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diseldriver · Joined: 03 Nov 2006 Posts: 31 Location: LA;-USA

Fuller State School and mental Hospital United States

Built: late 1800's some parts Closed: 1991 main part of the mental hospital building
Opened: N/A Demolished / Renovated: N/A
Location Age: N/A Abandonment: N/A
Location Genre: State School / Developmental Center / Training Center, Psychiatric
Current Status: Being demolished or renovated
Located In: United States

GHOSTS

(above picture ;- one of the cells on a ward , there would be several of these cells off one main corridor area which would form / make up a ward )

There have been reports of ghostly sounds of crying and screaming heard on various wards of the now abandoned mental hospital, also rattling noises, which sounds like the sides of metal beds / cribs being rattled by unseen hands have been heard.

One of the two NOW abandoned concrete playgrounds which are located in the center area of the main mental hospital buildings area, NOTE how the tops of the walls curved inward to prevent escape.

History

This abandoned hospital once catered for young children (aged 1 -16) and adolescents (aged 16-25) with developmental disabilities, and had became notorious in the public eye for neglect and abuse toward the residents.
Newspaper articles detail ex-employees telling tales of how children where without soap, clean clothes, sheets and even food; there were claims that some co-workers would beat the patients. They wrote how the foul smell of urine and feces would constantly be lingering in the air, and how many residents wore diapers and banged their heads against the walls for attention. A report was also published that a deaf woman, admitted in 1930, had been kept inside the hospital for 55 years, being misdiagnosed as "mentally retarded."

Some kids grew up here in large cribs and left to live in private-care homes when the institution closed, while many others left from the small morgue belonging to the hospital to be buried in an unmarked grave in a open field with in hospital grounds, which reportedly washed away at times from a nearby creek flooding, occasionally exposing graves. Another question of media sensationalism or the truth... TRUTH IM AFAID

A federal lawsuit was filed in 1978, ordering the institution to improve conditions, But yet another was placed in the late 1980's - which was a class-action lawsuit involving 74 residents.
The hospital finally shut down in 1991, due to "dangerous conditions."

Much of the campus (away from the main old hospital area) is now used as a drug rehab facility, which now adays resembles a prison in many ways (razor wire, marked and unmarked police vehicles attending, etc).

No Privacy

A memorial plaque outside one of the main hospital buildings rooms reads, "While yet I live, Let me not live in vain."

(note;- toilets encased in cement and there were no partitions)

When walking down the main hallway ( which ran through the center of the building), there is a large glass window that looked right into the wash room... the showers and bathtubs were clearly visible to anyone passing down the hallway! What was the purpose of this i hear you say ?

well in former days back then the emphasis was on economics - the budget was miniscule and that meant staffing was very low. In order to take care of the most people in the quickest, easiest, safest fashion (with the least amount of money provided by the latest taxpayers' vote) you had to come up with designs that understood the lack of staffpower and the general condition of the people living there.
Privacy is a luxury when the staffing ratio would possibly be 1 staff to 30 clients. In order for people to even get baths you have to develop a fast and safe method of doing it.
No one enjoyed doing this job, and no one believed how things would get so crowded in these hospitals. But these shower blocks ect wasn't built for someone's sadistic pleasure, although there were and are some sick people (as in every group) who may have enjoyed staring at nude people.

Just think about being the sole caretaker for 30 people, most of whom can't walk, who don't understand what you are saying to them, and who can't or won't cooperate when you are trying to wash / clean them up. You have just finished dinner and you are supposed to get all 30 people bathed and ready for bed and it is just you.
One of the people in your group needs to take a bath, but you aren't sure she can hold herself up right in the hospitals bath. You could do like they did in some other mental hospital places and have everyone walk through shower area and just hose them down.
Baths in most mental hospitals were seen as a luxury because the staff had to clean the tubs out in between clients, and that took time, I guess then actually seeing bathtubs in a mental hospital is a good thing even thougth there is a lack of Privacy.
But what happens if you are working with Client #1 and Client # 2 has a seizure behind you and slips under the water and drowns? and what if someone wants to go in the tub room to drown themself? I now hear you say ;- well i guess Privacy is the first "luxury" to go when there are few staff and lots of people.

I know that every time someone commits suicide in a mental hospital or jail everyone yells about how they should have been monitored. But then there is a group that hollers about their lack of privacy if they are constantly monitored.

