When was this "asylum" opened, and what
did it look like? Did it follow Kirkbride's design? Paste images as
appropriate - interior and exterior.
Augusta Mental Health Institute opened in
October 1840. It did follow Kirkbride’s design. It has multiple wings and
corridors. The AMHI campus is much like a prison setting with many buildings.
The campus was built on 800 acres across the river from the Capitol Building,
What was this institution's original intent?
The original intent of the hospital was to
house Maine’s mentally ill.
Who were the patients there? Do narratives of their experiences exist?
The patients treated there
suffered from all sorts of illnesses. People with epilepsy, Alzheimer’s and
people who had ideas that didn’t follow along with the social norm of the time.
At times there were 1600 patients in a
facility that was built for 1200.
There are narratives of the
patients who were there. They are interesting to read and seem to vary in
reports of treatment. Here is a link to those
narratives: https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/riverview/about-us
What was the patients' experience like in that
institution, and did that change over the course of the institution's history? Did
the institution, its services, and patients change over time?
The narratives discuss positives and negative
aspects of the institution, but I can’t determine if there is a specific time
period that was worse than others. The one thing that stood out is the
difference in the treatment of patients as the director or superintendent
changed. A few narratives talk about electric shock therapy and how it was
torture.
In the reports that I found on the Maine.gov
website, some patients remember kind and caring staff while others remember
being ignored and witnessing abuse by staff.
AMHI was one of the last institutions to
abandon the use of restraints. The use of medications changed frequently over
the years too. Patient activities was introduced in the 1870’s. They started
using art and nature because it soothed the patient. However, in the 1970’s,
one patient reports that she never received any kind of treatment. She slept
and was over medicated. There weren’t any groups available.
How many people lived, worked, and died there? Were bad conditions ever exposed to the public? How?
It seems that the institution was overpopulated until the era of de-institutionalization in 1974.The population dropped from 1500-350. The majority of overcrowding was in the late 1940’s. At one point they were capacity by 44%. This is a time period that one of the patients reports that the hospital was helpful and met his needs.
The conditions of AMHI were exposed and in
1990 a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of the patients who suffered
from the overcrowding and poor treatment that lead to 10 patients dying. The
class members are entitled to a responsive, comprehensive treatment team. If a
person is in a treatment program, you can not discharge them without permission
from the state.
One of the previous patients of the hospital
also brought light to the poor treatment. She remembers that patients would
disappear at night and no one ever knew what happened to them. In a quest to
memorialize those patients who died while at the hospital, they came across
records of over 11,000 patients. Many of the deaths weren’t recorded and no one
knows where the person was buried or why they died.
Would you have wanted "treatment" in this institution?
No, absolutely not. If I were
looking to go on a break from life and wasn’t seriously mentally ill, I’d go.
If I were truly sick and needed care, I would not go. I have visited a client
at Riverview and it is more like a prison than a therapeutic environment.
It appears the consistent factor for most of these institutions is how the number of patients increased beyond what the initial population was to be served. This created a decrease in quality of care and services being provided.
ReplyDeleteFor families who had patients at Augusta it must of been hard, especially when patients would disappear or have died.
Having a spectrum of treatment methods varying sounds confusing for staff and the patients.
Is Riverview the name of a current treatment facility?
When I worked as a DSP in southern Maine, I had the experience of meeting a couple of clients who were actually housed there in that facility. The horrible stories they would tell about being kept it hallways from so many people and how loud it was all the time. How the staff would ignore them and how it took them a long time before they trusted staff at group homes to not treat them the same way. When I talked to management about their experiences, they told me that back in the early 90's, each of them were granted extra money to 'make up for their traumatic experience'. What's ironic is, even though they had more spending money than your average, they were so traumatized from the isolation that they used to experience, that they would never want to do anything/ go anywhere to spend it. This is a good example of how money cannot always buyback happiness!
ReplyDeleteAs I read through most of the posts I see a common theme of overcrowding and deplorable conditions. unfortunately it seems like it was a norm back then when treating the mentally ill and I feel that it is one of the main causes of de-institutionalization in that they no longer could treat the amount of patients with the resources that they were given.
ReplyDeleteAs I read through most of the posts I see a common theme of overcrowding and deplorable conditions. unfortunately it seems like it was a norm back then when treating the mentally ill and I feel that it is one of the main causes of de-institutionalization in that they no longer could treat the amount of patients with the resources that they were given.
ReplyDelete