My first visit to see someone in the mental hospital, in 1982, was difficult | I'd gone to visit a friend who'd only recently been admitted | I didn't have any idea what to expect |
To make matters worse, I'd worked third shift, had been up most of the day running errands and chores, and was tired | I still had to go home to at least take a nap before starting the work cycle all over again |
Visiting hours were very unstructured | All visits took place in a large common room where people were aimlessly shuffling about, others reading, someone else was on the pay phone | A group of four men sat at a table rolling cigarettes from loose tobacco with a large rolling device that sat on the table | A visitor could, if he wished, stay all day | Just make sure you don't lose that visitor's badge, a flimsy piece of stick-on paper upon which you'd written your name | When you tired of visiting, you'd just get up and ask one of the staff to let you back downstairs |
It was not a good visit | I'd brought him what he'd asked for but he was off, upset, angry and not focused | I stayed until my friend got up and walked off, and just didn't return to where we were sitting | So I got up and asked to leave |
Ward staff let me out the door by the elevators | While the door to the elevator was wide open, staff neglected to tell me I'd need to be "keyed" to get down and out the building | I waited about 10 minutes before anyone came by | Finally, a gruff, gnarled sour-faced man came down the hall, got into the elevator car, turned the key in the slot, and we headed down | The car started on it's very slow trajectory down four floors to the lobby |
I must have sighed audibly, or made some other sound, for the man turned to me and said "Rough day, huh?" | I acknowledged that it was | Then, without so much as a scintilla of further discussion he said [or thought] aloud, "Yeah, that's the problem with this place" |
Curious, I asked, "What's that?" |
This time he sighed. "They don't let us put them in restraints as much any more" |
"Ahh!" I responded, almost grunting | There were three more flights to descend | I didn't know this man from Adam, but it was clear he wanted me to know with what degree of seriousness he took his job | I didn't know it at the time, because I was wondering what he'd do if I paniced while alone in the slow moving car with him, but that chance encounter started me on the career path I continue to follow today |
Fighting for patients' rights |
PHOTOS FROM a collection of over 800 taken while on a series of "urban expeditions" with my photographer friend Chad Kleitsch
posted by Will Brady @ 02:31
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