Danvers State Lunatic Hospital in Massachusetts History and Memories Part 4

Danvers State Lunatic Hospital started its own Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) School in the 1940s. This gave the aides a chance for further education.

Danvers State Lunatic Hospital started its own Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) School in the 1940s.  This gave the aides a chance for further education.  Writer of the book Danvers State Memoirs of a Nurse in the Asylum decided to participate.  She enjoyed working with people and felt like she had the ability to help sick people.  She wanted to provide them with more than just basic life maintenance.   The opportunity to learn a career meant more to her than just the paycheck.  When she became a Blackband, she did not forget the treatment she received as an aide.  She had empathy for the aides after her transition to an LPN.

In her day there were one hundred and fifty patients per ward.  A typical day for an aide included:

• Bathing the patients in the morning (usually a sponge bath)
• Dressing them when clothing was available (otherwise PJ tops and bottoms that had been supplied by the state were used)
• Aides cleaned the porch and floors, washed the rooms
• They fed the patients their meals and tried to communicate and talk with them
• After the evening meal, patients were changed for bed and given their final medications
• Sometimes the aides would braid the hair of the women

The above routine was on a calm day.  Most of the patients were totally out of reality and described as “loonies,” by the writer of this book.  Once they were admitted, they were usually there for life.  They rarely got out.  There were cases of family members just dumping relatives and having them committed against his or her will.  Often, these people did not have a recognizable psychosis, and the doctors were not available on weekends.  They worked only Monday through Friday, which caused admittance into the hospital to be rushed.  She described the majority of their doctors being “fine doctors,” and at that time, all were men.  She did say they had one male doctor who spent a lot of time trying to make dates with the aides, which made for a little break time gossip.

There were no goals of “curing” the patients that were admitted, or at least not to the point where they would return to society and be able to function adequately.  Assessments were made not so much to work out a treatment plan toward better mental health, but to just assess the patient’s status.  The mental hospitals in the 1940s were more of a containment center for those admitted.

Patients were not quarantined from each other when diseases broke out.  There was a fair amount of TB, syphilis and almost every other imaginable disease among them.  The aides and RNs that worked with them were fortunate if they did not contract the diseases from patients.

Treatment for mental illness was very limited in the golden age. At Danvers Insane Asylum, the medication consisted of aspirin and blood pressure pills.  Other treatments included:

• Shock treatment:  The patients were dragged in and the aides would almost have to sit on them to hold them down for the procedure.  The doctor put a stick in the patient’s mouth to keep them from swallowing their tongue.  He would then place electrodes on the temples and start the electricity.  There was a certain smell that lingered in the air even after the patient returned to their bed.  A great fear could be seen in the eyes of the patients during the procedure.  The goal of this procedure was to cause the patient to lose part of their memory.
• Cold Sheet Treatment:  Consisted of wrapping a patient very tightly in cold sheets (the sheets had been placed in the refrigerators until they were needed).  The patient was wrapped up like a mummy in these cold sheets to reduce agitation and clear the brain.
• Tub Treatment:  Consisted of having the patient sit under continuously running water, even during meals.  A patient would spend an entire day sitting naked in a tub.  The goal of this treatment was to help calm a patient down.

Continued in Part 5

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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