Edit Title changed because commenters said “Refund Mental Health Care” was bad and they were correct.
Walter Wallace Jr. recently shot by police in Philadelphia reminds me of my mother. Both of their lives were shaped by mental illness.
Mother died in February 1973. I was on leave in Arizona after a tour in Vietnam. I was building up the nerve to visit her. My younger brother called to say she had been found dead in her partially constructed home.
The house was the road from Safford, Arizona to Mt. Graham, right outside the federal minimum security prison (soon to have its most famous inmate (John Daniel Ehrlichman).
My younger brother arranged the sparsely attended funeral. There was her three sons, our father and a few others. We didn’t know enough to ask for military honors she had earned. No taps, no salute, and no flag.
Someone, maybe my older brother, got Ruskin Lyons, Graham County Superior Court Judge to say a few words. I respect him for doing it, but it was odd since twelve years before he had declared her an unfit mother and transferred custody of the three of us to our father. Not sure the name was correct on the grave. She had had a second very short marriage. Her maiden name was often misspelled.
We called her sister in New York. She sent a nice bunch of flowers.
It was a quiet ceremony. All four of us felt some mixture of shame, resentment and regret.
My parents met and married at Ellington Army Air Base outside of Houston. He was a Staff Sargent flying cargo planes. She was a Corporeal in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps.
Dad had a career as a Safety Engineer at Morenci copper mine. He divorced Edith his second wife after 15 years and outlived Delores his last marriage. After he retired he still had the Army wedding picture on the wall. A short description of the wedding made it into Aileen Kilgore’s book about Kilgore’s time as a WAC.
Friday night another WAC married—Cpl. Jean Siberman (sic) married a S.Sgt at Chapel No. 1 in a traditional ceremony. Jean wore white with a short, lacy veil. Her attendant (a WAC) looked happy to be legally wearing a civilian dress again. Two WACs in uniform stood with them at the altar and five GIs stood with the groom (why so many I don’t know, unless to give him moral support—he looked nervous).
Stateside Soldier Life in the Women’s Army Corps 1944-1945 — Aileen Kilgore Henderson [Note 1]
The wedding must have been the high point of mother’s life. She had married an enlisted pilot who flew cargo across the Atlantic. Since fraternization with officers could get both people up on charges a flying enlisted was pretty much the best prospect available.
From this point it was a long fall from a solid middle class upbringing in New York to poverty in Arizona.
Peaches
My only clear memory of my parents marriage was the peaches.
I was five or six years old, which would have made my younger brother three or four, and Bob eight.
I was sitting on a chair at the kitchen table in a company housing in the rural copper mining town of Morenci AZ. There was adult argument going on. The can of peaches on the table had my attention. Peaches were a sweet treat. They were cool and wet. Just enough firmness to chew with ease and nothing to cut the mouth or catch in the throat.
The can had been open with an old punch type can opener. The lid had been three quarters opened and then bent up so that the opened can appeared to have a round saw blade sticking up. Concentrating on the Del Monte logo was a distraction from angry voices. If ignored the storm might go away. In any case it would be unwise to attract attention to yourself.
Suddenly mother picked up the can and swing it at my father. The peaches were never to be eaten. We scattered for shelter.
Later in the evening we were sitting in the back seat of the car. All I could see was Dad’s bloody bandaged hand on the steering wheel. He was saying something about going away and we were crying.
Dad married a school teacher soon after the divorce.
This being the 50’s mother got custody of the children.
We first went back to New York and stayed with our maternal grandparents at Lake Oscawana.
The next year we moved back to eastern Arizona. My maternal grandparents were not well and mom had trouble getting child support from out of state. We stayed mostly in housing that catered to migrant farm workers and occasionally a kind stranger. There was a short second marriage.
Life from my first grade through the seventh pretty much sucked. We moved around frequently living in roadside motels with carports that catered to migrant farm workers. Occasionally picked cotton.
When we were about ten, seven, and six years old mother took us about 10 miles out of town in Mt. Graham and left us at a picnic area built by the CCC. Some guy in his 20’s with in a Jeep picked us up as we walked off the mountain and took us back to town. It is remembered 60 years later, but is wasn’t that unusual. Certainly not something to go to authorities about.
When some incidents happened which brought us to the attention of law enforcement, the Judge came to the rational opinion that she was an unfit mother and transferred custody to our father.
Mental Health Care Mid Twentieth Century
Mother was in state hospital’s and New York and Arizona.
The stay in Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in New York was before the divorce. I’m not sure of the circumstances. It is likely her parents and our father had some role in the decision to institutionalize.
My older brother wrote this about the stay:
I remember when mother came back from the mental hospital. I do not remember anything about her before that. Her very appearance scared me. Her appearance shocked and frightened me.. Her hair was white and stuck straight up. I didn’t remember her being like that before. In fact everything was She was critical of me. I didn’t bond at all with her. It was like she was a stranger to me and I couldn't remember anything about her. Who was this strange Why? that made her react so negatively to me? Why did I live with my grandparents instead of her? I can only speculate. Ron talked about how mother was so angry that she was committed to psychiatric care. She talked about making little birds from gum wrappers and asked Ron if he ever got them. He told her no. Mother said: ”The bastards! I think she was referring to her parents.
