4,224 Comments for Northampton State Hospital

Anyone know what the "door" at the top right of this picture is for?

Lynne, Why Nola? Ya'll have a story?

Lynne: Argh! There are places that still use this mechanism?

Think of how many bricks were needed to build that tunnel.

Heh quagmire lol

Ok, my remark was dumb-it happens sometimes :-)

Well, that's not really the only reason. It probably is a factor but in the case of this hospital, there were other proposals. A local college thought about using the theater for their performing arts. There were ideas kicked around. The real issue was that asbestos abatement and the necessary renovations to make the building safe again were expensive. The town could make tax money off the low income housing units which will be put here. It's all about the money. It was even put on the ballot for the townspeople to vote whether they wanted to save it and it was rejected 60/40. I've been researching this place lately since I live close and I have a college paper to do.

The only reason that abandoned houses, hospitals and hotels are torn down is because city officials and cops are so afraid that people will go in there either to just explore, loiter out of boredome, or do drugs, get hurt and sue the town for their injuries. Thats the only reason

Having now read a good portion of the comments on this site, I find the viewpoints of some of the individuals quite interesting. In order to objectively look at these institutions one must leave their preconceived notions behind. Many of you are assuming that they were all torture chambers and all of these people were extremely tormeted because of the current condition of these buildings and they now look very scary. When these hospitals were in operation, they looked much better. Yes, people were mistreated at times in these institutions and the quality of care was nothing compared to the care that is now offered to individuals.

It seems what many people are saying is that these patients were cared for in an unethical way. This leads me to the essence of "Ethics". The word ethics means "societal norms". Therefore, unethical treatment would be treating the patients in a way which was not acceptable to society. Treating the mentally ill as second class citizens was very much accepted during those days. Why do you think all those people were there? If your family did not have the means or the time or interest in you to care for you properly, you wound up here. What I'm saying is that the staff wasn't acting unethically if the care they were providing was consistent with the expectations of society at that time. As time went on, society changed it's view of the care of the mentally ill or developmentally delayed. That said, there is no excuse for abuse. That was wrong and should not have happened but the general operation of most of these institutions was fairly consistent, at least in the beginning, with societal expectations.

Another thing I' m finding interesting from the site is how many people think they see ghosts in the photographs. There may be, and likely are, ghosts at these sites but I doubt that you're going to find one in a photograph on a website. Since Motts is an artist, I bet he goes over every pic very carefully. If there was a ghost in a photo, I think he would have seen it. I get a chuckle out of the few people who post after each pic "Did you see the girl over there?" or "Do you see the body in the corner?" It's funny.

I'm really enjoying reading your insights, Lynne. They can only come for someone with many years of experience. There are not enough people with that sort of dedication.

BTW, the beginning of my post was not meant to be know-it-all like. I have a bit of experience with these situations. My uncle who is older now is developmentally delayed and was in a home for children with limitations. The home was closed down due to abuse and he now receives money from a class action lawsuit. Bad things happened back then but they weren't all terrible all the time.

I think they are easier to clean beacuse things don't get stuck in the otherwise sharp corner of the wall and floor. These seem to be common in washdown and seclusion rooms.

Except when we ask the Buildings & Grounds crew to paint the violent ward red to make them even more disturbed, eh? ;-)

Hee hee! That's what we are always striving for - make 'em crazier so we can get our butts kicked more often and have more "days off" for Workman's Comp when someone gets irritable and chucks us through the window.

P.S. It is truly awesome to watch someone pick up an entire loaded metal file cabinet or bed and toss it across the room. It makes you a little less critical of wire mesh and thick glass after you've been beaned with a large chair a few times. Luckily the worst I've gotten is several cracked ribs, but that was back before I picked up better skills at de-fusing upsetting situations. And what's funny is that I still love the people I work with and wouldn't do any other job in the world.

WAWAWAWAWAWAWAWA!!!!!! 8`-)

[Blechhh!!! You are right - that WAS pretty disgusting, wasn't it? :-) ]

If you have a serious mental illness you do not necessarily need to have gone through any traumatic environmental experiences to cause a crisis; your biochemistry does all that for you. It takes all environmental stimuli and warps them. Yes, it is worse if terrible things happen to you in your life, but you can have the perfect, ideal life and a serious mental illness will twist and warp whatever your experiences are. It is not usually the case that people are "driven crazy" by life or by other people; it depends on the amount of "resources" that your biology gives you in the first place. If you are prone (genetically) to a specific form of mental illness it takes fewer environmental "prompts" to cause problems. If you are lucky enough to be born without much in the way of a pre-determined genetic problem you can be in some pretty terrible environments and come out all right.

I went to graduate school with a woman whose parents had each been in a different Nazi death camp in WWII, and she was quite well-adjusted and her parents were two of the sweetest little old people you'd ever meet.

I also had a young college student in counseling from a very rich family (read: very, very, very, very, very rich) and she was suicidal because she did not get in the "correct" sorority. Another was upset because she couldn't figure how many people to invite to her parents' yacht for spring break. (Both true stories - details changed slightly to protect the identities - etc.)

Most of us are somewhere in the middle and need a combination of coping skills issues, a predetermined genetic disease process, and some environmental stressors to tip us over the edge.

The type of violence we see in a "violent ward" is usually the result of a schizophrenic or psychotic process (or a physiological process such as dementia, alcoholism, or drug use) and rarely the result of sociopaths, such as your Ted Bundy types. Those folks are generally much more self-controlled, especially in situations like this.

Gack! I sound like I am teaching class! Sorry 'bout that! :-)

Mel Brooks Rules !! ;-)

Im need a sitz bath