485 Comments for Manteno State Hospital

colorful

Great Gallery. And this Grand Finale really love the absolute timelessness.....

The ceiling rot designs, coupled with the brick and hanging pictures------incredibly arousing to my eyes......

I was there. I was a fifteen year old, obviously misplaced, and not really hebephrenic schizophrenic after all. I had a nervous giggle, but none of the other symptoms.
I need to set things straight about the ice baths, altho someone already wrote there were none. The idea came from the iced sheets they used to wrap us in.
Actually, I had only one fateful weekend on Hydro, due to my acting up and my regular shrinks being off ot an event--and there was no such thing as privacy. They lined a group of us up against the wall stark naked, and then one by one we went into the hydrotherapy room. I remember the day they wrapped me in those frozen sheets. I had heard about it from some of the attendants. It was supposed to relax me and put me to sleep. The sheets are bound tightly with your arms at your side and no way to move your legs and feet, and it feels oh so cold. Then, a warmth starts to flow through your body from head to toe, and you want to close your eyes. Me, being a teenager and a rebel to boot, I refused to yield to the sensation. I recited large segments Edgar Allen Poe in my head--mostly The Raven and Annabelle Lee. I never slept. But I talked to an attendant or two who confessed to submitting to such a treatment just for its positive, relaxing effects. It wasn't a bad thing if you had control of your situation. The worse of this place was the attendants inability to see us a people, not cattle, and the fact that we had no control over our lives.
Of course, these cold pack treatments could have been worse. I understood that this is how things began for those who had electrodes attached to their heads and administered the 'shock' of shock treatments.
The end.

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nice place. I can remember just needing to get away and vacationing there.

A lot of the links herein don't work. The writing wasn't there originally, it came from a photo shoot a few years back that was supposed to tell a visual story of a real patient who was tortured and experimented on for years. Google around for it. "Gennie Messages" by Kristyn Vinikour. http://neurocritic.blo...t-manteno-state.html <- that's the most helpful one I could find.
Brilliant work here though, well done.

The metal bars, control station, pipes, fixtures, valves etc. are probably all missing because they were sent to the scrap yard for cash. The tub is a pretty standard style used in many hospitals for continuous baths.

http://www.opacity.us/image5714_clean.htm
http://www.opacity.us/...ontinuous_bath_time/

Not sure if this is a hydrotherapy room or just a place to take a bath. The other pictures of hydrotherapy rooms from that era, the tubs had metal bars around the tubs on which to secure canvas covers that would cover the patients' bodies (their heads would stick out, or sometimes their upper torsos--have seen pictures of patients taking their dinner in a tub.) The hydrotherapy rooms also had a bunch of dials in a control panel where an attendent would control the temperature and flow of the water (for continuous baths where water constantly flowed into and out of the tub).

Way back in the day if someone was feverish a cold tub might have actually felt good, and back before anti-biotics mental illness was sometimes a byproduct of physical illness. As to having warm water pour over oneself, that is what spas today do to relax people. Probaly better than nothing, but like a lot of things in medicine any whisp of beneficial treatment is taken to extremes then someone decides to use it for punishment.

Sad story about the grandmother--this country has gone from locking up harmless people for having a nervous breakdown,, to just about not locking up anyone unless they are found unfit to stand trial.

A story worth writing.!

Isnt this Manteno's Verteran's Home now ??

My Grandmother was a patient at Manteno State Hospital for over 40 yrs of her life. She went in at the age of 24 and died there. I was a child and didn't understand why she was even there. There were alot of family secrets and my mother was told that her mom had a "Nervous Breakdown" after the death of her mother. I don't know why her father and other family memeber left her in there. My mother took us to see her one day when I was 12yrs old and I think that was my mother's first time of seeing her to. My mother's family had told my mother that her mother died when she was young. It saddens me that they did such Cruel things to people in there. Nobody ever knows where their life is going to end of at and I don't think it's funny to Laugh at People who have a Mental disorder...I know my mother said that my grandmother got beat up by other patients. When I did see my Grandmother(Doris) she was quiet and didn't talk...she did smile at us...I think she was probably drugged up most of the time...but it is sad to know that all she went in for was a Nervous Breakdown...

I was a patient at Manteno in 1977&1978;.I remember those bathrooms. I was at James Bldg,which was remodeled& the bathrooms had regular stalls with doors& the showers had doors.My understanding why it was built that way is in 1930s mental hospitals were thought to be built like reform schools & were not very comfortable. Today the concept is mentally ill people deserve better & the concept is for a dignified environment.This picture is in a 1936 bldg.Cottage ward bldgs from 1934 such as Krapelin have 8 toilets with no stalls or partitions at all. The Krapelin bldg is where the Chaplains were. We had 2 Catholic Priests& had Mass almost every day. Manteno MHC was not as bad as the common perception There were good staff for the most part God bless &peace; to all from James Vezina Chicago IL

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This place felt angry. Not scary, just as if alot of anger was still here.