In the late 1950s at Danvers Insane Asylum the staff spent most of their time providing medical treatment and basic care.  There was very little attention given to treating mental illness.  Those with dementia were admitted to the facility as well.  Once admitted, it seemed hope was never really part of the treatment or the daily routines. 

Danvers was divided into front wards and back wards.  A back ward was used for the extremely sick or those who needed constant care.  Some of the back wards housed the old and feeble and those with dementia.  Another back ward was used for violent patients.  Patients on these wards were allowed out only in a fenced yard called the “bullpen,” with a staff member always in attendance.

Even after medical advances of World War II, the staff at Danvers still boiled syringes and reused them.  They were thrown away only if they broke, nothing was disposable and there could be quite a commotion made if anything was thrown away as there was always a shortage of money for running the huge facility.

Many times staff was faced with treating chronic illnesses such as diabetes, but they also had to deal with patient self-abuse and patients fighting with each other.  The women would tear at each other’s hair and scratch at each other’s eye.  It seemed more than just a fight; it was more like a quest to destroy the other person.  Sometimes the nurses, who acted as referees would get battered.  Much of staff’s time went to controlling the patients. 

Before they received tranquilizers, patients were locked in rooms when their behavior got too much for the staff to handle.  Control through medication started arriving at Danvers in the late 1950s.  New drugs started being tried out on patients and sometimes the patient would have the opposite reaction to a drug.  A tranquilizer might make a patient more hyperactive rather than calming them down.

Some that were kept in seclusion would urinate and defecate on the floor.  Cockroaches were as big as little birds flying all around the room.  The patient hovered in the corner on the floor. 

There were cockroaches on the porch as well, huge black things as described by the writer of Danvers State Memoirs of a Nurse in the Asylum.  The porch was a long windowed area that provided the patients with some fresh air and sunshine.  They had locked areas with bars over the windows.  Many times patients were not taken to the bathrooms, sometimes just because the patient was not able to ask to go and they would defecate in the c

In summertime, the aides would turn all the benches over and use a bucket of bleach and a fire hose to clean them.  There would be hundreds of roaches running about once the benches were turned over.  This was an everyday porch duty for whichever aide got the unlucky assignment.

At this time, in the 1950s, there were still between one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty patients per ward, males and females.  Small epidemics broke out among them.  There would be dozens of patients with diarrhea at one time.  They took the patients into showers several at a time and hosed them down to clean the filth.  Some of them were dying from the dehydration caused by the diarrhea.  Sometimes if a patient died, the doctor would cut off the arm or leg to use it for medical studies was the memory of writer of Danvers State Memoirs of a Nurse in the Asylum. 

During diarrhea epidemics, all the clothes would become soiled and the patients would have nothing to wear.  They would have to endure the days and nights on the ward without a stitch of clothes on.  Even though Danvers had its own laundry room complete with staff, a diarrhea epidemic would create a pile of filthy clothes and sheets that would take the staff several days of bleaching and disinfecting to get things back to normal.  Staffing problems continued to plaque the facility.  There was never enough help to take care of the overcrowding of patients.

During this time period, mental health facilities were not inspected routinely as they are today.  The state health departments inspected Danvers occasionally and when they were due to arrive; there would be all new dresses for the patients and the best of meals.  When the inspection was all over, the next day, things would go back to normal.  They would take the extra beds they dragged out for inspection and put them back in the attic.  The law required a certain amount of beds to be a certain amount of distance apart from each other.  They would open and close wards to hide the patients because Danvers was so overcrowded.  Money was always scarce and was never enough to improve the situation.

Continued in Part 6

Source:  Danvers State Memoirs of a Nurse in the Asylum by Angelina Szot and Barbara Stilwell

Written by:  Connie Limon.  For more information about the history of, visiting and living in Massachusetts visit:  http://smalldogs2.com/VisitingMassachusetts  To submit articles and find a variety of FREE reprint articles visit http://www.camelotarticles.com

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