485 Comments for Manteno State Hospital

As a side note, I had a great aunt who often checked herself into Manteno. Although she did not like the electroshock treatments she received, she was quite happy there and felt very safe.

I was there last weekend. The room has now been painted over, and the tubs are gone. All that remains is a bit of the writing on the bases where the tubs were.

oh and i have worked in many diffirent areas of mental health from Max Security, Med Security, IPCU, to acute admissions and rehab and i can GUARANTEE they do not use this approach anymore within the western world. Along with mechanical restraints and strait jackets. All nurses are trainned to deal with patients in a perfectly ethical and dignifying manner. Its ashame that the knowledge of mental health was so small in those days, compared to what we know now and the approaches we can use to benefit a larger recovery rate for service users.

ive heard stories about ice baths, i was under the impression that they were used in the same way as ECT (Electro-Convulsive Therapy), where with ECT you put an electrode to each temple to induce a fit, so basically it is just like rebooting a computer, and oddly enough i have met PATIENTS who swear by this therapy so it must work for some people, on the otherhand i hava whitnessed patients having dramatic deterioration to there mental health as well but its a last resort with alot of patients once all meds have been tried.

But apparantly ice baths had the same effect but they didnt have the same anisthetics and muscle relaxants when they were in use, so it was branded as un-ethical(obviously). They were not kept in the bathtubs for a long period of time, maybe just submerged for a few seconds so it shocks the system just like ECT.

it was so different awhile ago. this building is a loading dock now. its a shame that they turned something so beautiful into something so ugly.

I've been in these buildings also, and i've read a lot about the hospital.

For all of you that think this was vandalism, it wasn't. the paint was not put on the walls while the buildings were abandoned. gennie's story is all throught one building and was written on the walls by gennie herself. she was one of the patients that was checked into the state hospital because she was abandoned by her family, and the state sent her there. she had no mental issues when she was first checked in. if you walk through the building, each one has the doctor's comments and a bit of gennie's own thinking after each one of her 14 shock therapy treatments. she was given the treatments because she was shy and the doctors found it to be a mental issue because she didn't talk. but in all reality, who would talk much if they were a sane person in a mental hospital?

gennie's building is one of the 3 of 60 buildings that are still left standing and haven't been renovated.

as for if they had intentions behind their treatment, probably, but it was most likely experimentation. the average amount of people that died from treatment in this hospital while it was open was 36 per month.

You are saying you keep people in bathtubs full of ice and ice water for many hours, sometimes days? Even though people die after an hour or so because that's what human bodies do after that amount of exposure? I don't know everything about everything, but I do know that being in ice/ice water for multiple hours will kill a person. If you don't know that and you are doing this, either you are fairly unaware of what is happening in your facility or you must have one hell of a mortality rate. :-)

http://www.ussartf.org/cold_water_survival.htm

Lynne- why do you think you know everything about everything? We DO use COLD BATHS in the US. I cant say where I work but we do. What do you think these tubs are for, just bathing?

I can't believe that article is from late 08's.
The crowding of facilities for senile care is indeed walking towards similar abuse.

And I do wonder if those physicians back then, even if they had a good intention, actually had any empirical data to back up their experiments. Especially EST. What could they believe a charge like that would do the brain's electrical patterns?
I take it they didn't publish it in periodicals...

Wow...The writing on the walls in this place makes it look like it was ment to be there.....

i would think its too pink to be blood, but who knows.

WOW !

This is such a great photo. very lively but yet
dead?(I don't think thats the word i'm looking for)

how beautiful

I've only posted here a few times, but I gotta say, I love reading these posts. Like someone already said, usually I have to jump back up to the shot to see something I missed the first time. I find most of the comments witty and fun. While I love love love the pictures, the comments are half the fun of this site.