Laboratory

looks like my old high school lab

I can't even imagine what went on there.

Ron, my money would be on medical tests. Autopsies. Pathology. It's just a science lab. I doubt people were gagged, strapped down and subjected to freakish painful experiments and torture, if that's what you mean...

Still, it's creepy.

Yes, creepy...love the B&W effect...

Yeah, the black & white effect gives it that old school look

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.

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? ;-)

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

So you're denying that sex offenders can have mental disorders?

Why would they be sex offenders?

I lubs our lynne!

Navi, are you suggesting someone with a mental disorder should not be treated as a criminal, even if they have committed (and been found guilty of) a crime?

Navi, Sorry you cant seem to understand my statement. People with mental disorders need to be treated humanly.
Criminals belong in jail Period.

As an innocent bystander- not in the medical pro. - just a big fan of the site. I have read almost every post good and bad in the arguement of the torture and poor treatment in these places, from a laymans standpoint here is my opinion.

Long before asylums and hospitals came to be, "strange" and "unusual" practices took place in the name of medical science , without these "torturous" or "odd experiments" how could the medical field have become so helpfull???? So it just stands to reason that of course the practices would continue when doctors began looking into the function of the mind. It is just the way humans learn- trial and error- we learn from our mistakes -thats just the way it is. What we think at one time is the way things should be done, may turn out to be wrong but from that we learn that the right way . It is the learning process plain and simple.
So Lynne you are 100% right in your last post, you just say it very eloquently and passionately, but you are right!!!
I am so tired of reading "people were tortured here" "people were mistreated here". It gets old, of course the bad is sensationalized, but what about all the good that has happened in the name of medical science, you hardly ever hear of that.

Sorry for the rant, and it may be a little out of place here, but I had to say my peace on the subject. I have a child with a life long medical ailment and if the medical world needs to do some sort of experiments to find a cure then so be it, I would like to see my child healthy and well someday by whatever means necessary, and I hold that opinion to the practices they used in the treatment of the mentaly ill then and now. There needs to be a way to make people better, and without experiment we can't learn, I bleieve it is as simple as that. Like Lynne says over and over what was practiced then, seems bad now, and what is practiced now will seem bad in the future. But the medical field will have advanced ( like it is always does through experimentation) and thats a good thing.

Okay now I'm really done with my rant *phew*

"Navi, are you suggesting someone with a mental disorder should not be treated as a criminal, even if they have committed (and been found guilty of) a crime?"

I am merely suggesting that anyone who suffers from mental disease deserves to be treated for it in some way, shape, or form. Chances are, if they weren't mentally unstable in the first place, they wouldn't have committed the crime. If they suffer from mental disease, did their "true" selves, their rational selves, commit the crime? So honestly, what good does it really do to toss them in a prison cell? Do you really want your tax dollars going towards what may actually be construed as inhumane treatment? I don't.

For the record, attempted suicide is a crime.

"Navi, Sorry you cant seem to understand my statement. "

And I'm sorry you can't seem to understand what it's like to have mental disease. :) Unfortunately, ignorance isn't one of them.

Navi, Ignorance are not I still believe mental patients deserve to be treated humanly. If that makes me Ignorant so be it.

Thanks for that Navi, I wasn't too sure where you were coming from. I agree with you, criminals with mental disorders also need to have treatment available to them, and that is something we have in our jails here in NZ. Do US jails not have that accommodation?

Where I'm coming from is a completely non-professional place, merely observation and personal opinion (being of mental disease myself). So if Lynne corrects me on something, or if I don't word it properly, so be it.

Criminals in US prisons are afforded medication, yes, but I'm not convinced something that simple is "proper care." They're still being left at the mercy of other criminals/prisoners who are likely to harm them (a quick example that comes to mind is a recent forced tattooing - a man was forcibly tattooed with the name of his victim on his forehead, which I find to be sick on all levels), and in most cases, medication is the ONLY course of treatment. I know there is counseling available somewhere, in some way, but even that seems like a band-aid.

I can think of another example my Law teacher told me about last year - who knows if this situation has changed, I certainly would like to. A schizophrenic on death row refused to take his medication because he knew the law was that he wouldn't be executed unless he was of sane mind. But the prison was unsure if they were within their rights forcing him to be medicated only so they could kill him. And if he knew he needed to be medicated, was he really insane? That's messed up on so many levels.

