a long time ago, people with severe mental illness were almost exclusively locked up in state hospitals. thankfully times have changed & most people are able to live freely & successfully in communities with social & mental health supports. i am a psychiatric nurse & understand that people with mental illness are just like you & me. they have hopes & dreams. they feel happy, sad, angry & hurt. most are not any more violent than a person without mental illness. the other day i was attending a training for work on the grounds where one of these state hospitals existed. during lunch, i took a walk around the grounds & came upon this graveyard. i was saddened by the thought that so many people lived without the right to freedom & died lonely. these graves represent the lost, unclaimed souls.
tracy is a talented photographer who runs a weekly collage of shadow shots on her blog every sunday. she takes cool pictures too!
that's sad ... these must have been from the time when people treated mental illness patients like they have some infectious disease or something .. so they were locked away and forgotten. human beings can be cruel sometimes. hopefully the people now are more educated to know that people with mental illness could have a life too...and dignity.
ReplyDeleteThat is sad. On the other side, my mother, a clinical social worker, complained that when they closed the institutions they failed to provide the needed services in the community. Many of the menatlly ill wound up homeless on the street. That was also sad.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem is not so much where we care for the mentaly and cognitively disabled but that often we do not care for them at all.
In row upon row
ReplyDeletethe lonely lie side by side—
something in them died.
My Shadow Shot
Well, someone has created a mini-Arlington landscape, so they have not gone un-noticed. Someday, someone will want to know what happened to an aunt or an uncle...
ReplyDeleteMy father was caught up in this archaic mental health as a young adult but managed to survive after electro-shock treatments and return home to his wife and family ... then I was born ;-)
ReplyDeleteHugs and blessings,
My Shadow Shot Sunday
Incredible - thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteSad but reminds us something about human being...
ReplyDeleteThank you visiting my blog!
Have a nice week!