TandC Associates, LLC

Introduction

Some time ago two sets of stories came to light in the press that made a strong impression.  The first had to do with the discoveries of unnamed graves on the grounds of State Psychiatric Hospitals across this country.  One such example:  Hillside Cemetery is located on Lake Street in Shrewsbury (MA).  It was once the site of a 120-acre Hillside Farm operated by Worcester State Hospital.  Patients who died at the hospital ended up being buried at Hillside. There are two sections with a total of more than 1,900 graves, each marked only by a concrete brick into which was inscribed a number.

More recently a similar kind of sad discovery meant the following:

The Oregon State Hospital published online the names, birthdays and dates of death for the former patients and prison inmates, who died between 1914 and the 1970′s.  The remains were discovered in 2004 in corroding copper canisters.  Some of them had fused together after years of neglect.Oregon’s state mental hospital is trying to match surviving relatives with 3,500 people whose cremated remains were once stacked away in a storage area dubbed the “room of forgotten souls.”

The second area of news had to do with locating a large store of suitcases filled with the personal belongings belonging to unidentified deceased patients in an upstate New York State Psychiatric Hospital which recently had been closed.  These press reports had pointed to the existence of a largely forgotten population of men and women.

We started thinking about the resulting great loss to society that these stories had brought to our attention, and that since their appearance, these reports also have, to a large extent, been forgotten.  Not all such people have been forgotten – Clifford Beers (“A Mind That Found Itself”) and John Forbes Nash (“A Beautiful Mind”) are two examples.   In addition, Lionel Aldridge, a professional football player,  w as a defensive end in the National Football League on the historic Green Bay Packers teams of the 1960’s.
After retiring, Aldridge became a sports analyst in Milwaukee and for Packers radio and NBC until manifesting paranoid schizophrenia in the late 1970s.   Homeless for a time, he eventually achieved a level of reintegration, working as an advocate for the homeless and mentally ill until his death in 1998.  His memory is still honored each year as the National Association on Mental Illness (NAMI) announces the Lionel Aldridge Award for courage, leadership and service to a person living with mental illness.

In 1990, as part of a national tour, he visited Fountain House, a New York City based psychosocial rehabilitation clubhouse. Following a tour of the program he spoke at a staff and member (consumer) community meeting:

”The reality that we would experience as football players if we allowed ourselves to experience ourselves as losers is that we would experience more losing as football players and I think the same thing applies here. Football is a game of inches and it becomes very difficult to win. The harder it becomes to win the more particular you have to be in participation.
“They tell me schizophrenia is something they have no cure for. I’ve got it, I know I’m schizophrenic; don’t be telling me there’s no cure for it. You haven’t heard from me yet. I’ve had this since 1974; that gives me 16 years of experience with this illness. If you spend 16 years on anything you’re going to learn something about it.
“So the experts went to school to learn about us. But what they learned is that all schizophrenics are about the same, and maybe the most they will say is that there are a variety of kinds of schizophrenia. They still aren’t able to say that each individual is uniquely sick and that his recovery process has to be as unique as his illness. If you took 10 people up here who have recovered from schizophrenia, they would have all arrived here from a different route because we are that unique.
“But I think it is us, we the people who have it, who have the keys to recovery and wit me, I like to get real personal and real responsible and say I created it, and I have the power to heal it. I’d like to see somebody join me in that thinking.”

Courtenay Harding in an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times on John Nash noted:

“The film “A Beautiful Mind,”…portrays (John Nash’s) recovery from schizophrenia…What most Americans and even many psychiatrists do not realize is that many people with schizophrenia…do significantly improve or recover.                                                “(W)e, as a society, should recognize a moral imperative to listen to what science has told us since 1955 and what patients told us long before. Mentally ill people have the capacity to lead productive lives in full citizenship. We should have the courage to provide that opportunity for them.”

The goal of this experience-based series is to introduce a group of individuals in an attempt to partially rectify the anonymity underscored by those graves and suitcases and to respond to both Lionel Aldridge’s challenge and Courtenay Harding’s plea. It is our intention to bring out in the open some examples of men and women who were similarly stricken and hospitalized, and the important lessons they have tried to teach us, if only we can learn from them.

This posting is abstracted from a larger writing, pending publication.  Any quotations or references must be made with the permission of the author, who can be contacted through this website or by e-mail at:  tandcassociates@gmail.com.   As always, your comments and suggestions are entirely welcome, either below or at the above referenced e-mail address.