children in the wards

the psych hospital i worked at was a strange entity. most people see a nuthouse as a place where you get to leave. eventually. good behavior, rehabilitated...something that would allow you to get a pardon. where i was could be labelled a long-term care facility. as in, you came and you weren't leaving.

as shifts in how one deals with the mentally ill came, so did theories on how the patients needed to be treated. from en mass wards, to apartment style to the final push out into community-based group homes, many of the patients had suffered through all these various phases.

the one major aspect of the hospital was how it had a policy back in the day to never turn a patient away. regardless of age or severity or medical cost, they were admitted. and you didn't have to be a specific age or even demonstrate some sort of disorder. sign the papers and the deal was done. not to say it was all this scenario, but a few sad cases were from this old policy.

there was even a train stop behind the grounds that people could take. in the depression the stop was forever releasing tired clusters of people walking to the main administration building. many of them bringing children that they couldn't look after any more.

and to be clear, some of these kids had nothing wrong with them. families took stock of all the kids and decided which one would be the most disposable. the one who could be turned loose to free up some resources. can you imagine being taken onto a train with no explanation and marched into a building to sit and wait? you'd watch a parent or both of them leave the office with some papers and wonder what was going to happen. any child would hop off the chair, assuming they're going to follow their parents. but they would be held back and a new life started without any clear end in sight.

some parents tried to come up with a lie, some just walked. an old timer who had worked at the hospital talked about these passed on stories. children stunned and then screaming as they were pulled back from the doors. and that was it.

some kids did have something "wrong" but that was a wildly diverse diagnosis. some had slight learning disabilities that just made them stand out as the "dumb" kid in the family. some were hearing or visually impaired. mentally top notch and smart, but the declaration that they were untrainable was too much for parents to deal with.

and into the belly of the hospital they went. there were various wards set up in the 30's and 40's based on gender and age. there was even a nursery. no child would be turned away during these open moratoriums. the stories of the nursery workers deeply disturbed my mother who was a janitor at the hospital from when she was 17 until she retired.

she drunkenly spilled out a story when i was a teenager about the staff who were in the nursery. these babies were loved and tended to, just like any day care. but these kids don't ever go home. 24/7 being watched and tended to. every hissy fit documented and into a master file that grew larger the older they got. They stayed in this area until age 5 when they went to the older set which was 5 to 14. Mom described hearing one woman who had to turn countless children over as they turned 5. She said it was horrifying to hear her sob and shake. "they were like my own. i held them every day and then when it was time to go to the next ward we [the women working in the nursery] would cry and beg for them to stay longer. just a bit more time, they can't make it with the older kids... they can't be left alone at night because they'll cry. they can't cry because they'll be preyed on by older patients. who'll make sure they're safe?"

pulled out of one set of hands, they were set down into the next phase. a pastoral time in the nursery replaced with the learning curve of being around older patients. the women in the nurseries watched little faces peeking over shoulders, probably waiving goodbye. oblivious as they were walked into a completely new setting. and really, anyone can turn into an animal when you're left in a zoo for too long.

my own personal experience with this facet of the hospital came from my gang of guys i worked with. mostly between the ages of 30 to 55, they were mentally ill or handicapped. but that's not to say they didn't have memories and clear, albeit blunt emotions. many asked out of habit when their mommy or daddy were coming to visit. i had to be very careful and check a file before i said anything. i once absent mindedly agreed with a patient that they would come soon only to be savaged over the head with a meal tray when i turned around. his parents never came to visit after he was admitted. when he calmed down and we had our proverbial peace pipe [juice and cheetos] i asked him why he was upset with me. he thought about it for a minute and said, "mommy daddy..." and gestured with his hand in rounded motions. like when a kid pretends they're guiding an invisible airplane in their hand. he looked down and got quiet.

he had pantomimed the last time he saw his parents when he was 8. they signed a paper, and that was it for mommy daddy.