Things are MUCH better now adays, now that funding is better and we have better staffing ratios (in the daytime 1 staff to 4 or 5 clients in most places - if you are lucky - and 1 staff to 8 clients at night) we are better able to incorporate both privacy and safety, but remember back then it wasnt.

Adult Crib Utica crib.

oops - Sorry actually, the item pictured above is not a Utica crib. That is just a large standard hospital crib. A Utica crib (named for the place it was designed - the "New York State Lunatic Asylum at Utica") was designed in the 1880s.
It was apparently designed for use with manic, agitated patients who needed rest and could not /would stay in their beds to recover. As with most things, it was purportedly developed with the best of intentions, since there were few other options except chains and dungeons,

Even assuming this was the reason it was initially designed, it quickly became seen as an effective way to keep violent or manic patients restrained without using chains, and that soon became good PR ploy for most hospitals back then to try to get extra money for the hospital to try to improve things. Because the main way (only way?) of containing people with mental illness up until then had been to chain them to the wall or bed.
Many hospitals fought to look more humane and compassionate, and wanted alternatives to chaining people up. That's where the straightjackets later came from. The hospitals were very proud that they could use a straightjacket on a patient, which kept them from hurting themselves and others, yet still gave many of the patients the freedom to walk around. Most hospitals who had 1/2 their clientele in straightjackets liked and started to called themselves "restraint-free", and I suppose compared with chaining them to the wall it IS a step up. Sort of . . . kinda sorta . . .

I guess if you have large people who don't have control of their bodies and who do not understand the concept of danger, there is great potential for them falling out of bed and getting injured. So when they are in bed you need some sort of barrier to prevent them from falling out.

If, like most institutions, you had little money, you had several choices. You could strap them in so they wouldn't fall out (restraint! Eeeks!), you could lay everyone on the floor on mattresses so when they rolled over they wouldn't have far to go (how callous! How barbaric!), you could make wooden sides for the beds (but then the person in the bed couldn't see anything but the ceiling), or you could go for a large crib which at least offered some way of seeing what went on. I think there would have been equal criticisms had they chosen ANY of these options.

Again, it's easy to be critical of the situation if you aren't aware of the cultural views at the time. People with handicaps back then were sent away because they were considered "incurable," families were strongly encouraged to leave them at these institutions, the state received very small amounts of money for their care, and the staff were paid outrageously low salaries and were generally treated like grunts. If it wasn't for the group of underpaid but dedicated and caring staff who kept these folks alive, even if they had to fight management and other staff who didn't feel likewise, many of these disabled folks wouldn't be alive today (and there are MANY people still alive today who lived in institutions when they were at their most crowded peaks in the 60s and 70s).
There were also the courageous families who stood up for their loved ones in these places and fought for more money for better care and for money for community placements because they didn't receive any government assistance if they tried to keep their loved ones at home.

Just try to imagine having to care at home for a large person with a severe to profound handicapping condition without support from others, and do it day after day after week after month after year. You cant and don't try to get too comfortable or even try to sleep through the night because your loved one DOESN'T understand danger and something terrible could happen if your attention wandered or you slept too soundly.

It was not a black and white situration back then in those times, many families didn't want to send their disabled loves loves to institutions, but would could they do with out funding or help to keep their loved ones at home, or their loved ones were considered dangerous

I'd challenge anyone who is critical of what happened back then to have been part of the culture at the time to have acted much differently, especially with the lack of support they would have gotten.
This is NOT a defense of to how things used to be - Yes they were atrocious conditions in many mental hospitals - I guess this IS an attempt to educate people on why it happened so that it doesn't happen again.
The budget is getting tighter and institutional budgets are getting squeezed, as so are the budgets for community and home programs for folks with disabilities.

I hope all of you who have expressed concern about what you have read above and seen on Madmart's site are contacting your local and state governments and asking for increased funding for people with disabilities.

Otherwise saying "tut tut" and being outraged about what happened in the past - while ignoring that it is now the increased funding that prevents this from happening today in your very own community - means you are also turning a blind eye and are part of the problem.

[OK - sorry - im jumping back down off my soapbox, but its got to stop these poor conditions in mental hospitals ect, just remember it is STILL HAPPENING in the USA and in many other parts of the world ]