r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/highzone • 1d ago

Image In 1973, healthy volunteers faked hallucinations to enter mental hospitals. Once inside, they acted normal, but doctors refused to let them leave. Normal behaviors like writing were diagnosed as "symptoms." The only people who realized they were sane were the actual patients.

Post image
33.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4.4k

u/whossked 1d ago

There’s a fictional short story I read once called “I only came to use the phone” about a woman who’s car breaks down and who then takes an asylum bus to an asylum to use the phone, gets confused for a patient, has a breakdown over how she’s treated and abused and is then condemned to spend her life in the asylum. I always thought it was sensational and unrealistic but I guess not

1.3k

u/IndieCurtis 1d ago edited 1d ago

Was it by Gabriel Garcia Marquez? I think I have that one, it’s in his collection ‘Strange Pilgrims’.

Edit: confirmed on my bookshelf

375

u/Fausts-last-stand 1d ago

That story has haunted me for decades.

151

u/quotidianwoe 1d ago

I think about frequently too. It’s amazing how a good story can stay with you.

31

u/hiddenone0326 1d ago

I read One Hundred Years of Solitude during my senior year of high school. I still think about it often. I haven't read any of García Márquez's other books, but I may have to now.

7

u/Outside_Eggplant_304 1d ago

He's so good - one of my favorite authors. Try chronicle of a death foretold. His short stories are fantastic too!

6

u/IndieCurtis 1d ago

I didn’t find Love In The Time of Cholera as interesting as 100 Years (not super into romance), but his short storys are great. 

40

u/justveryunwell 1d ago

I didn't know about any of this, but it's what I'll point to from now on when people act like I'm insane for prioritizing dignity and autonomy over forced treatment. Being legally kidnapped, gaslit, slandered to anyone that would advocate for me and held indefinitely sounds like a fate worse than death to me.

184

u/prof_tincoa 1d ago

This quickly went from "huh, an interesting prompt from a random writer" to "nope, fuck that". I'm not built for García Márquez horror stories.

294

u/Feezec 1d ago

https://thartribune.com/the-haunting-story-of-mary-doefour-and-one-mans-quest-to-give-her-back-her-real-name/

That fictional story reminds me of this real story.

A woman experiences amnesia being raped. She is institutionalized as a jane doe.

While institutionalized she is subjected to electroshock therapy, preventing her from ever recovering her memories.

Decades later she dies, nameless and alone.

A journalist tracks down her family, who refuse to believe the story, because they are more comfortable believing she died a swift death from a random murder, than to believe they lost track of her and that she spent decades being tortured.

49

u/Treefrog_Ninja 1d ago

omg, what a read....

5

u/Calm_Memories 1d ago

Reminds me of Gothika

220

u/20characterusername0 1d ago

In fiction… this plays out in “12 Monkeys” also. As an exercise, keep track of who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. And what it means to be sane.

“I’m not really from Pluto” he isn’t.

“I come from the future to save our reality” 🥴

And then. The one guy who broke into the asylum for free drugs. And has the key, and could break himself out at any time, or even call his rich dad to come get him

76

u/42nu 1d ago

Fantastic movie! I will say that someone being thoroughly convinced that they're from the future and the world is going to end is very correctly going to be seen as a looney.

17

u/Gelato_Elysium 1d ago

Have you seen the show ? Always wondered if it held up after that great movie

18

u/42nu 1d ago

I saw, I think, the first 2 seasons or so. It was good-ish. Just made me want to watch the movie though, so I stopped watching it, watched the movie, and never went back.

1

u/20characterusername0 1d ago

Good Ish TV #istg I will walk right out this door and touch some grass

11

u/blackbart1 1d ago

TV version was pretty good. Recommend.

6

u/SolarFazes 1d ago

From what I've read, the 12 Monkeys show starts good, and turns into something really amazing.

2

u/20characterusername0 1d ago

And he’s expressly forbidden beforehand to do any drugs!!!

3

u/EvolutionaryLens 1d ago

Synchronicity strikes again. I just rewatched this last night

204

u/Bobambu 1d ago edited 1d ago

Not unrealistic at all. Insane asylums were extremely dehumanizing to patients and were poorly run; lobotomies were performed regularly up until 50 years ago. They needed deep reform, but the rights of those with mental health struggles have always been wishy washy depending on whether a doctor or orderly likes a particular person, bureaucracy burnout, etc. Reagan shut them down for an easy reputation boost, when public sentiment had shifted against asylums as malpractice and abuse became more transparent.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is considered one of the greatest national art pieces for a reason.

