Suitcases from the asylum

Wish I didn't miss this thread when it first came up.

Ward 81 appears to belong to the depressing subgenre of the documentary photography section.

The State Hospital Attic exhibit is another excellent example of dark era in the realm of institutionalized social history opened up to reveal how things were and institutions needed to change in order to help people they were assigned to help in the first place.

I worked in an institution, first as a nursing aide, and then as a recreation aide, during the 1960s. It was primarily a place for the profoundly physically and mentally disabled, but there were people of every other kind, both legally committed and voluntarily there, as well. If you have any questions I will answer as best I can. Roy

Hi Roy and welcome to A2K.

That must have been fascinating.

Do you think people were better cared for in institutions then they are now?

I have really mixed feelings about it.

Over the last few months my city has had a rash of people killed by the police. Almost all of the people killed had mental health problems. I can't help but wonder if it would be safer for the people themselves, the police and the general public if these people hadn't been institutionalized.

I know that there were charges that the institutions were horrific and brutal places so it's hard to say that that's a better alternative.

I'm really curious about what it was actually like in an institution.

Thanks, The place was a community, built as a TB sanitarium originally, on the top of a mountain. Buildings were all stone, but not 'one flew over the coo-coos nest' plain. Very beautiful place. Many buildings, roads, tunnels, church, movie theater, auditorium, gym, store, summer camp, post office and farm at one time, but those gone by the time I got there. And the people who lived there thought they lived in a community, the staff, like myself were thought of as 'special transients'.

The residents were generally of two groups, the ones that knew who they were, where they were at, and that they owned the place, such as it was. The others were profoundly mentally disabled and lived without a self-aware existence.

The question is, were these people better off when they were put into private, for profit, organizational care? In Pa. most, but not all, of the profoundly mentally disabled were moved to a few remaining 'institutions', so they stayed on. But of the remaining majority, I would say that once the transition was past (which was terrible: 'familes' of people who had lived together all of their lives were split up), but following that period, most were no better off, and no worse off. The fact was that the old institutions like the one I worked at were far, far to expensive to operate today. They were little cities to themselves, something out of long ago past.

As to the brutality of the place, it's not true. Think about your high school, and how people interacted. Love, hate, indifference, everything in between. The institution was just a bunch of people, acting like people.