Diary of a Medical Student: Hospital of Horrors

by Harvey J. Widroe, Ron Kenner (Editor)

THE TRUE MADHOUSE DAYS Having lived through the true Madhouse days, I can tell you an amzing story not recorded elsewhere. It is about the snake-pit era of the 1950s when our state hospitals like Manteno were reaching their peak populations. At the time our society swept the mentally ill into institutions thought of as benign and benevolent. But in fact they were not so kind and benevolent. Very few people knew about it at the time. But I knew, because I was there. As an idealistic medical student, intent on helping patients with serious mental illness, I went to live at Manteno for three life altering months. Here is what happened...

228 pages, Paperback

First published May 6, 2010

Reviews

[Ina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Into -- and out of -- the Snake Pit

Dr. Widroe's book, a first person memoir written with Ron Kenner, has pages that will rouse your anger. About the inhumanity of the mental health world of the `50s, "Hospital of Horrors" was written from the perspective of a man who tells us he was a medical student, not yet a bona fide doctor, when he was told after signing on as a research assistant at "Freud II" that he would, in fact, be charged with the care of about eighty patients on a ward filled with very seriously mentally ill men and women. Widroe bears witness to the horrors inflicted upon these patients and those in other wards at the time, and to his feeling of helplessness over changing the system.

Today, he writes, we have medicines to hasten a move toward normalcy that wasn't even deemed possible then. Widroe's account of the way things were then vs. the way they are now, which he juxtaposes in the final chapter of his book, point up his positive take on mental health today: while undoubtedly there are problems with mental health care, we have come a long way from those nightmarish times he observed first-hand a half century ago

[Star · Rating 5 out of 5]

Severely mentally ill people were warehoused at institutions in the 1950s and treated as sub-human. The author was a medical student who signed on as a research assistant at Manteno State Hospital when he witnessed shock treatments and worse. He felt helpless working in a system he could not change and so kept a diary of everything he saw and experienced. The author expresses that today, while the system is still not perfect, having the medications we do have greatly increased the ability of the mentally ill to manage their disease and live a normal life.

This is a book for those who are interested in the history of the treatment of America’s mentally ill population who were institutionalized for “their own good”.