1,382 Comments for Dixmont State Hospital

Navi, No one said a mental patient belonged in Jail. They deserve to be treated humanly. A sex offender still belongs in jail.

I always think I'm being clear, but obviously I've not done a very good job. For that I apologize.

There were times when the things we now call "torture" were commonplace. At that time those things were not called "torture". At that time they were called "treatment" or "acceptable experimentation." The techniques, treatments, and experimental procedures many people want to now call "torture" were often well-known at the time and were in fact published in journals for anyone to see who cared to look. I can find you several hundred of these "secret experiments" in older journals any day of the week, and so can any of you if you go to any university library. Everyone knew that experiments like these went on, and no one stormed the Bastille to ask them to stop, I am sorry to say. Didn't happen. Pick up almost any journal from the 40s and 50s and you will see these things described clear and plain as can be. No secrets. Straight forward at the time and "acceptable" to the culture at the time. Kind of like the way we currently zap the hell out of people who have cancer with radiation to save their lives - this will undoubtedly be seen as obscene torture and experimentation in the next 50 years but right now we think it is brilliant and a grand way to save lives. It's all we have right now. Are we evil now because we don't know any better? Should we do nothing at all and just wait for someone to magically come up with a cure without trying anything? And then we scream and holler because no one ran "experiments" before the drug was first released to see if it actually worked?

The point is that this wasn't considered a "bad thing" when it was done, whether or not we call it a "bad thing" today. So, yes, people did weird things to people who lived in mental hospitals, psychiatric wards, prisons, and, quite frankly, regular hospitals, including pediatric wards of "normal" hospitals. These weird things were also done (in lesser numbers, of course) on people who were considered "normal" like you and I are considered "normal." This was part of the culture. This was something most people knew about and were aware of, IF they cared enough to find out, which most people did not. As regards how most people in this country (don't know about other countries than the U.S.) felt, they were simply too busy worrying about Communists and Socialists and Black Panthers and beatniks and panty lines and ring-around-the-collar to care what was happening in their hospitals to their "outcasts." Ugly but true.

So, yes, things happened that we now called torture. There were even some instances where it went on and no one knew about it. Anyone who ISN'T aware that this used to happen is a pretty poor specimen of a human being to have lived in a world with this much knowledge having been public for so long and not having been aware of this.

No one is trying to hide anything about how bad institutions were (and still are in some cases). Bad things happened. Bad people were there. Bad policies were in place and people did things of which most of us are now ashamed. But it sprouted from a bad culture or was a product of the lack of knowledge we had at the time. And until we are willing to say that WE were the bad culture and that our knowledge was limited and that the bad things that happened came from US, then we have missed the entire point and it will happen again. As soon as you start blaming one person, one group, one place, for bad things, then it will be easy to ignore that the bad stuff lies in all of us and it takes all of us to keep it from happening again. If we say it was one place where bad things happened, then we shut down the one place but we then ignore the fact that it happened somewhere else as well. And somewhere else. And somewhere else. It would be pretty convenient to think there were only a few sick people involved. But them's not the facts, Jack.

Oh heck, I can't say it right and no one cares. I suppose it IS easier to blame the "bad guys." Sorry. My bad. I should know better by now. Don't know why I keep at it. Lost cause and all that.

These people are sexual deviants who have been treated in the past for various mental disorders through the use of medication. Now, they're out on their own, maybe with a nurse to make sure they take their medications. I wouldn't know, the last time I heard about it, there was no nurse.

Sorry, but I refuse to believe that prison is an appropriate place for people with mental conditions. Should we start placing all mental patients in prison?

I agree Secretattic1. Although to belong in jail have to be found guilty of a crime. And what sentence would you offer, and what do you do with them once their sentence has been served? Its a huge problem that faces most societies right now, without an immediate solution presenting itself.

I'm sure Navi's reference to 'treating' them wasn't intended how I read it.

I would much rather these people be where they are no harm to anyone , AND where no harm be done to them, Child molester belong in jail not a hospital.

So I'm guessing you would prefer to have a dozen child molesters in your neighbourhood, living all in one house right next to a playground?

By all means, YOU take care of these people.

To find facts about torture going on in these places you have to investigate, no one hardly believes these people, just read these comments and then do some research http://www.zmag.org/Bulletins/psthosp.htm
http://mhawestchester....vocates/beers802.asp

Sry to see this destroyed I grew up on top of that hill off Toms Run Road

Bravo, Lynne. Though I do have one thing to add to your list of what happens to those "free" people now...When there was the large scale movement to shut down WSH, my hometown acquired a pack of sexual deviants, living in a sort of halfway house next to a YMCA and playground, with basically no one to help them or treat them.

Web definition: "Torture is the infliction of severe physical or psychological pain as an expression of cruelty, a means of intimidation, deterrent or punishment, or as a tool for the extraction of information or confession."

Torture is generally defined in terms of the intent. If the therapy or treatment was an attempt to help people get better, even if painful, we are less likely to call it torture. Braces on children's teeth hurt, but they generally make the child look better in time. Doesn't make the child feel any better at the time, but the intent is there for long-term improvement. Plastic surgery - cutting someone's face apart and sewing it back together - is an intrusive, painful procedure, but most people in society don't call it torture (unless they actually have to watch it happen <G>).

As time passes and we develop new ways of doing things (or new ethics and societal mores develop) we tend to look backwards and redefine things according to what is relevant and known NOW.

In our society in the 1700 and 1800's, if people exhibited any tendencies toward psychiatric illness they used to be condemned to attics, cellars, outdoor sheds, jails, and prisons where they were caged, chained to the wall, had little food, and had little to no exposure from the heat and cold because it was believed they could not feel pain. Many became de facto indentured servants to others. Many wandered the streets being expelled from town after town, being chased, ridiculed, and physically attacked by children and others, and often starving to death or dying from exposure to the elements. The mental health movement of the 1800s was an attempt to get people out of these terrible conditions and off somewhere they could be safe - a "haven" or "asylum." They received a place to live, medical treatment, food and medicines, and attempts were made at "restoring" their senses.

As time went by, more and more people were sent to these places but the legislature did not keep up with providing enough money to allow these places to provide the minimums necessary for comfort, much less for treatment. The people in society (that's you and me) demanded we get these "weirdoes" off the street and away from us, but we weren't nice enough to vote to give the "weirdoes" enough money to be comfortable, i.e., receive some of the basics of life.

It wasn't the hospitals being "torturous." It was US not caring enough as a society about the people we asked to have hidden away - WE didn't have the conscience to demand that enough money was spent to take care of these very vulnerable folks.

Then someone came in and decided it WAS the fault of all the hospitals and demanded they be shut down. So they were. And now where all all the people they "freed?" Back in the streets with no shelter or food, being set on fire by punks for "fun", back in jails and prisons, back at home with a family that is slowly disintegrating because they have no resources to take care of their loved one.

Kinda makes a body wonder what "torture" really is, don't it? ;-)

Haha. Looks like the curtains in some ER's back home. Scary to think you can liken one to another.

Actually it wouldn't be so far fetched to think of a mental hospital as a place of torture sadly ... many of them were. At least torture as we would see the acts today. In earlier times it was the best way to deal with the problems they didn't understand.

It was one of those stickers that looks like stained glass. Almost everything of value was stripped from Dixmont.

Was that stained glass in the top of the windows Mr. Motts?

I noticed that same thing Dan..and it also missed the light still on the ceiling...and from teh looks of the wall on the left it wasnt installed to far from were the light was