Letchworth Mental Hospital: abandoned New York City with a macabre and tragic history

Over the years, people with mental illness have been isolated from society. There was no treatment as such, there were attempts to systematize and analyze their behavior and condition, but in the end, the clinic in New York changed everything. This was told by the author of Livejournal under the nickname samsebeskazal.

The seriously ill were isolated, and the quiet patients were monitored. People were treated with bloodletting, laxatives, tied up, locked up in semi-dark rooms, beaten, doused with cold water, put on shackles, spun on a wheel.

Psychiatry as a science appeared only in the 19th century, moving forward in small steps. Often healthy people were placed in clinics, who could easily go crazy over the conditions in which they were kept.

At the end of the 18th century, with the revolution in France and thanks to Dr. Philippe Pinel, attitudes towards patients with mental illness changed. They were transferred from gloomy rooms to bright rooms, removed their isolation, became more humane, and were allowed to move around the clinic. Procedures including bypass, treatment and observation were also established.

Fears that the insane at large might harm themselves and others were not justified. The innovation has brought successful results.

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However, these innovations were recognized only in a number of European countries. In America, 23-year-old journalist Nellie Bly conducted a study. Having penetrated into the clinic, looking like a patient, she learned in what conditions the patients were kept. Having got out of there thanks to Joseph Pulitzer, she wrote the book "10 days in a madhouse", which, by the way, has been translated into Russian.

In the book, Nelly described all the horrors and violence that patients were subjected to.

Another personality, thanks to whom the humanization of psychiatric clinics occurred, is William Pryor Lechworth, a Quaker, a successful businessman and philanthropist. At the age of 50, he decides to do charity work, he was concerned about the lives of people who were less successful than himself.

He showed particular concern for disabled children. Traveling to Europe, he studied in detail the methods of treatment for epilepsy and mental illness.

Returning to America, becoming president of the New York State Charity Council in 1878, he would promote progressive ideas and therapies. His model of the clinic was very different from the one that existed at that time.

Instead of dark and cramped premises, there is an autonomous village consisting of cottages located in nature.

The model will receive New York State approval and construction of the village will begin. Unfortunately, Lechworth himself did not live up to the opening of the village, but it will receive his name - Lechworth Village (Lechworth Village).

The first patients were admitted here on July 10, 1911. The experienced Doctor Little will be the village leader. The village will soon expand and will consist of 130 administrative, residential and medical buildings.

Some patients will be busy with work: some will take care of the animals, some will do the cleaning, some will work in the fields. Little and his collaborators conducted research into the characteristics of the mental activity of patients, even conducted courses for doctors arriving from the United States and European countries. The village provided jobs for 10 local residents.

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Unfortunately, the village was ruined by its own success. Patients from all over the country will come here, in 1953 the village was populated to the maximum - 3000 people. Patients from other clinics in the country came here, including the Bellevue Clinic, which was already overcrowded.

Due to the fact that the number of patients increased, and funding remained at the same level, the conditions of detention deteriorated, the lack of personnel, the lack of the most basic needs - food, water, other materials - led to the fact that patients were often seen weak.

The children were malnourished. In the late 1960s, the number of patients reached 5000.

Willowbrook - The Last Great Shame, aired in 1972 on ABC News, showed the horror of psychiatric hospitals. Journalist Geraldo Rivera conducted research, and the footage of the program could not be watched without tears. Many children were kept without clothes, spent a long time in their own feces, in dark and cramped rooms.

Lack of staff resulted in patients not receiving even the most basic care, staff were unable to cope and there was not enough time even for feeding.

Rivera will talk about other establishments in her research, including the village of Lechworth. It turned out that there were facts of mass negligence, physical and sexual abuse of patients, at that time they were almost powerless people.

As a result, the parents of the children who were in the clinics filed a lawsuit against Governor Nelson Rockefelerr. The aforementioned program, the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Milos Forman, released in 1975, the public outcry contributed to the adoption of the federal law "On the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons" adopted in 1980 and numerous reforms that changed the attitude towards patients in psychiatric clinics in the United States.

Although in California, already in the 50s and 60s, there was a deinstitutionalization of people with mental illness.

Undoubtedly, the emergence of psychotropic drugs, a change in public attitudes towards patients with mental illness, and budgetary reforms have contributed to the closure of clinics across America. Many patients lead a healthy lifestyle habitual. If 90 percent of them had been admitted to clinics in the middle of the last century, today they have successfully integrated into society.

But not everything is so smooth, many mental patients ended up on the street today. Most homeless people have mental health problems. In some cases, they are placed in prisons because it is cheaper than keeping them in clinics.

Of course, the improvement in the situation of people with mental illness is largely due to the fact that society has not been silent about this problem for a long time.

On his channel, the author also posted a video about the place where the village of Lechworth was once located.