Mother seemed traumatized from being in a mental hospital and I believe part of that was receiving shock treatments.
Here is what Dr. Kirsch, a Psychiatrist said about shock treatments: My first contact with ECT was in 1973, on a Bronx psychiatric ward. I was a rather naïve 21-year-old nursing aide. I loved the job but I wasn’t sure why, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons, five or six older women would always appear, on a line of chairs in the corridor. Most sat with a passive air of indifference. Usually, however, one or two trembled with fear. Occasionally one would leave the line, either shouting or tiptoeing so as not to be noticed. They were dragged back to the line. When I discovered they were waiting for ‘electroshock’ I was fascinated. I volunteered for the job of sitting with them as they came round from the general anesthetic, after their shocks and convulsions. They would ask me ‘Where am I?’ 'Who am I?’ ‘Why is my head pounding?’ ‘What have they done to me?’ One old lady asked me, in tears, ‘But why would they do such a thing to me?' Then came the day I was allowed in to watch, along with some medical students. The psychiatrist asked, 'Would anyone like to press the button?' All five stepped eagerly forward. As the old woman’s body vibrated, toes twitching, I left. I found myself in the car park, being sick. I knew nothing of the research about this treatment. I just had, quite literally, a gut reaction that something was horribly wrong.
Dr. Kirsch even told of a case where ECT actually killed a man: My next encounter was in my first job as a clinical psychologist in the UK in the 1980s. At a staff meeting, I waited to see if anyone would raise the issue of the man who had died on the ECT table the day before. Nobody did. So I did. The psychiatrist said, 'That is none of your business and I am personally insulted by your insinuation that we killed him’. When I refused to be quiet I was physically removed from the room. Knowing that his notes read ‘ECT contraindicated – serious heart condition,’ the social worker and I returned in the evening and photocopied that page. As we anticipated, the page soon disappeared from the man's chart. I tried for two years to get the hospital, the Health Authority, the government, and professional bodies to take an interest in that page and the case. I failed. But I did not forget
Dr Kirsch later signed a letter asking that ECT be stopped until there was valid research that the dangers outweighed the proven risks. He found there was no validated study showing ECT was effective. All the studies he and others reviewed were flawed and biased. The letter highlighted the fact that most people given ECT are women and older people. It also emphasized that any Inquiry must be independent. This is crucial because the use of ECT is currently monitored by the Royal College of Psychiatrists who may be less likely to pick up on the sorts of irregularities and failings identified by our own independent audit. Patients were never informed about the risk of long term memory loss. They were often given the treatment against their wishes.
The lead signatory on the letter is Dr Sue Cunliffe, who had been a pediatrician until having ECT rendered her incapable of working. I had the honor of debating alongside Sue at the 57th Maudsley Debate, at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, in 2018, where we proposed the motion 'This House Believes ECT has No Place in Modern Medicine.' The arguments from the two psychiatrists opposing the motion, and the absence of any apparent empathy for Sue's alarming personal story, seem beyond belief
She checked herself into the Arizona State Hospital (formerly Arizona Insane Asylum) sometime in the late 1960’s. It is disturbing to imagine what was going on in her mind that would make her decide it would be better back inside a state institution.
Below is a section of the Hospital Superintendent’s 1968 annual report. This is specific to the maximum security section, but still it is shocking to see the head of hospital describe “conditions literally deplorable and approaching inhumane..”
Even under conditions literally deplorable and approaching inhumane, every effort is being made to conduct a program of treatment and safekeeping. A full-time ward administrator was added to the staff to facilitate the treatment planning and to free the consulting psychiatrist and the division staff nurse from administrative duties. Increased patient communication in the form of self-government meetings brought initial concern to staff members, but resulted in a decrease of negative incidents.
I attending the University of Arizona at the time in Tucson. My brother called me from Utah and said she was there and I should visit. I drove the two hours up to Phoenix and went to the hospital. I asked someone where she was and was directed down a wing “that way”.
It was (as I remember) a long corridor, similar to a dormitory. There were women sitting in the hall smoking. There was no organization or anyone obvious to ask for help or directions. I wandered around a bit and left. Not the proudest moment in my life.
Doubt I could have helped much. Would not have been unusual to be yelled at for an hour or so if I had found her. She didn’t stay for much more than a few months, I think.
My younger brother’s oldest daughter (he has 4 daughters and two sons) is a Physician’s Assistant. His daughters have over the years tried to get information on our family history. We have all been very vague about our childhood. My niece went down to the ASH and found mother was diagnosed with Paranoid schizophrenia.
Arizona State Hospital has reduced capacity by 80 percent and now concentrates on confining the criminally insane.
Modern Mental Health Care
Mental Health care has moved beyond large centers of the past.
Those institutions are very expensive to maintain and run. Outcomes were not always good and abuses occurred.
