What's it like in a group home/institution?
08 Aug 2008, 8:41 am
anbuend, you wrote about The Retreat:
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It's too close to my worst institution nightmares - where control is subtly hidden, and shifted, rather than eliminated. [...] All reports I hear of it make it a point of extreme pride among Quakers, and it find that alarming as well
If people are proud about a place then they are more likely to care about it, and do their best to ensure that it reaches and maintains high standards. And
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I have also read reports of the way people are treated there, and it sounds again like transferring the locks and shackles from the doors and beds to inside of people's minds.
I don't know if that is the intention of the psychiatric staff there.
You also wrote
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It has pretty much none of the qualities I've seen in places that actually seem to work the best.
Where are those places?
Your message raises a whole lot of questions about different approaches to mental illness.
A very interesting article is Progress and Power: Exploring the Disciplinary Connections between Moral Treatment and Psychiatric Rehabilitation, by Erica Lilleleht (Assistant Professor of Psychology at Seattle University), published in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 9.2 (2002) 167-182. See http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophy ... leht01.pdf .
Moral treatment of the insane was regarded as enlightened and progressive in the 19th century. Thomas Story Kirkbride (1809-1883), sometime medical superintendent of The Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, was a leading advocate for it in the United States.
The approach of psychiatric rehabilitation was developed from the 1960s onwards and is represented by the work of William Anthony and his colleagues at Boston's University's Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation. In this approach
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the mad are not understood in terms of their symptoms, internal conflicts, or even crisis behaviors. Instead these individuals are defined in terms of normative skill areas connected to identifiable goals, with these definitions taking the form of standardized skill descriptions, and quantified assessments of ability and/or environment support.
Erica Lilleleht criticises this approach:
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although psychiatric rehabilitation's overt intent is humanitarian (seeking to liberate the mad from resource dependency and segregated living) its self-perpetuating technologies may be practised at the expense of these more explicit goals.
Therapeutic communities claim to offer a radically different approach. Probably the most famous community in Britain was Kingsley Hall in London in the late 1960s: http://www.philadelphia-association.co. ... -Hall.html . It was part of the contemporary counter culture and was strongly influenced by the ideas of anti-psychiatry/radical psychiatry. In the words of a brochure of the time it was
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a melting pot, a crucible in which many assumptions about normal-abnormal, conformist-deviant, sane-crazy experience and behaviour were dissolved. No person gave another tranquilisers or sedatives. Behaviour was feasible which would have been intolerable elsewhere. It was a place where people could be together and let each other be.
Loren Mosher was inspired by his brief stay at Kingsley Hall to set up Soteria House in the United States. Although it was later forced to close.
The most important critique of therapeutic communities is how they use patients as the primary agents of exerting peer control. Judi Chamberlain writes in On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System. London:Mind (1988):
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It is very difficult to maintain one's integrity under the therapeutic community system. Patients are required - in plain English - to rat on one another. Resisting the system can result in punishment. Patients are required to enforce the standards and expectations of the staff.
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A very good account and analysis of therapeutic communities is in Asylum to Action: Paddington Day Hospital, Therapeutic Communities and Beyond. Helen Spandler. Jessica Kingsley Publishers (2006): http://www.jkp.com/catalogue/book.php/i ... 1843103486 .
There is no perfect mental health institution, but if I ever have to be a patient in one I would like to be in The Retreat.
08 Aug 2008, 10:15 am
Woodpeace wrote:
If people are proud about a place then they are more likely to care about it, and do their best to ensure that it reaches and maintains high standards.
I haven't seen that. What I have seen is people being proud of a place (at least, in the way I've heard that one talked about) makes them more likely to deceive themselves into believing it's good when it isn't, and less likely to want to hear negative things about it.
There's a way that they talk of it that just isn't right, I can't put my finger on it.
I do expect to hear something negative about a place if it's any good. I've never heard a single substantially negative word about that place.
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And
I don't know if that is the intention of the psychiatric staff there.
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I have also read reports of the way people are treated there, and it sounds again like transferring the locks and shackles from the doors and beds to inside of people's minds.
