| |
|
To
Change the Future, Remember
the Past
DHS photo exhibit of state
hospital history leaves key parts
of the story untold
by Luther Granquist and Anita Schermer
On October 15, 2007,
the Minnesota Department of Human Services celebrated the history
of state hospitals and nursing homes by presenting an exhibit of
photographs, videos and documents with the theme “Honor the
Past, Embrace the Present, Create the Future.” While
many of the historical artifacts on display were interesting, what was not
shown to the public may hold greater significance when trying to
understand this long and frequently shameful chapter of Minnesota
history.
Photographs of the institutions stood out because of the sheer magnitude
of the buildings. Aerial images captured the vast size of these buildings,
with Fergus Falls State Hospital forming an arc about one-third of
a mile long and Moose Lake State Hospital stretching out almost as
big. However, few pictures of the men and women who actually lived
in these imposing structures were on display.
The documents on display
included Governor Luther Youngdahl’s
statement at a burning of restraints which took place at Anoka State
Hospital on October 31, 1949. He said: “As little as eighteen
months ago all but one of our mental hospitals used mechanical restraints.
Today most are restraint free. The bonfire which I am lighting tonight
consists of 359 strait-jackets, 196 cuffs, 91 straps, and 25 canvas
mittens.” Newspaper clippings of that era told about how Moose
Lake State Hospital received national recognition for ending the
use of restraints.
In addition, the Department
exhibited a 1967 article about the American Psychiatric Association
awarding the Medical Services Division of the Minnesota Department
of Public Welfare for the Division’s attack
on dehumanization. Dr. David Vail, the Medical Director of the Department,
and Miriam Karlins, head of volunteer services at DPW for many years,
spearheaded this effort. During his tenure as medical director Vail
was a staunch advocate for patient’s rights. The Department
appropriately honored these actions and the men and women who worked
in the institutions. But we should also remember the men and women,
boys and girls and even toddlers who grew up and lived in these institutions.
A complete view of the
past would have included heart-rending scenes of children from
Faribault State Hospital in the mid-1960s. To Bridge the Gap, a
film by Jerry Walsh of the Association for Retarded Children, shows
the “saddest scene” he had ever observed in a state
institution, a little girl crouched in the corner of a large dayroom. “For
the lack of human warmth, she’s huddled up against the cold
brick wall, and this is the only comfort she gets so often day in
and day out.”
Both To Bridge the Gap
and Changes, a film made five years later by Professor Travis Thompson
from the University of Minnesota, show what life was like in the
Dakota Building at Faribault. Walsh called it “herd
care.” Thompson, who was asked by the Faribault administration
to work with the men in Dakota Building, recounted the first time
he entered that building: “I encountered an odor that was
familiar from my childhood. It was a mixture of the smell of urine,
feces and antiseptic. It was similar to the smell in my grandfather’s
cattle barn north of Milaca, Minnesota…. Men were milling
aimlessly around the room, none wore shoes, many had no shirts
and some were naked. The nurse told me the 67 men all had severe
or profound mental retardation and were non-verbal. Some sat motionless
in the lawn chairs, others rocked, flapped their hands, others
screamed or shouted but their vocalizations contained no words,
only loud uninterpretable sounds. I was struck by how many had
what appeared to be cuts, scars, abrasions and scrapes or wounds
in various degrees of healing.” These films and Thompson’s
comments are on the Minnesota DD Council Web site at www.mncdd.org/parallels2/video-index.html.
Comparable scenes from Cottage 7 at Cambridge State Hospital will
be on the Web site later this year. These scenes, an important
and shameful part of this history, ought to have been part of the
exhibit, together with an account of Thompson’s success teaching
the men in Dakota Building and the successful work done by Project
Teach in Cottage 7.
Dakota Building and
Cottage 7 were truly back wards of the worst sort. But cleaner
and less crowded buildings were nonetheless still barren and sterile
places, with a resident’s life often
spent sitting for hours on a staircase or lying on a bare terrazzo
floor. This reality, seen in pictures from Cambridge from March 1973,
should have been displayed as well.
The exhibit could have
included Dr. Vail’s February 1965 Legislative
Bulletin in which he acknowledged that “the mental retardation
institutions are operating at a stark survival level that is a wrench
to the heart.” Vail’s comments may have been prompted by
an earlier analysis of levels of patient care done by Dr. H.P. Robb
from Brainerd State Hospital. “Survival care” provided
the physical care and supervision necessary to preserve life, but did
not “reasonably assure residents will not suffer serious injury
or physical neglect.” Better than “survival care” was “custodial
care,” which could attempt to maintain a resident as he is and
to prevent serious injury or physical neglect, but “fosters ‘institutionalization’ and
dependency so that the resident cannot learn and grow as he should.” Worse
than “survival care” was “presurvival care,” when
only another patient was in charge of a ward. In March 1965 Robb
wrote that 704 of the residents at Brainerd, almost 60% of them,
received only a survival level of care.
The state hospitals
of that era could not operate without patient labor. In 1968, Dr.
Roger Johnson from Faribault wrote that ten years earlier, higher
level patients were doing 80% to 90% of the labor in state institutions.
Most of these persons had been discharged. “We
need,” he wrote, “many more employees to take care of the
2,000 residents we have today than we needed to take care of the 3,200
we had eight years ago.” In 1968, Johnson said that Faribault
residents were paid a maximum of $2.00 a month for work that benefited
the institution. Therefore, the full picture of the history of our
institutions would have to include reliance upon and exploitation
of state hospital residents.
A full account of the
history of our institutions would have shown the restraint chair,
pictured on p. 1, in use at Brainerd State Hospital in 1980. Despite
the awards given Moose Lake State Hospital in 1949 for being restraint
free, staff at that hospital placed residents with mental retardation
in comparable restraint chairs from the 1970s until the institution
was closed in the 1990s. Papoose boards, cuffs on beds, and restraint
chairs were used on residents with mental retardation in other
institutions as well. A thoughtful presentation of the state hospital
history might have considered how Vail’s attack on dehumanization
squared with this widespread use of restraint.
The Department did not display photographs of rows of numbered graves
in state hospital cemeteries, or the overgrown knoll north of the Fergus
Falls State Hospital without any markers at all. Nor did they include
the ongoing efforts of Remembering with Dignity to correct this dehumanizing
practice. A complete and honest history of the institutions would recognize
how the people who lived in them were numbered even after death.
The institutions for
persons with mental retardation have closed. Other state institutions
have closed or changed. While it is appropriate to respect and
to honor the efforts made by people who administered and worked
in those institutions, we should not “Honor the Past.” Rather,
we should “Remember the Past” to create a better future
for the persons the state serves. ![]()
|
Search
for Access Press
Articles
This restraint chair
was still in use at Brainerd State Hospital in 1980.
Not part of the exhibit were photos such as these depicting
a sadly common part of many residents’ lives: spending hours
in barren surroundings, sitting on a staircase or lying on a bare
terrazzo floor
|