Modern methods are cost effective and required less skilled professionals.
Common course of treatment is:
- Let the family care for the afflicted person as long as possible.
- The family searches for the rare accessible programs or psychiatric beds.
- After all available funds, mental and emotional strength is exhausted an insolvable crisis arises. Then —
- Ask for law enforcement help, who will come over and kill the mentally ill person.
Walter Wallace was receiving some mental health treatment. His family believed they were doing some good, he trusted the personnel at West Philadelphia Consortium and if their people had been part of the response it may not have ended in his death.
A couple of months ago Ricardo Munoz was shot by police in Lancaster, PA. He had a history of mental illness. The district attorney ruled the officer was justified.
These are local news stories (the Philly one made it to national news with the added riots), but search any “Police shoot mentally ill in XXXX” and you will get results.
For example:
Colorado,
Idaho,
Louisiana,
Oregon,
New Jersey.
It is not just the powerless and unconnected that suffer from neglect or lack of services. State senator Craig Deeds of Virginia tried to find treatment for his son, and failed. He was stabbed and his son shot himself.
Sandy Hook, CT.
The peak of institutionalized mentally ill people was in 1955; 559,000 patients or 0.3% of the population. Since then state run mental illness hospitals have been shuttered across the nation.
Between 1955 and 1994, roughly 487,000 mentally ill patients were discharged from state hospitals. That lowered the number to only 72,000 patients. States closed most of their hospitals. That permanently reduced the availability of long-term, in-patient care facilities. By 2010, there were 43,000 psychiatric beds available. This equated to about 14 beds per 100,000 people.
As a result, 3.5 million of the severely mentally ill do not receive any psychiatric treatment at all. About 200,000 of those who suffer from schizophrenia, depression, or bipolar disorder are homeless. That's one-third of the total homeless population. Ten percent are veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or other war-related injuries.
More than 350,000 are in jails and prisons. Sixteen percent of all inmates are severely mentally ill. There are almost ten times as many severely mentally ill people in jails and prisons than in hospitals. AMA Journal of Ethics
Surely the police are not blameless, but the odds are bad when you give a person a gun and send them out to keep order. It is not going to go well for the mentally ill.
All over the nation mental health needs are unmet. Old mental health facilities have been abandoned. Community based programs are inadequate, always underfunded and a prime target for budget cutting during hard times. For profit institutions have an incentive to raise costs and treat the well funded patients with less severe ailments.
There were many problems with the old insane asylums. The Soviet Union used psychiatric wards as a method of silencing dissidents. People have been stripped of their freedom and wealth after being declared unfairly incompetent.
All of the above is no excuse for the failure to attempt to provide adequate levels of care.
A society will be judged by how it treats its weakest members.
— Harry Truman, 1884-1972, American President [1945-1953]
Note 1 — Stateside Soldier by Aileen Kilgore Henderson is an interesting little book. It is a sketch by an Alabama woman looking back at her youth from a rural farm to through the Army. The quote above is a comment of what happened on 16 June 1944.
The book is a little hard to follow since it is excerpts from her diary and letters home. Paints a picture of a person and a time long past.
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Another thing that happened that day in Columbia SC was the execution of 14 year of George Stinney Jr.
George was not represented by an attorney.
The trial lasted three hours. The only evidence against him was a questionable confession. The jury took ten minutes to reach a decision.
In 2014 his conviction was vacated. Never heard of him ‘till I googled the date for some reference
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Note 2 — Morenci AZ back in the day. All of the buildings in the foreground are gone. The crusher, mill and smelter have been leveled. There is a youtube video of the smokestacks being blown up. The mine is still there, with a much smaller workforce.
Note 3. Wet Canyon Picnic Area was built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) in the 1930’s. They built many useful and head scratching things out in the desert. We knew it as ‘First Water’. It was a popular picnic area. Enough elevation to be a cool shady spot above the desert floor.
The Civilian Conservation Corps camp, F41A, was established at Noon Creek in the Pinaleño Mountains in 1933. The camp operated during the winter. The enrollees built the Noon Creek picnic area located at milepost 7.2 on the Swift Trail Road. Tables and grills have been replaced since then, but the paths, steps, and retaining walls remain unaltered. The Wet Canyon stone bridge and picnic area at milepost 9.8 were constructed in 1937. Enrollees also built roads, fences, and erosion control dams in the area. During the summer time the camp was relocated to Treasure Park for high-elevation work. — Living New Deal
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.Random Thought
Support your local library
In elementary school my brothers and I fended for ourselves. The ragged kids of the crazy lady weren’t really welcome in town. My refuge was a library card. I read all of the Wizard of Oz books available in the Safford Library, then Tom Corbet Spaces Cadet books, and some of the Hardy Boys.
The Wizard of Oz was the best. I could identify with Dorothy. She spent all her time wandering around in a strange places with weird stuff happening. Controlling anything wasn’t an option and getting through the day was the challenge. Made sense to me.
Libraries are struggling now. Help your local library if you can.