I don't know if that is the intention of the psychiatric staff there.
Intention doesn't matter much, you have to not only not intend something, or even intend not to do it, you have to specifically intend not to do it and be aware precisely how not to do it, and be aware precisely what things would accomplish that without necessarily intending it, and avoid them.
Aside from that, they got some of their ideas from Pinel, who most assuredly did have that in mind. They would have had to have had a lot of knowledge that I don't see how they'd have had, if they wanted to improve on that while still taking basic approaches from him.
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Your message raises a whole lot of questions about different approaches to mental illness.
Actually, what I've said has nothing to do with mental illness, it has to do with captivity in general.
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The most important critique of therapeutic communities is how they use patients as the primary agents of exerting peer control. Judi Chamberlain writes in On Our Own: Patient Controlled Alternatives to the Mental Health System. London:Mind (1988):
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It is very difficult to maintain one's integrity under the therapeutic community system. Patients are required - in plain English - to rat on one another. Resisting the system can result in punishment. Patients are required to enforce the standards and expectations of the staff.
. Exactly, and she has better ideas than almost anyone on the topic.
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There is no perfect mental health institution, but if I ever have to be a patient in one I would like to be in The Retreat.
I wouldn't, I'd rather be in one where the bad treatment was more obvious -- and where imperfection was obvious in how people talked about it.
_________________
"In my world it's a place of patterns and feel. In my world it's a haven for what is real. It's my world, nobody can steal it, but people like me, we live in the shadows." -Donna Williams
Last edited by anbuend on 08 Aug 2008, 10:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
08 Aug 2008, 10:44 am
the places were the worst thing ever
i was put in several that were for people that were drug dealers and other violent people and i would never want anyone to go into those places ever again
these doctors in my past was under the idea that i was a psychotic delinnquent because of my iq not being ret*d and was not willing to look at other things even though i never fit any diagnosis for anything except what would be aspergers but except for my iq i had all the other signs of autism
the places were so bad that the others would always take advantage of me and make me do things with them that i did not want to do and even the people working there would always grab you and force you to do things that you did not want to do
the biggest thing the people working there was on is that everyone had to play football and if you do not like the things that they do then too bad you had to like it anyway
a lot of my experiences from those places would need a mature forum because they are not a thing that can be posted here but they happened just the same
StrawberryJam
Pileated woodpecker
Joined: 31 Jul 2008
Age: 33
Gender: Female
Posts: 196
Location: Mt Sterling
08 Aug 2008, 11:05 am
i was gonna post this in my original post describing my stay at a mental institution, and jamieg's talk of football reminded me of it
one day, we were allowed to go to the gym. we were allowed to play basketball and do rock climbing. the gym itself was seperate from the rest of the building, and looked like it was built in the 50s or something, judging by the archetect style, but maybe 60s. and so yeah, we played with stuff. i hated basketball so i tried rock climbing and it was fun. but then we had to leave and this one kid didnt want to :/ he hadnt even started throwing a fit when one of the clerk people started trying to wrestle him to the ground, but ended up picking him up, rather clumsily to, and then he dropped the kid on his head and cracked his skull o_o; there was blood everywhere, and the guy rushed the kid to the bathroom and we were kinda pushed out the door. im honestly not sure what in a bathroom can help a cracked skull but ok... luckily the mental place was adjoining a hospital.
_________________
Mother always says, "Honorrr before gain."
Who's on a beef again?
08 Aug 2008, 1:58 pm
Postperson wrote:
Fnord wrote:
First, you cry.
If you're pretty, or very lucky, then someone will take pity on you only long enough to tell you to stop. If you don't, then forever afterwards you'll be known as the fool that cries, and the others will want to find out if it's true. Once they've determined what makes you cry, they will use it to make you cry whenever they feel like it, just because they can. Then you'll hate them for the power they have over you, and you'll vow to never make them happy again.
So you stop crying.
