Institutionization of Autistics in the past

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Bad bad bad bad wrong bad bad wrong bad.

Edit: s**t... just read the link to the thing about eugenics in America...

I have an aunt who's actually a schizophrenic and periodically has been in the hospital for breakdowns and can get rather sick. My grandmother, however, does everything in her power so that my aunt never ends up in an institution and gives her the stability and structure she needs to cope with her illness. It had been 11 years since her last hospitalization when she had to go there again two years ago. One doctor said it was extremely rare for a schizophrenic to go that long without being hospitalized and credited my grandmother's care.

Just read about Rosemary Kennedy.

Hi Folks,

I worked in or visited a number of institutions in the US and Australia in the 1980s and early 1990s. In Australia, aside from those clients with clear intellectual disabilities, including those presenting with Down's Syndrome, ASD, and other developmental difference, it was common practice for magistrates to order that older adolescents and young adults [who probably fell into the slow-learner category] and got into petty crime be "Sectioned" under the Mental Health Act and sent to live in locked units. [This was probably better than going to gaol, but still not appropriate.] It had also been the practice in the early to mid-twentieth century to institutionalise young "wayward" women who were considered morally at risk.

At one 750 bed institution in Melbourne [Victoria] there was a unit housing elderly women, all mentally and socially competent and educated to a degree, who fell under this category. They were kept on in the institution long after they were admitted to care for the very young children, even babies, who were admitted soon after birth when diagnosed as developmentally different, or, to use an old term "defective". I knew a senior nurse who, when new to the profession, worked in a unit housing 34 four developmentally delayed infants. Facilities were so poor that some infants were put in large cardboard boxes instead of cots and the three staff on duty could barely keep up with basic care needs let alone offer stimulation and "mothering" of any kind. Thus environmental deprivation took a severe toll.

By the way, when I was a graduate student in 1978 the term "childhood schizophrenia" was an alternative label in the literature for autism. In the early 1990s one of the last institutions in Victoria was closed and the inmates sent to live in the community. I was asked to help with the management of behaviour of one man, about 60 years of age. Some of the behaviour he learned in the institution did not transfer well to a community setting. He was first institutionalised at age 15 for a brief period, but, after being kicked out of school - he was giving a beating by his teacher to teach him his manners - he was home educated by his mother who also taught him to play piano. In 1943 [aged about 19] he was finally admitted to a mental institution as an "undifferentiated schizophrenic". The files contained a complete and detailed developmental record from birth and highlight many sensory issues: auditory defensiveness, tactile issues, etc. as well as other "odd" patterns of behaviour and strange tantrum-like episodes. Using the DSM criteria we had no trouble diagnosing this pedantically spoken, well-mannered [in an old fashioned way] literate man as ASD [probably AS], yet he had ended up, at one point, in a ward [J-ward] for the criminally insane in his 50+ years "inside".

There but for the grace of God go I...

Jim Crawford.

With all the republicans running I'm terrified the institutionalizations of people with special needs will come back I know it's probably irrational