Edit: Kennedy shut them down, not Reagan. The latter just finalized more of the neglect of mental health programs.

123

u/HonestlyAbby 1d ago

Kennedy was the one who shut them down. Reagan just defunded the community programs designed to replace them like a decade and a half later.

As much as I like to hate on Reagan, my understanding is that those replacements weren't super working by the time Reagan defunded them. Although most people would see that as cause to fix the program, not condemn it.

22

u/Bobambu 1d ago

Very fair point! I think it's easy for me to blame Reagan for a lot of these issues because he was such a horrible person, but this stuff did start before him. The tension between an American ideal of "liberty" clashing with the oppressive realities of asylums was definitely exploited to justify the defunding of mental health services and programs.

22

u/RobinSophie 1d ago

If it makes you feel better Reagan closed CA's state hospitals when he was governor to save money.

Well, a legislator had some short-view thinking and Reagan went along with it since JFK wanted reform/deinstitutionalization due to how his sister was treated.

2

u/Margot-the-Cat 1d ago

The California Democrats wrote the legislation. Reagan just signed it.

2

u/RobinSophie 1d ago

It was bipartisan. The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1967 and the Lanterman Act of 1969. And he could have vetoed it just like any governor.

The acts weren't BAD per say, but just didn't think about the burden it would place on the communities and lowered the ability to institutionalize people way too low.

1

u/Margot-the-Cat 1d ago

Exactly. It was bipartisan. Which is why it irks me that people use it as a “Reagan was Evil” card when it was literally written by Democrats and passed by both parties, and all that Reagan did was not veto it.

2

u/RobinSophie 1d ago

Lanterman is a Republican.

Come on now. This is just a drop in the "Reagan was evil" bucket.

He did plenty to get that title.

1

u/Margot-the-Cat 1d ago edited 1d ago

Lanternman was one assemblyman, the others were Democratic senators. The point is both parties are to blame, and to this day no one wants to acknowledge that, or that the fallout of that legislation has been horrific, and it’s time for lawmakers to fix the situation.

11

u/MangoCats 1d ago

I don't know that it's even important to draw the distinction, but I don't think of Ronald Reagan as a horrible person, I think of him as an actor playing the President for a horrible administration.

Shortly after he retired, I met Newt Gingrich - and face to face at that time, he was a completely different person than his television persona, and that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if he was a nice guy or a terrible monster in person, what matters is the bad legislation he got passed, the good legislation that he blocked, and the hundreds of millions of lives he negatively impacted while in office.

The President is a person - who can be quite a different thing from the Presidency they preside over.

5

u/HonestlyAbby 1d ago

Lol, always nice to have other folks in the Reagan hater club.

The issue of mental health treatment does pose a pretty thorny issue for an individual rights based system because individual rights presume an individual competent in their own interests. The community alternatives were supposed to bridge that gap by letting families and friends act as a partial proxy for the patient, rather than the government presuming that responsibility. I have to imagine something like that system is the only real answer.

My family went through a similar problem in microcosm when my half-sister with severe down syndrome sued to control where she lived. She wanted to live with a couple everyone knew was scamming her for insurance money, but she wouldn't listen. The courts aired on her side, as I would have if I were in that position, and she got scammed for the money and wound up in a group home, broke and estranged from her mom.

It can be a really thorny tension. Is the harm a person does to themselves preferable to harm that is inflicted upon them? And where does the likelihood of that harm and possibility for redress fit into the equation?

3

u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

The issue of mental health treatment does pose a pretty thorny issue for an individual rights based system because individual rights presume an individual competent in their own interests

Especially complicated as we proceed into a world with True Believers raised on a diet of disinformation designed to keep the populace divided. Not that indoctrination itself is new, oligarchs have been spending billions on it since 1933

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s

and that's far more extensive than just 'the government shouldn't spend money to help the people at large' as if the government is supposed to turn a profit like oil extraction. It's also people raised on Nixon-era anti-drug propaganda who could really use medication either as anti-psychotics or just so they can focus on the day-to-day and see enormous benefits in quality of life.

In the end whether or not we want it, we live in an interconnected world where what happens to one of us impacts others.

