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- inscription at the entrance to hell as described by Dante in The Divine Comedy -
in•tro•duc•tion
Thirty years ago America began the overwhelming process of deinstitutionalization. Since 1955 we have lost over 93% of our state psychiatric treatment centers, leaving more than 200,000 mentally ill to fend for themselves.
Recently, various state governments have launched a campaign to destroy the massive, imposing buildings that once housed and treated the so-called outcasts of society. In spite of most of these buildings being listed on historical registers, our nation’s need to further our commercial interests along with our fear of the dark history these buildings hold in their walls has prompted institutions such as Danvers State and Northampton State in Massachusetts to be slated for “redevelopment”.
Activists have fought long and hard to keep these symbols of humanity from being destroyed, but the results have been less than promising. The history of these institutions and the changes in the treatment of the mentally ill and mentally retarded that they represent is fading away as we become a nation afraid to learn from our sordid past.
When I started work for a small residential treatment facility in Western Massachusetts, I had already seen Session 9, the film that put Danvers State into the limelight in 2002. It didn’t take long to find that there were hundreds of buildings just like Danvers; hundreds of buildings that were once places of intense horror and pain, but also places of transformational caring and support.
I began looking at web pages published by amateur photographers who had been inside some of these hospitals and, almost immediately, I was hooked. It is human nature that curiosity fuels the continued dissemination of history.
Here is curiosity.