1,382 Comments for Dixmont State Hospital

Even regular hospital floors have "treatment" rooms. My son was hospitalized for pneumonia when he was 18 months old, and they took him to the treatment room to start an IV. They didn't want me there (saying they didn't want him to associate me with the treatment) but I refused to leave (I didn't want him to think Mommy had abandoned him to strangers). Neither of the two nurses could get the IV line inserted and so they were going to put it in his head. I said "no way, at least not yet" and asked them to call down to the ER and have an ER nurse or EMT come up to the floor to do the procedure. They agreed to this, and the ER nurse got the line in on the first try (I also used the same request when my 80-year-old father was hospitalized and was becoming agitated by a nurse's unsuccessful attempts to start an IV--people who practice emergency medicine seem to have special skills with IVs). If I hadn't insisted on staying with my son, and he had come out of that treatment room with an IV attached to the top of his head, he wouldn't have been the only one needing a treatment!

This made me think of the bathrooms in my elementary school and kids climbing up on the toilet seat in one stall to look over the partition to catch the person in the next stall "in the act." (maybe we were just a strange bunch of kids--we also thought it was cool to sneak into the opposite sex's bathroom after school so that we could say we had been in there).

As for the lack of doors--that's much more understandable after you've had to crawl under a few doors to free a person who was able to lock the door but lacked the manual dexterity to unlock it.

I've known a number of people with autism who had a particular fascination with pipes (turning valves, removing fittings, putting things inside, etc.). The fascination seemed to increase geometrically if the pipes could also gush forth water. Even better was a pipe or fixture that could gush forth water that could then be kept from going down the drain. :-) Without close supervision of bathrooms, a facility could keep a full-time plumber busy just unclogging toilets and sinks.

In housing for people with developmental disabilities, many of the residents need training in personal hygiene/toileting skills. Other residents will "play" with the contents of the toilet if there is not a staff person to keep them from doing so. Sometimes there are medical reasons for needing to monitor a patient's urination/defecation.

Just like with so many other facets of mental health care, one cannot make judgments just based on an isolated picture. There are usually reasons for things being the way they are. And the reasons are not to torture people, violate their rights, or invade their privacy.

Oh yes, the "poor tortured people who never got a decent life"! Life in the community with so-called "normal" people is not a cakewalk for someone with mental illness or developmental disabilities, either. When I've been eating in a restaurant with some of the people I work with, I've heard insensitive, RUDE comments along the lines of "Why do they bring *that* out in public? We shouldn't have to look at *that* while we're eating. Don't they know there are places for things like *that*?"

I bet it was from patients as well...either way, it's a very powerful photo

theres more to the stories told. And im going to find the untold secrets and screams left in those walls at Dixmont Hospital...

i love this view ;D

the blonde chick with bleeding eyeballs is suggestive, you know.

Any left?

That picture makes me want to cry. Utter hopelessness.

Is that George Constanza in the middle?

The doors look surprisingly in good condition.

My ex was put into a seclusion room at the hospital she was at and was on suicide watch. Nice pic btw

My Grandmother was in Dixmont from 1925 until she died in 1984. I hated to go their and I, for one, am glad they are tearing it down. There was nothing pretty about that place. I would see my grandmother come out of a door, while we sat on benches that looked like Dixmont had gotten them from a church. I remember the walls were an off white, When she would come out the door she would sometimes have scratches and cuts from fights she was in. I hated Dixmont and I'm glad they tore it down! To me there is nothing to preserve.

please tell me u went in there????

thats 1 darn scary pic. me and meg are 10 u no