4,537 Comments for Pennhurst State School

I would suggest that rather than "taking a good portion of time out of your day" to read all these dreary comments it might be easier to hit the "Hide Comments" button. Some of us are looking beyond the art and into the reality that the art reflects, although by your comments I see that you don't seem to "approve" of it. The fact that this "artwork" is the product of a universe that was real is probably uncomfortable for a lot of people, and is one of the reasons the "Hide Comments" option was installed.

None of us have the ability to "give others permission to interpret things as they like" - but it's always better to give people some objective reality if you happen to know something about it than it is to let people run off half-cocked with bizarre ideas from things they have never personally experienced but have just decided "must be." That isn't "art" - that is "drama pretending to be art that doesn't want to bother with reality because it might be uncomfortable."

i've read through the comments on this particular picture and i've taken a good portion of time out of my day to do so.
and i think taking years to proove something in this argument is ridiculous.
obviously, if nothing has been solved by now, it never will be.
let the ignorant remain in "bliss".

this is artwork.
let people interpret it as they'd like.

I personally believe that everyone who can SHOULD live in the community if there are enough resources to make that happen. However, the cost of being institutionalized versus living in the community is close to equal at this point. That is because the majority of people who first moved from the institutions to the community were people with more supports and more skills. People who currently live in institutional facilities have fewer skills overall and a significantly higher rate of behavioral, medical, and physical challenges.

When we finally move everyone out, and I am confident we eventually will, the costs - which are running neck and neck now - will shift to being more expensive to live in the community. However, I personally think it is worth it for everyone to have better access to the community, even though physical integration doesn't equal social integration, as we have seen in the research.

I do disagree, however, about abuse being detected more quickly in the community. There is little support for this as far as facts and figures, and in fact, at this point the institutions have a higher reporting rate and for smaller injuries and incidents. That is due to the fact that there are more people at a facility who are able to see our folks whereas in most community placements you have fewer people who work longer shifts and the turnover rate means that you will have a whole new set of staff every year, on the average. The turnover rate in the community is between 100% and 150%. In the facility where I work it is around 15%. That can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing, but it does mean that there are more people who are familiar with our folks and because we have roving crews of staff who monitor living areas and check out nursing logs and injury reports (like me) I can spit you back info on who has had how many injuries, when, what they were, how serious they were, and whether the rate or pattern dictates a review or an investigation. Resources are way too scattered in the community for that to occur.

At the same time, I think it's worth the cost to go community. Now if someone could just convince our funding agencies that this is the way to go . . .

theres a tunnel that runs in to the army base

" The point is people can be better served in group homes .
where abuse is less likely to occur for less money and human dignity is preserved"
Well I don't know about that. I think it's probably about the same. Maybe less reported because there is less monitoring.

It costs three times as much to keep people in institutions than in four person group homes. There is no dout good and terrable things occured at institutions. The point is people can be better served in group homes .
where abuse is less likely to occur for less money and human dignity is preserved

is that a ghost that is black in very front?

wow. i realize i'm discovering this thread very late, but i feel compelled to commend and agree with Lynne. In another thread in the Pennhurst section (of the pic of the basement w/ the painting of the many-eyed thing) I used the example of Facilitated Communication to illustrate concrete evidence of the "witch trial" mentality, which I agree is just as harmful as taking advantage of the defenseless. It's also quite disturbing, as the witch hunters, in a perverse way, really seem to want those stories of abuse to be true, as if to fulfill some masochistically romantic fantasy of trial endurance that they have. Just know that there are rational people out there who aren't blind to the benevolence and hard work of mental health professionals.

we in the psych community use those to sink sea org vessels, though that's an old variant. the new ones never leave survivors, which sucks because we used to get to go out there in runabouts and shoot them ourselves.

that wheelchair has his own one-man show

,,,is what that looks like.

I think we should all remember that these places didnt look exactly like they do now during their heyday, by any means, and there is a tendency for caregivers and 3rd parties to imagine scenarios of abuse in situations such as these, and dare I say, perhaps exagerrate the ubiquity of such incidents. its this very same imaginative mindset that fuels interest in these very pictures themselves (thematically I mean.).
This tendency is actually proven through psychological experiment: in the facilitated communication fiasco involving the alphabet boards and the autistic patients, with the caregivers "assisting" their communication manually. In reality, the caregivers were subconsciously controlling the "conversation," much like the way it is actually you operating the Ouija board. Many caregivers reported detailed accounts of incest and abuse, supposedly confided to them by their autistic patients. Families were ripped apart by these accusations, the greater majority of which were proved false via forensic science and psych research. And all along It was merely a particularly interesting form of transference on the part of the caregivers. Facilitated Communication is now largely considered pseudoscience.
im not saying abuse didnt occur. not at all. but it is important to keep a sober mind regarding all this. the history of mental health wasn't entirely a bacchanal of sadism, and like civilization in general, it's gotten more and more humane over time.

What a great set, Motts. I know I'm a newbie on the scene, but what a place this must have been when running.

That is very nice architecture. Still beutiful and eyecatching after all these years.

I hope some idiot doesn't put a live fuse in that bad boy

Who was holding the camera?