, both exterior and interior.

***Gives Lynne a standing ovation.......(the heck with it) throws underwear....
Presents Lynne with the Golden Cumezekyame Award***

Allie Cat,

Pull in the claws - you are right on the edge of flaming some good people because you are a little full of yourself right now. You are doing an awful lot of judging of others without having any idea of what you are talking about. Most of us don't mind a healthy discussion about the ills of the system, given that most outsiders don't have the first clue or interest in the good things that have happened (which shows their own state of mind rather than being reflective of the system). But the point at which you start making public judgments about others merely because of the place they worked makes you as dangerous as people who actually do engage in abuse, because you have prejudged without any facts, and that is equally wrong. You have smeared some good people whose only "sin" was choosing to take care of people who have problems.

Once you have cleaned up the child care system you work for we will be happy to listen to the negative information you want to throw at us. I would say, however, that you may want to consider another job, because if all you are looking for is abuse, you will find it, whether it is there or not. People with that viewpoint scare me every bit as much as the people who engage in abuse. "Witch trials," we used to call them. All I have to do is think that someone is abusive and magically they are.

So we damn and fire all the facility caretakers for the terrible sin of having worked at a facility. Then there are no staff, so we hire pure and self-righteous people who often turn out to be ill-suited to work with this population and guess what? The rate of true abuse rises because the first group of staff actually knew how to deal with all the incredibly difficult scenarios that attach themselves to people who are fragile or who have illnesses of any sort.

You worry about me being in charge of abuse? Sorry, that's what I do and I am very good at it, which is why I feel I can comment about what happens in this field. What would worry me is having you come work a few shifts where I work. Of course, like others, if you made it through the initial criminal background screening you would still need 6 weeks of pre-service training and a minimum of a month being under the wing of a seasoned staff before you could work with my folks. Most people don't have that sort of patience to hang in there that long, especially not the sort of people who like to make snap judgments about things with which they are unfamiliar.

Some of the things you have said are true, but it's difficult to respond to someone who throws rotten garbage along with the mix. If you want to discuss issues, please disentangle them from your accusations. You sound like someone from a lynch mob who has prejudged the outcome and is rearranging the facts to fit the situation.

I have said all along that there have been and are problems with the system, some of them atrocious. But I have also tried to point out which of the supposed atrocities DIDN'T actually occur but were the product of feverish imaginations, why the REAL problems occurred, why we shouldn't prejudge the staff (many of whom kept alive some very fragile people or who championed people with some pretty horrendous problems), and what could be done to fix the problems of the system.

My guess - your favorite colors are black and white.