3,287 Comments for Danvers State Hospital

Whoops, thanks for the correction Ed!

torture! all of it!

seriously tho, i've just read "Mad in America" and it's extremely thought-provoking. the thing that comes across throughout (and yes, some of the treatments seem startling in today's context) is that every treatment was designed IN AN EFFORT TO HELP PATIENTS. misguided or not, there it is. and a lot of it was - i don't think anyone would try to deny it. the road to hell and all that...

Makes me glad we have showers and no bathtubs, Ed.

Torture is right. You ever try taking a 289 pound soapy person who doen't want to get out of the tub, out of a tub? Talk about back breaking labor and torture..

Definitely torture. Jo or surly girl will chime in here at some point, or Dr. Sketch or Tony or someone, and we will all agree - DEFINITELY torture. ;-)

Oh sure! Thank me and then call me "long winded" in the next sentence! Boo hoo! 8`-(

Thanks Duchess, I just had to do a double take after you said that... and then a tripple take. Creepy Creepy Creepy!

Wow, at first I thought this seemed like the most innocent looking picture out of the whole lot. Thanks Lynne for setting me straight, LoL. What a great shot.

Wow, I never even noticed the shadow person until after readin the comments. Great shot!!! It looks like the employees are going to return any second and pick up where they left off.

Not sure if this is going to be looked at after so many longwinded posts...

I work as a CNA in a nursing home and It can be really fustrating at times (Thanks Lynne for sticking up for us). Commonly there will be 30 patients on a wing with only two aids and a nurse. It gets hecktic when there are patients trying to stand up by themselves when they are not strong enough. My facility encourages alarms to be placed on wheelchairs and beds (the alarm goes off when theres no contact with the patient). But you get 2 or 3 patients on every wing who forget that they need help and we have to run towards the sound of the alarm every five minutes. What happens when 3 alarms start to go off at once and it takes 1 or 2 minutes to get each person settled down? The nurses will call the patients doctor and if he/she gives the signal then we can put seat belts or lap trays on them (By the way these are our only restraints). Now the patient is safe from hurting his/herself and us aids can tend to the needs of others more thouroughly.

PS - I can just picture that chair roaming around the place at night, looking to see where all it's people went to... ok ok bad thoughts!!! Damn, now I'm gonna have to watch a disney movie to get that image out of my head.

yes, it was wasnt it! it was indeed a good time to have a friend

i saw that! i remember it too! thats where we met too, dont you remember stephanie? it was about 1978, i was 12 and you were 10 if i remember correctly,

there was a movie filmed here on location, called Session 9, i remember watching the movie and thinking "i know that room, and that ward, and i have been kept in that room before! it was a long long time ago but i remember it!" it breaks my heart to see it in this shape!

i have a photo of the dummy on a stretcher in the middle of the gym...i was told it had originally come from foxboro.

awesome photos.

Danvers is beautiful on the outside, but what about the things that happened on the inside? Very scary. Danvers had so much patient abuse. My grandmother witnessed a nurse picking a patient up by their hair once. See what I mean?