General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Parents of mentally ill adult children have few options. [View all]bobclark86
(1,415 posts)I've known people who were in places like Willowbrook (actually, I knew a lady who was AT Willowbrook before she died last year). That is, in every definition of the word, an atrocity. It's the one positive thing I'll ever say about Geraldo, but go watch his report from when he was at WABC in New York.
Places like Willowbrook were dumping grounds -- in the 1940s, women with post-partum depression, "sluts," drunks, dope fiends, paralyzed people and those with Down syndrome or cerebral palsy were all tossed into these places. Things like Thorazine helped get some out. Some treatment programs were put in place for others. But up until the 1980s, these institutions were all too common in America.
We learned the hard way one extreme won't work -- and now the other obviously isn't working, either.