Still Some Psychiatric Hell Holes Left In The World

I had trouble repressing tears as I read a recent article about conditions in a Mexican psychiatric hospital.

To me, accounts of wartime and man’s inhumanity to man pale next to what people of all cultures have, at one time or another, done with the seriously mentally ill.

Not too long ago, in the company of my husband and a highly distinguished (academic research type) foreign psychologist, I visited the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Museum in Los Angeles.  Of course, we decided before we went in that we would not tell them what I did for a living, and the psychologist simply (and wisely) said she was a teacher. The museum is funded by an arm of the Church of Scientology, who has a decidedly anti-psychiatric bias.  Of course, they can accurately document physical abuses of psychiatric patients — and plenty of fatalities resulting therefrom — mostly from other places and other historical times — in a compelling way.  However, their goal is to convince the public that Scientology’s methods are preferable — not to reform the field of psychiatry. I’ve been asked many times if I am a Scientologist, since — up to a point — we make many similar observations.  But our roads diverge quite substantially when we reach the conclusions of our observations.  Needless to say — No, I’m not a Scientologist. The time I spent touring the “Psychiatry Kills” museum rushed into my mind as I read the article about the hospital in Mexico. I thought of the locked room at a certain state psychiatric hospital known to me in France.  The overwhelming majority of the hospital was beautiful and in no way second to any American standards for similar institutions, even though I did not even visit them until many years later when I was looking for work.But there was one room where there were a few patients who had been, I was told discreetly, unable to move forward as the hospital had become modernized.  I remember the tender and caring guard who took me to visit the room, at my own request.  He had warned me that a gentle soul such as myself could have nightmares (I did) but I had to see it, and I did. The only visual I could even suggest that would get close to it, would be some of the asylum scene in the movie Amadeus. The 20^th century French version could have been lifted wholesale from the 18th century of Mozart.  I really resonated with the reporter who said of this Mexican mental institution, something about it looking as if time stood still. There were two 18th century physicians whom I consider giants in the treatment of the mentally ill, who saw this abuse and tried to fix it. People who had, as far as I could tell, both powerful intellect and powerful humanitarian motivations.One was Phillippe Pinel in France.  Known as the man who cut the chains of the mentally ill, he did that quite literally.  People watched him and the tools he used to cut the chains as if it were a spectator sport, expecting those who had been chained to go wild. When the chains were severed, they did not move at all.

Another was Benjamin Rush, great patriot and signer of the Declaration of Independence. I think shrinks are generally pretty proud of him, for there is a simplified version of his likeness on the seal of the American Psychiatric Association.  Although he is depicted as a torturer at the “Psychiatry Kills” museum, his contributions to the care of the mentally ill were actually daring and humanely sensitive innovations compared to the practices that came before him. There are problems in the field of psychiatric treatment and plenty of them. One of them is frequently the period of time during which the patients had been treated poorly has been so long that change for at least those few is difficult at best. I do not think it an accident that both Pinel and Rush were active during the times their countries were in the middle of a revolution. When I think of other people who have spoken up for the seriously mentally ill — who plainly are too ill to speak up for themselves — these seem to be people who have political interests on their agenda, too. People like Dorothea Dix, the pioneering feminist during the 19th century who championed humane treatment in mental institutions lecturer. Human rights are to me more basic than basic.  They are a part of evolution. They are a way we preserve our species; we are wired for this.  It should be our very nature.  We should all be able to say “there but for the grace of God go I” — or whatever God-free equivalent you choose — when we see people in pain. I am not the only one who feels that an extreme lack of empathy is psychopathologic. The correlation of interest in these causes with an interest in human rights is great, but it does not seem to be correlated with … religion. I have worked with enough folks from Mexico to know it is a Catholic country where many people take their religion seriously. I don’t know many details about Mexican politics — only enough to know there have been cases reported that, shall we say with understatement, are not quite straight arrow and some money disappears sometimes.  I am sure there are people concerned about this breach of human rights, but I can’t seem to tell that anyone knows who and where they are. In other words, if the Mexican government moved their mental health budget from 2.5% to 10% as the World Health Organization has suggested, things have a fighting chance of starting to get better, (although they might need a French type Amadeus room for a little while).  But it has seemed to me that organizations such as WHO have more words than power.  I honestly don’t know how this horrible situation can be improved. I had always assumed that the regard of humans for other humans was simple, sacrosanct, assumed. I can’t even figure out how to achieve that one.