None of which helps the fact that WSH housed a group of dangerous people who are now roaming the streets, because the government (and most of its citizens, probably) didn't care and closed the hospital.

Navi your point is extremely valid. Mental disorder is such an individual thing, I think the biggest mistake society makes is sticking the same label on everyone and trying to manage them all with the same process.

Remember, its society. There are no right or wrong answers, and your opinion matters just as much as the person next to you, irrelevant of their expertise. Look how wrong professionals have been in the past. We all have to do the best with the time given to us.

wow, I totally can't believe what people did in there. Though I would really like to know if what I heard about what they did to people in there was true or not?

Lucy, I wonder what really happened there, 2. I get totally freaked out when I even think of it...Try looking it up on google, under hauntings at dixmont mental institution. I found a lot of interesting...

I forgot one word to my above entry... And that word is stuff. ; - )

I could tell you what happened at Dixmont. But you would find it disturbing.

i was a victom of radiation exprierment when i was a patent in building 22 when i was 7 years old,my testicals are deformed and i would never want to have childern as the risk of berth defects are very high so even my umanity has been taken away from me. i can try to forget about the many beatings and the sex abuse ;rape of a child by the atandent george gloster in1966 throw 1967 that took place many times i wll have to deal with the pain and damage to my body, for me there is NO escape this place will be part of me to my last berth i take on earth. i would like to leed a class action law suite to reward my life long pain and suffering of a life time.i will now give a email contact ilovetomichael@yahoo.com let me know what you think of my postings on this evail place of shame!!!! please this place should never reopen like the camps of the germans this will allways be a torta house!!!! 38 years later i still cry when i think about it as if it were yesterday

the above crimes took place at kings park state hospital not dixmount hospital

Yea, the state came up with some bright idea, that they can't afford the state hospital anymore (to busy giving themselves 17% raises in the middle of the night), so they closed down these hospitals ant let all the EDP's out into society with the normal people, so they can deal with them !!!!!!!

BAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAA i love the way people take this seriously
it's kinda VERY funny

Navi im sorry but i personaly am a victim of a sex offender i believe mental problem or not its still wrong and if a mental problem was to blame then it should have been delt with prior to. Jail is where they belong and after the individual paid his or her dept to society then mental help could and really should be saught after. Even while the individual pays his or her dept to society, they may still recive mental help.(this part is general) And for as far as what all may or may not have happened- it was very grusome and really not much for advancement in science. I would like to think that cutting someone open (while not sadated) is not in any way humane. Also if someone needs to be tied down and gaged while this occurs, obviously they feel pain. I really dispise Psyk. wards, and hospitals alike. I believe what they did and still do is very wrong. I cannot tell you how many stories i have been told of girls being druged and raped in those facillities, even better when they try to go to the police about it the hospital just says they imagened it. I feel this is very wrong and a compleat violation of a doctor or a nurse's power or licence... I thank you all for reading.. and i really don't want to offened anyone. If i did i am sorry. bye bye.

The lab would have been like any hospital or health department lab. No torture. Just samples on slides to look for parasites like nematodes (blood fluke sort of thing) and hookworms. Blood drawn into little vaccutainer tubes to do basic bloodwork to diagnose and treat things like electrolyte abnormalities. A pretty simple urinary tract infection can make older folks completely crazy and that would have been some of what the lab would have been used for (analyzing the cup of urine...no patient attached).

I remember times when patients would dissapear for days, and when they showed back up, they couldn't remember anything of where they had been or what happened. Electric shocks and labotomies were common practice here......

It's called "practicing medicine".....

Oh, and when patients would show up with bruises, black and blue, the medical staff would always say " he or she fell down"....

Where could I find examples of the experimental methods that psychiatrics would use on pacients?
looking for psychiatic abuse in 1800-1900's
thanks!

patients were treated like a guinea pig instead of an actual person.
and the ones who had very severe and disturbing conditions were
kept in the tunnels of the mental facility so nobody could see them.

they also performed some kind of shock thepary(sorry cant
remember the name)and these treatments were so severe that
patients would often break bones.

they also performed lots and lots of lobomoties which included
ice picks and needles into the brain to silence violent patients.