The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases From a State Hospital Attic

The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases From a State Hospital Attic

Written by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny, photographs by Lisa Rinzler

When the Willard Psychiatric Center overlooking Seneca Lake in upstate New York was abandoned in 1995, 427 patient suitcases were moved to the warehouse for the state museum.  In 1998, the authors undertook a project to examine the suitcases and learn about the Willard inmates through them.  Ten suitcases were chosen from among the 427.  The authors were given permission to view the medical records, which were stored in an abandoned hospital building. 

“What might be revealed by comparing the personal artifacts from their pre-institutional lives with the way they were perceived by doctors and hospital staff?  Regardless of what might have troubled them, we were struck by the sundering of who they were as people from who they became as mental patients.”  (p19)

Beyond the biographies, information about general treatments, and conditions at the hospital, the general history of mental health care is discussed. 

The author of the preface, Robert Whitaker, speaks of the Quaker method of caring for the newly insane with compassion by providing food, shelter and companionship.  Apparently this was the initiative behind later institutions but that ethic was rather poorly carried out at Willard where the patients were “cared” for in the most rudimentary manner. “The hospital was no longer seen as a refuge for troubled people, but rather as a place for keeping them away from society…” (p10)

The question is presented, might looking into the patient’s histories have provided a path for possible treatment and recovery?  That seems likely in at least some cases.

Therese Lehner was an immigrant, a nun whose leader was cast out and she followed.  She suffered many hardships in the following years and asked repeatedly to be released from her vows.  Oddly enough, the hospital assumed this was something she had made up.  The researchers were able to verify her story, years after her body was given to medical research instead of being given a Catholic burial. 

Likewise, the case of Mrs. Ethel Smalls reveals a lack of treating the patient as a person.  Being evicted by her landlady at the age of forty, after divorcing her abusive husband and losing two infant children, Ethel felt “tired” and went to bed.  The police were called and she was committed.  She agreed to go, thinking she was going for a rest cure.  She never felt well enough to leave.  Like some women do, she spent a great deal of time talking about her various discomforts, which were discounted by staff.

“is always talking about herself and her ailments.  She expresses no other delusions or hallucinations.” (p78) 

Ethel had endured years of abuse by her husband, suffered a miscarriage and had an ovarian tumor removed.  Any of those things could have produced lasting problems that caused her stated complaints of back pain, headaches, gastrointestinal upsets and severe menstrual periods.  Instead she was ignored.  She fractured her wrist but it was never set.  She told about a spinal defect but no one believed her until an x-ray revealed scoliosis.  Even with that, she probably felt safer there than in her previous life.

The authors also provide insight into the current state of treatment for those suffering mentally, including a look at how other countries handle different problems.  Hearing voices, for instance, is not automatically seen as a cause for institutionalization in many places.  According to the authors, two to three percent of the population hears voices but only a third of those people become psychiatric patients.  The others have coping mechanisms.  One might think that those not receiving treatment are sadly slipping through the cracks but drugs for treating such auditory hallucinations are “only effective in stopping the voices for about 35 percent of people...”  (p53) 

The combination of biographies and historical details provide a fascinating and accessible portrait of mental healthcare in the past and make a plea for a humanization of the current system.  I would highly recommend this book, in particular for anyone interested in the history of the Finger Lakes area.