Family and BryceMaggie is
somewhere between Providence and Framingham. I am here alone, in another
city ending in "-ingham."
I'm not really alone, of course. Estelle is sleeping across the hall.
She is our daughter, eighteen years of age, full of life, pretty as her
mother, and completing her second year of secondary school here in the
United States. I once described our family situation as living the
American dream, only somewhat in reverse. Instead of arriving on these
shores with only a few dollars in our pockets, we have arrived
established, with me as an anchor to the promise that America holds out
for so many across our globe, of riches, freedom, and hope.
Mwelwa is also here, in his room adjacent to Estelle's. He's also
living the American dream in reverse, having arrived here a year ago,
after five years of struggle with immigration and finances, to pursue a
post-baccalaureate degree in health administration. We've run out
of support for his school at the moment. My final year of formal
education will take precedence; I can not use my student loan money to
pay for his school this semester. Not if I want to also graduate. But he
is working as hard as possible, having secured two jobs to save for the
next set of classes. This is the sort of persistence and work ethic that
will carry his day.
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Tomorrow several esteemed colleagues and I will pay a visit to the
mental hospital in Tuscaloosa, Alabama known as Bryce. It is infamous,
in my limited understanding, for changing the way the United States
looks at health care for the mentally ill. If my memory serves, Bryce
was involved in a lawsuit that resulted in two major events. First, the
conditions that mental health care facilities must maintain were
immensely improved as a result of the lawsuit. Second, the changes that
resulted from the lawsuit led to an inability for states to maintain
mental health facilities. Thus, as a result of the later event, the
percent of homeless in the United States who were suffering serious
mental illness increased dramatically. That may or may not be true. I
need to do more research. But that is my perception of some of the
history.
Now I am going to check to see if I have my facts correct.
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Bryce was founded in 1861 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The original
facility was abandoned in the early 1960s. It's interesting that most of
the first ten pages that Google generated yielded "File not found"
results. In fact, most of the first thirty pages that Google generated
were dead links. Is there something to hide? Or is my internet
connection faulty. I think it's the latter. My rational mind can still
seek out conspiracy theories...
It appears that a lawsuit was filed on 23 October 1970 by a fifteen
year old patient named Ricky Wyatt. The lawsuit, Wyatt v. Stickney, was
precipitated by the firing of a lot of staff. A finding by the court was
that staff couldn't sue, but patients could. Ricky Wyatt's case was the
breakthrough. The case turned into a class-action lawsuit that was
finally dismissed thirty-three years later, in 2003, after the state of
Alabama was found to be in compliance.
In the thirty-three years that the case was open - the longest period
of any mental health case in the United States' history - national
standards were established and named after Ricky Wyatt, who was the
nephew of someone who was laid off in the employee terminations at Bryce. These
national standards were:
I found the information above through an online encyclopedia. There
were references detailed at the end of the entry, but I am having
difficulty finding any of the references listed. This leads me to
one of three conclusions. (1) Maybe the entry is bogus, and the
references are faked. (2) Maybe Alabama has made a large, concerted
effort to bury the past, in an effort to move forward. (3) Maybe the
references are not available through the modern means of the Internet.
An interesting finding is that there once was a publication called
The Meteor, which sounds like it was innovative, that published
writings of inmates and employees of the Bryce Mental Hospital. I would
be fascinated to read some of these entries.
Also of interest - something I would love to read - is a book written
by Reverend Joseph Camp called An Insight into an Insane Asylum.
According to the Spring 1994 issue of Alabama Heritage (No. 32),
In
May 1881, thinking he was on a pleasant trip to Tuscaloosa with his
family, seventy-year-old Reverend Joseph Camp was admitted to the
Alabama Insane Hospital by his wife and son-in-law. The shock of being
admitted to the hospital only grew during Camp's next five months and
twenty days as a patient there. Upon returning to his family in
November, Camp published his book, entitled An Insight into an Insane
Asylum, at his own expense. Camp's book notes the treatment he received
as a mental patient of the Alabama Insane Hospital, including practices
of nurses and physicians that often border on cruelty. To this day,
Camp's book remains the only significant exposé of the Alabama Insane
Hospital ever written.
Sounds like fascinating reading.
