Did you ever know anyone who spent time in a mental hospital in the 70s or 80s? If so, what did they think of the experience?
Did you ever know anyone who spent time in a mental hospital in the 70s or 80s? If so, what did they think of the experience?
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My father was in one during the 80s, at least twice. Later in his life he denied ever being one and said I was weak for taking a .5 mg Clonazepam.
My mother had a friend in Montreal who was hospitalized for depression. Her doctor took part in the MK ultra trials and he gave her LSD for months.
My cheating ex wife went in crazy and came out crazy
I had a great uncle who served in Korea and he was in and out of mental hospitals from the time he was discharged until he died. He said that it wasn’t that much different from being in the military.
My sister did after my parents pulled her out of a cult. It was a short stay but she describes it as a nice experience. She talks about all the attention she was given and enjoyed that.
I had a grandmother that did, but I never had occasion to discuss it with her. It wasn’t something that would’ve been considered polite to bring up in my family
A friend in high school was hospitalized after cutting herself. It was an unknown thing at the time. I didn’t understand what happened at all. When she got out, we didn’t ever talk about it. It was very confusing. Another friend went in and had a series of electro-shock treatments. He came out weirder than when he went in. He scared me, so our friendship was limited.
The last time I saw my brother alive, he was in one. said, “I’ve seen the head nut doctor, and he said I’m the head nut.”
My grandmother only went to the 6th grade but she had a good job during The Great Depression. She was a cook in a state mental hospital. They made 800 meals a day and ran kitchens 24/7. In 25 years there were parts of that institution that she was never allowed to be admitted to.
She was retired when they tore that hospital down in the late 60’s. Seems we found a cure for mental illness. ; p
No, but my brother worked in one. He had some wild stories,mostly about getting hit by the patients. It was a state mental institution in New York. They closed it down in the 90s.
I worked in an Asylum in the 70’s. Some patients were damaged by untreated syphilis. Some were a result of lobotomies. Many were institutionalized as kids because no one knew what to do with them. None of them were violent or aggressive. Then I worked in a Psych clinic as a Community Psych Nurse. I had 15 chronic patients and 15 acute patients. That was a great job at the time.
Yes. State hospitals were awful. The patients were heavily drugged.
I DID !! i did my psych rotation, for nursing school, at medfield state hospital, medfield mass, 1977….. sad place, but then, those people had a roof over their heads and meds, and meals 3X a day , instead of being on the streets with little to no oversight…………
My family really enjoyed the experience and would love to plan a reunion there in the near future…
80s. Middle-aged mother. The only thing she has ever said is that she expected there to be more people suffering from depression in her group therapy, and most of them were in treatment for gambling addiction.
I spent a month in one around ’92 after I attempted suicide. I was a teenager. It was great. I didn’t want to go home. The therapy and the drugs did absolutely nothing for me. In fact, they were a joke. I enjoyed being around other teens that were like me and we had fun playing games or watching movies. My life at home was not good. My depression got better for that month just because I wasn’t at home.
My sister had to break her out by climbing the fence
I spent 6 weeks in a juvenile psych ward in the 80s, and it was awesome. Up till then I spent my days being bullied, so being somewhere where I could relate to others was great. We did art and music therapy and only had to do 2 hours of school a day. There was a farm on the grounds and we got to go feed animals and pet sheep. They tried to make me leave at 4 weeks, but I pretended I was suicidal to get another 2 weeks out of them.
Yes. A fellow in the neighborhood nicknamed ‘Loopy Louie’ and our version of Corporal Max Klinger voluntarily committed himself to the psychiatric unit of the local hospital and was also involuntarily committed to County by the court in efforts to avoid the draft and get a job.
Louis knew names and purposes of medications like a pharmacist and made his own dresses when home between stays or on furlough.
He told me that he volunteered in the County hospital’s cafeteria and put extra food on the trays of the tough guys to avoid getting beat up. He called it the Funny Farm.
Louis and my grandmother got along great. He would come over and watch ‘As The World Turns’ with her. Every time he came over she’d say, “Damn it Louis. Go home and take that dress off, Halloween’s been over for months!!”
Yes, a couple people. They didn’t like it one bit and would do anything to not go back ever.
My sister did, in the 80’s, after my parents caught her passed out, huffing Scotchgard in her room at 14. It was hell for the whole family. She hated it.
No, but I’ve known a couple I recognized should have been in one.
Ken Kesey did as an assistant and was inspired to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
I worked in a mental hospital from 85-94. It didn’t seem so bad. Id say the worst unit was for eating disorders. Mostly anorexic teenage girls.
Back in the early 70’s an Aunt on my dad’s side was subjected to shock therapy a couple of times. She never talked about it and I was told to never bring it up.
Someone I knew said their stay was like 3 weeks at a resort and that the food was excellent and the nurses nice.
I worked in a mental institution, called a “State Hospital”. As an LPN in the late 70’s.
My best friend (still to this day) was put in an adolescent home in the 80s. Her mom was mad at her dad for leaving them so she wanted to run up an expensive hospital bill that he had to pay. She said it was awsome. She met some hot guy and the food was great. My mom had our girl scout troop send her a card. Her dad took her mom back to court and she had to pay half after all!
My aunt Kathy did in the 70s. She was schizophrenic and got a lot of shock treatment. She only ever said it was horrible. I didn’t need to know more.
