The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic

Bellevue Literary Press

The Lives They Left Behind:  Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
Darby Penney
Peter Stastny
2008

The Summary
Willard State Hospital operated for 125 years before it closed its doors in 1995, after which more than 400 suitcases were discovered in the attic--each holding the belongings of someone who disappeared inside Willard and never left its campus again.

The Good
The Lives They Left Behind offers incredible insight into psychiatric care throughout the 20th century, providing an in-depth look at how psychiatric disorders were perceived and treated.  It's both informative and engaging, which I found beneficial when reading.  It gave me statistics, but it also gave me a face to put to the numbers, a unique story behind the cold, hard facts.

I was fascinated to learn that Willard received a disproportionately large number of women as patients, especially at the very beginning when the hospital opened its doors.  Many of these women were often committed because they didn't conform to social standards, suffered from what was then classified as a sexual deviancy, or struggled with other disorders such a menopause, chronic pain, anxiety, PTSD, etc.  Although I found it difficult (and heartbreaking) to read their stories, I was fascinated to learn about what women experienced in society and what society expected of them.

I especially liked that the authors gave an overview of the institution, of general psychiatric care, and zeroed in on specific individuals.  The Lives They Left Behind offers a look at the "big picture" and individual care.  It doesn't just tell you about the things that patients, as a single population, experienced, it gives you the opportunity to witness what one patient versus another experienced.  All stories are different, all treatments were different, and Penney and Stastny reflect that.

The Bad
Although I can say I thought Stastny and Penney did a great job of connecting to readers, showing both the technical and emotional sides of psychiatric care, I thought some of it was a bit dry.  It's an examination of psychiatry and mental health treatment, riddled with statistics and numbers, which sometimes made it feel more like an academic study versus an ongoing narrative of Willard patients.

I'm not saying that makes it a bad book--far from it!--but it does make it a little challenging, a little dense and dull.

The Ugly
The treatments inflicted on mental patients, even at revolutionary compounds like Willard, is very hard to stomach.  Not counting shock therapy, many patients underwent unnecessary operations and received drug prescriptions that often did more harm than good.  Some individuals were even hospitalized necessarily, especially women.

Josephine Smith, for instance, was hospitalized (at a different institution) for 75 years because her family didn't want to deal with her erratic behavior.  Lawrence Marek, who was taken to Willard, likely suffered from some form of mental illness; however, much of his behavior could be attributed to personal tragedies and struggles.

After Ethel Smalls arrived at Willard, she spent the latter half of her life committed because she complained of chronic pains and, most likely, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after losing two of her children and enduring years of abuse from her husband.  However, she wasn't treated for PTSD for two reasons:  she wasn't considered to have endured any real trauma, and only soldiers were said to suffer from PTSD.

Margaret Dunleavy, likewise, suffered with chronic pain from tuberculosis and her treatments for tuberculosis.  She, most likely, didn't have any mental disorder at all; rather, she was hospitalized after an unexpected outburst that was caused by several stressors--her work conditions, her disease, her unconventional relationship with her lover, among others--and her employers essentially decided she wasn't worth the hassle, recommending she be committed.  She spent the rest of her days at Willard.

And this is just a small sample of patients who were ripped from their lives simply because they were too much trouble, too burdensome to family, friends, or coworkers.  While some needed institutionalization, because they obviously suffered from some psychological or behavioral disorder, several others didn't need lifelong commitment--they needed more understanding, more empathy, and less time behind bars.