Now you're that wierd kid who cried to get sympathy and stopped when you didn't get any. They laugh. They sneer. But mostly, they leave you alone. After a while, you are no longer real to them - just wierd. You no longer have your old name, the one your parents (or some anonymous clerk is some anonymous office) gave you. Your new name, and your entire identity, is now Wierd. No matter how well you do, no matter how great your accomplishments, you are still Wierd.
The Others watch how you eat, how you walk, how you breath, how you stand and sit and sleep. They listen to what you say. They sniff the air around you. And everything you do, everything you say, everything you own, everthing you are interested in, and everything around and about you becomes weird because you are Wierd.
Then you surprise them.
One day, an Important Person praises you and sets you apart because you are Special. You have a unique talent or a skill that the Important Person greatly admires, and the Important Person rewards you in some way that no one else has been rewarded. You think that the Others will accept you now because you are Special, not Wierd. Instead, they now know you as Especially Wierd, because only another Wierd person would think of you as Special, and Important People are the wierdest of all. But that doesn't matter to you any more, because you know that you are Special - the Important Person said so.
So you wait.
And you strive.
And you succeed.
And the Others whom you once thought were so intimidating are now Small and Weak. They look at you and wonder why being Especially Wierd gives you the right to succeed where they have failed. And your success makes them ask you for favors. It does not surprise you. However, it does amaze you that they expect the favors they ask for. They are trying to draw on an empty account - one that they never opened or invested in. So you have no favors to grant them. Now you are Especially Wierd and Stuck Up.
Finally, you can leave. You take one last look around. The rooms are empty. The halls are silent. No one is there to see you off. Faceless, nameless clerks have whisked away their copies of the release papers. You wait for the bus with your meager belongings stuffed into two suitcases and a backpack. Your new life awaits, but will it be any different?
The bus comes, and it goes, and you're gone.
If you're pretty, or very lucky, then someone will take pity on you only long enough to tell you to stop. If you don't, then forever afterwards you'll be known as the fool that cries, and the others will want to find out if it's true. Once they've determined what makes you cry, they will use it to make you cry whenever they feel like it, just because they can. Then you'll hate them for the power they have over you, and you'll vow to never make them happy again.
So you stop crying.
Now you're that wierd kid who cried to get sympathy and stopped when you didn't get any. They laugh. They sneer. But mostly, they leave you alone. After a while, you are no longer real to them - just wierd. You no longer have your old name, the one your parents (or some anonymous clerk is some anonymous office) gave you. Your new name, and your entire identity, is now Wierd. No matter how well you do, no matter how great your accomplishments, you are still Wierd.
The Others watch how you eat, how you walk, how you breath, how you stand and sit and sleep. They listen to what you say. They sniff the air around you. And everything you do, everything you say, everything you own, everthing you are interested in, and everything around and about you becomes weird because you are Wierd.
Then you surprise them.
One day, an Important Person praises you and sets you apart because you are Special. You have a unique talent or a skill that the Important Person greatly admires, and the Important Person rewards you in some way that no one else has been rewarded. You think that the Others will accept you now because you are Special, not Wierd. Instead, they now know you as Especially Wierd, because only another Wierd person would think of you as Special, and Important People are the wierdest of all. But that doesn't matter to you any more, because you know that you are Special - the Important Person said so.
So you wait.
And you strive.
And you succeed.
And the Others whom you once thought were so intimidating are now Small and Weak. They look at you and wonder why being Especially Wierd gives you the right to succeed where they have failed. And your success makes them ask you for favors. It does not surprise you. However, it does amaze you that they expect the favors they ask for. They are trying to draw on an empty account - one that they never opened or invested in. So you have no favors to grant them. Now you are Especially Wierd and Stuck Up.
Finally, you can leave. You take one last look around. The rooms are empty. The halls are silent. No one is there to see you off. Faceless, nameless clerks have whisked away their copies of the release papers. You wait for the bus with your meager belongings stuffed into two suitcases and a backpack. Your new life awaits, but will it be any different?
The bus comes, and it goes, and you're gone.
This reads to me like an account of family life, not institutional life.
It reads to me like my educational experience. I cried the first day of kindergarten. So it began.
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