I did. It was not fun, and I was in a “luxury” hospital. After my mother died, and I was homeless, the school found out and that’s how they dealt with it because it was an image problem. They said I was suicidal, but yes, i was depressed, my mother had just died. But the school had a lot of suicides in the last few years, and were kind using it as a “catchall” to deal with awkward kids (usually because you were pregnant, or dyed your hair green or something). This was 13 years before Columbine.
I was kidnapped from school by cops, and put in a police car. I was dropped off at a staging point, drugged (“we’re just taking some blood to test for drugs” aaaaand, I was out), and woke up during my “trial.” My dad (who had made me homeless) did not show. I was given temporary emancipation (I was still a teen), and allowed to choose. They gave me a choice: either say I was suicidal and they would “put me under observation” for a few days at a hospital of my choice, or refuse the claim, and be put in the worst one in the system for 2 months. From my punk friends, I knew what to do: pick the most expensive one on the list. If your parents couldn’t afford it, they’d let you go quickly.
I was there a month and a half. And yes, they let me go because of failure to pay.
It was less a mental hospital and more of a “rich kid kennel.” I was with other teens who were put there for being pregnant, dyed their hair a non-standard color, smoking, being overweight, drug use, homosexuality, and other relatively minor discipline problems. We did have a FEW kids who probably needed to be there, but most were just autistic kids or the product of really shitty rich parents. It wasn’t like something out of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” but more like a minimum security prison.
We weren’t allowed to have belts, laces, socks, or long sleeves. You could wear other street clothes, but if you committed infractions, they forced you to wear paper hospital gowns. No “sharps” either (anything with edges, or could be made into one like wood, metal, plastic, or glass). I shared my room with two other kids, and one said the former occupant tried to claw his way out through the cement blocks. You could see the scratches and blood smears soaked into the concrete. The rooms were bugged, and sometimes your conversations were replayed to you. To keep us all calm, they took our blood several times a week, and kept us from sleeping more than a few hours at a time. They claimed the blood draws was to test for drugs, and that the lack of sleep was to make sure we hadn’t escaped and replaced our body with pillows. Uh huh.
Food was actually kind of good, and you had a wristband that identified your diet. The fat kids got barely anything. I gave some of my food to one girl, who smuggled cigarettes for people, because she had weekend passes with her parents. She got weirded out I wanted nothing in return. I lost about 30 lbs, in addition to the other 20 lbs I lost after I became homeless (I went from 186 to 135 before I stabilized). We had unlimited orange juice and tapioca served in small foil-topped cups. No spoons, though, you just used your fingers or squeezed the cup into your mouth.
You were allowed 2 phone calls a week. Bathroom breaks were only allowed with permission, and you had to piss or shit in a stall with a nurse watching.
They had a “quiet room” for those who got out of hand. In the 6 weeks I was there, one one guy was admitted, and he asked to be in there because he went through manic episodes. Later he told me “I just want to be alone sometimes, and they don’t even let you take a shit without having someone standing there.”
We had “class” during the day. Class was a county requirement, and a huge joke. Like first grade stuff for high schoolers. The “teachers” were all subs, and almost never the same person day to day. Most just let you hang out and read books. The afternoons were “community discussion” with a therapist moderating. The community meetings had “elected” patients, like the “class president,” but those titles were doled out by the hospital, and could be revoked for bad behavior.
I knew someone who did in the 90’s. They labeled her as bipolar and/or schizophrenic and they did rounds of electroshock therapy. When family found out, they advocated for her and took her out and cared for her. It was really sad. She was in a controlling and abusive relationship. She needed someone to help her build her self esteem and get her out of a bad relationship, not pump her full and drugs and “shock her memories away”. It was barbaric. I’ll never forgive or forget what those doctors did.
Parents used to send off their teen daughters back then. I knew of one classmate that happened to. She was fine The parents were not.
I had a high school friend who was vibrant, normal, a musician, good student, well liked. We went to different colleges and during my junior year my mom told me that she was diagnosed with mental illness and sent to McLean Hospital.
I went to visit her during my spring break and she looked like a zombie, a totally different person. She did know me right away and kept saying “you talk, I don’t really want to”. Then while I was talking and talking she suddenly broke in and said “I tried to kill myself the other day you know?”. I didn’t know what to say and just said “oh no, I didn’t know”. Then she kept talking ” Can you believe that? I don’t know why I did that. Thank God someone stopped me.” Then she giggled a bit and asked me some questions about home. I would be answering questions and out of nowhere she would just interrupt saying “Can you believe that though? I can’t believe I did that”.
I never saw her room, once in a while a nurse would come by and say hello or “you’ve got a visitor!” or something, when they left she would say “who’s that? Do you know them because I don’t”. There was a scream from somewhere and it startled me but I remember she didn’t move, just kept on with what she was saying. The place, or at least the section where we sat and talked, did not feel like a hospital it was more like a an old school sort of vibe with long hallways if I remember correctly.
It was so long ago that I don’t remember how the visit ended, I think she just told me that she had to go back to her room or something. She had been diagnosed with manic depressive disorder with some schizophrenia I believe. They eventually got her on some decent meds and she could function pretty well, went back to our hometown and worked menial jobs such as restaurant dishwasher or ice cream dipper. I would visit her whenever I was home for the holidays or what not. Some years she would be much better or more “with it” than other years and she would constantly be on some new medication because she was paranoid that this doctor or that doctor had been trying to kill her and she refused what they were giving her. She had kind of a rollercoaster life but never ended up back in an institution. She died of cancer at the age of 60.