Were autistics placed in sanitariums or asylums in the past?

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[...No , it's alright ~ And it was the whole line/the concept which I was referring to , anyway .






ote="kraftiekortie"]I knew somebody who was resident at Willowbrook. He's now working as a maintenance supervisor at the place where I work. He is "learning-disabled" rather than intellectually disabled.

If I evoked a bad memory, ASS-P, I apologize.[/quote]

I don't know, but I would think it would depend partly on their social status and partly on where they fell on the spectrum. It would have been fine to be a quirky introverted lighthouse keeper, or a quirky introverted fur-trader, or a quirky introverted religious hermit, or a quirky introverted pony express rider, or a quirky introverted artist, or a quirky introverted hack driver, or a quirky introverted radio star, or even a quirky introverted farmer. That list could go on for a while. I think that until maybe the mid-20th century or so, a lot of people could have lived out their high functioning autistic lives and at times even blended in.

My opinion, as children a gifted aspie would have had a good had a good chance of staying out of them, would have been labeled a genius. Someone with severe autism, low IQ, speech delay or other major developmental delay that could have been noticed early would have been in trouble.

People Temple Grandin were lucky that her parents cared and wouldn't give up, unfortunately they were the minority.

I probably would have been put in one back in the old days if I existed then and I wouldn't be functioning as I am now. I was language delayed and didn't understand lot of things other kids would have understood. Unless I had parents who refused to send me away and did their own therapy instead.

...And maybe , then , get sent to a WORSE state loony bin/whatever !


quote="BetwixtBetween"]

It used to happen A LOT.

It happened to my grandfather-- not as a kid for autistic traits, but as an adult for the OCD I'm pretty sure he developed worrying about the autistic traits. This was in the 60s. Things weren't good, but they were better than they used to be, and better for an adult with a "nervous breakdown" than they would have been for a 'tard kid.

My grandmother still to this day lives in terror of "the institution." When I was a little toe-walking, hand-flapping, obsessively spinning girl, she used to chase me around going, "Don't do that! That's what ret*d kids do! Do you want people to think you're ret*d and lock you up in an institution?"

I used to think she was being manipulative.

Now I realize that she was born in 1924, and she remembers well the American eugenics movement, and all the terrible things that happened to people in institutions, and she was really legitimately terrified for me.

We will be cleaning up the scars of how we have approached developmental delays, intellectual delays, and mental illness for a LONG LONG f*****g TIME.

It was proposed that I be institutionalized in the early 1960's.

...I kind of hate all psychatitrists & psychologists (Sp?? I am being hurried off the computer now.........) , and lesser workers there , due to things that happened to me...(Yes . I acknowledge there can be exceptions to " all psychs bad " , yes , this org was set up by one...) and , seriously , decades after what started this , i fantasize bout delivering a kick in the balls/face/knock on the knees to - ANY , really ! They're my " class enemy " , ha , ha ! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! a psych worker ~ Just that , no more physicaslly ~
However , I've fantasized about forcing drugs that I was forced to take ~ Thorazine , Mellaril ~ upon them , FORCING them , a fair amount ~ Even handcuffing them after forcing it on them (Leaving a key within you-can-get-it-eventually distance ~ See , I'm nice 0 ~ " Payback's a b*tch . "

Yes they were.

People considered “mental cripples” which was a catch all term for a lot of mental illnesses at the time were recommended for institutionalization. Those institutions were brutul with patients chained and sedated if they acted up.

Autistics were subject to all sorts of experiments including drugs.

In the olden days, mental hospitals were the repository of quite a number of things we would not consider mental illness today. You could be warehoused for epilepsy, low intelligence, alcoholism, physical deformities and disabilities, blindness or deafness, venereal diseases (STDs), etc.

In my genealogy research I saw one several-times-great uncle was institutionalized at the state "work farm" for boys, for the reason of "stubbornness." He was later found fit to serve as cannon-fodder in the Civil War. He survived the war, but never married and died in a soldier's home. I have no idea if he was autistic - all I know is that he was stubborn. Bless his heart.

Triplett just passed away at age 89 at his home after fighting cancer.