December 14, 2007

The Lives They Left Behind - a haunting examination of suitcases and trunks found in the attic of an abandoned psychiatric center.

For most of Willard’s existence an understanding of psychiatric disorders was minimal as was appropriate care, Ms. Penney said. Electroshock treatments, ice baths and insulin shocks were common.

posted by fish tick 16 years ago
  • I knew someone (she died seven years ago) who suffered from depression in the 1950s, in rural New Zealand. She was never "cured" and was only given actual effective treatment in the 1980s, after decades of hell for her, her husband and her children. I don't know if she was institutionalised but she had a wide variety of horrible, horrible treatments including electroshock treatment.
  • Wow. Sad, enraging, beautiful. Amazing site; thanks, 'shtick! Note: Be sure to read the "Is it better today?" page.
  • This isn't far from where I grew up. When I was a kid, every mother's stock exclamation when the children acted up was, "You kids are gonna send me straight to Willard!" Or, if you acted out of control somebody would say, "They're goona come and haul you off to Willard!" It was a sort of looming specter to us kids; we knew it was a place you didn't ever want to go. And as much as I'm generally fascinated with abandoned institutional buildings, I'm not 100% sure I'd take an opportunity to visit there now, since just sitting here writing about it makes me feel a little of that childhood fear again. I could be mistaken, but I also believe one of my uncles worked as an orderly there for a short time. I'll have to check with Mother Monster. Sounds like Patient Frank was suffering from PTSD (I guess they called it "battle fatigue" after WWII). He was one heck of a handsome man, too. I wonder if all those photos were packed away after the patients died, or if they didn't even have access to them during their lives. If not, what a shame that they didn't even have that small comfort, which probably would have improved their mental health. So full of ghosts, the world is. Especially in institutions - hospitals, schools, churches, courthouses, etc.
  • They called it 'shell shock'.
  • I'm not wanting to sound cynical or bitter, but I'm wondering if those living now in poor conditions will be romanticized in the future. So much easier to deal with a photo and the contents of a suitcase than to deal with a living human being.
  • I worked at a state hospital for the retarded for a brief time in the 1950s. Some of that time was spent on a ward for adult women with varying degrees of behavior problems. All of them had been transferred form hospitals that were involved in the treatment scandals just preceding my work there. (Sorry, but Google links seem to have forgotten the news of the time.) Since many of the ward supervisors had been transferred from the worst of the transferring hospitals, the treatment was probably not much better. The event which has remained most clear in my memory is when the other "technicians" on the ward gave a "wet sheet treatment" to a patient who was in crisis mode. They restrained the patient in bed and brought in tubs of ice water where they soaked sheets. They wrapped the icy sheets around the patient's body, being very careful to keep any body parts from touching each other and trade warmth. The patient screamed and cried for a while, but as her body temperature dropped she "slept." Ultimately, her body reacted to the chill by upping her temperature. By the time they took the sheets off, they were almost steaming. She didn't cause any problems for the rest of the time I was on that word.
  • GramMa, I didn't think it was romanticizing 'em, but I guess anytime you take pretty pictures of pain-filled subjects there's a bit of that in there, huh.
  • pretty pictures of pain-filled subjects...very eloquent. I am curious about the photographer, however. These photos appear to be meticulously posed with textbook lighting design. Could this person be a future resident...
  • HW, I guess I mean that everything in the photos is so tidy, and it makes things seem...distant. All the edges seem smooth. Human beings and their emotions are messy and sharp and sometimes very ugly. My thought on reading about some of the long-term commitments was that if I had been confined under conditions like that, I would have gone slowly insane.
  • These people are long dead, so let's not concern oursleves with justice or equality for them. Don't make qualitive judgements between care and abuse, instead recognize that you don't care, you ignore, you walk on by: FormOfAbuse alert. With so much going on in the dregs, it's hard to remove ones face from what's facsinating.