Here is an interesting article I came across while reading things having to do with a different thread here and it made me think of
this thread while reading it. So I'll put it here rather than over there to allow the others here to be able to decide for themselves what life in a state mental hospital can be like.
Although this was written in 2001 and is 6 years old or so, it is
years past the 1990's "sweeping reforms" you were refering to..
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/07/22/MN122212.DTL
"Shortly after midnight on Christmas, Orrin Patrick, a 45-year-old mentally ill patient at Napa State Hospital, led a young orderly into the starkly lit dayroom on Unit T-7.
There, lying in a pool of blood on the speckled linoleum floor, was John Reed, 48, of Yuba City. He had been pummeled in the face and strangled.
To hospital employees and patients' rights advocates, Reed's slaying exposes a fundamental flaw in California's mental health system: Criminally inclined, often violent patients are now in the majority at state hospitals - and the hospitals are ill-equipped to handle them.
The problem has reached a critical stage at Napa State Hospital, which has a severe employee shortage and where staff members are given only rudimentary training on how to deal with criminal behavior. With more than 100 job vacancies at the hospital, the nursing staff has barely enough time to clothe, feed and medicate patients, let alone deal with violent outbursts.
"This particular death is the result of some serious long-term problems in providing care for people who have been committed to this hospital," said social worker Joan Bartos, who worked at Napa State Hospital until a year ago. "It's not a safe place for patients to be treated. It's also a very dangerous place for staff."
In the last four years, the once sleepy campus-style hospital has become a holding pen for men and woman incompetent to stand trial on criminal charges or found not guilty of crimes by reason of insanity. It is a dramatic shift from its founding purpose: Since 1875, the hospital had mainly served mentally ill patients committed by civil courts....."
Much more @ link. Yeah, like this is a
nicer place than prison- no one here being punished or at risk of being murdered!
The world hasn't changed that much and people housed in these hospitals *are* indeed being punished and living in fear of other inmates just like in Prisons.. except in prison, the cells of violent, maximum security prisoners are locked- the doors in these places are not!
