Because now they have to publish this offensive claptrap about an old “lunatic asylum.”
Haunting History at an Old W.Va. Hospital
(Originally found on Alison Hymes’ blog.)
liz | 3:12 PM | Uncategorized
Liz Spikol was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 20th century. She started writing about her experience as a person with mental illness in 1999, while employed at Philadelphia Weekly as the paper’s managing editor. Aside from serving as that paper’s web editor, music editor, staff writer, senior editor, executive editor and a host of other random roles that she couldn’t make up her mind about, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher, as a Certified Peer Specialist during Philly’s system-wide transformation and as a communications specialist for a prison reform organization. Currently, she works at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and writes book reviews for PW. This blog — named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 and 2008 by PsychCentral — is about medications, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, SAD (and many other acronyms), mad pride, Big Pharma, celebrities, hospitals, stigma and the recovery movement. And other stuff.
“Political excitement, religious enthusiasm and seduction also were symptoms that could merit a few years, or a lifetime, of confinement.”
Oh God, I would have been SO locked up back then. As it is…I heard that the old time mental hospitals were deliberately constructed on hilltops so the “bad air” from the asylum would not drift down and infect the “normal” people with madness.
I share a faculty office with several other people and we’re all quite around the bend. I wonder if it’s my fault.
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