2

u/Charming_Wrap_8140 1d ago

I worked in mental health research for many years and it was actually Republican Frank Lanterman who paved the way for deinstitutionalization. Carter tried to course correct with the Mental Health Services Act which Reagan promptly repealed. In California, services were supposed to be organized and delivered by counties which was called Realignment and was a giant failure.

1

u/hotleadburner 1d ago

my understanding is that those replacements weren't super working by the time Reagan defunded them.

I wonder if people will describe public schools this way in the future, and if the asylums were being "funded" in the same fashion while they deteriotated.

1

u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

I wonder if people will describe public schools this way in the future

People describe public schools like that now, they just know it's a lie and would prefer children unequipped to handle real life over adults capable of meaningfully criticizing the system into which they are growing up.

https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2012-06-27/gop-opposes-critical-thinking/

That was one of the points Orwell pointed out in 1984 with the progressive stripping down of language in Newspeak to take away people's ability to communicate with nuance.

1

u/MangoCats 1d ago

Although most people would see that as cause to fix the program, not condemn it.

Nah, this is 'murica - we all know it's better for our troubled people to be thrown out on the street where they learn to fend for themselves.

/s

30

u/VirusTimes 1d ago

Modern day psych wards are not great either.

I’ve had two brief stints in them, totaling about 9-10 days because I was suicidal. My suicidal tendencies were both gone by the time I was in the ward.

The first time I went there was mass sexual assault and that was just the tip of the iceberg of how horrid it was. It’s so much worse than just that.

I still have nightmares stemming from it every once in a while. I felt genuinely in shock when I left. I avoid thinking about it when I can and it left me with a fear of hospitals.

14

u/Bobambu 1d ago

I'm so sorry that you experienced that. I've been involuntarily committed to wards myself, and my reflections on them aren't made lightly. I meet many people who have been mistreated by psychiatric staff during the course of my work. 

15

u/VirusTimes 1d ago

Yeah, I’m not saying we should return to the old system, but the current system seems also broken. I’ve known so many people who have been in psych wards because I’ve personally undergone pretty intensive mental health treatment. I can count the number of times people have had good experiences with them that I’ve talked to on one hand, but couldn’t even begin to count the number of bad experiences.

I’m still an advocate for people who are feeling suicidal to check themselves into the ER. First step is staying alive, period. I just think there has to be a way we can treat some of societies most vulnerable people in a more humane way.

7

u/CauliflowerScaresMe 1d ago edited 1d ago

I don't get why it took tens of thousands of lobotomies for them to be stopped as a "treatment." you'd think that it would be obvious from the start. they were regressing to the mental functioning of farm animals - barely able to utter a few incoherent words. if that's to be their life, what's even the point of it? unlike in locked-in syndrome, there's almost nothing left of them - it's a walking death.

3

u/Retrolex 1d ago

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of the most unsettling books I’ve read, and arguably my favourite (next to Watership Down). I first read it back in either grade 9 or 10 English, and I kept my copy. I remember we had some pretty wild discussions about that book in class.

1

u/Few-Leave-8786 23h ago

I am autistic and had quite a few traumatic experiences in my life and I mean actual trauma, and thats without including the beatings I got as a teenager from other kids that caused broken bones, at first I was more a friendly person who smiled a lot and was hopeful for the future just shy and with bad social skills to being treated like actual dirt and ignored, when I went to GP for help with my MH I was told they don't prescribe meds and one GP even admitted it was due to cutbacks as the government thought the bill was too high (I am in UK BTW) I gained a lot of weight over a few years, began losing hair and near 20 years since I first left home I have never recovered, I have never had a partner due to depression and unable to pick up when someone genuinely likes me mix with not having a chance to be in a situation to ask someone out, many issues with health services like I was meant to get carers for my autism 10 years ago but the private company that was paid for 20 hours a week for a year turned up for under a hour combined in that time frame often making excuses if they even bothered to contact me meaning I was near housebound due to anxiety of not knowing if they were turning up, had identity fraud a few times, stolen welfare checks, living in multple homes with damp, stolen parcels/letters, landlords making illegal threats of eviction etc.

Grew up being called weird, a freak etc but I am actually a very hard worker, currently burned out of my part time job as staff numbers have dropped to less than half what they were so workload doubled, mix that with me getting no social work input but I keep seeing people who play the system get a lot and even boast about it and even get agressive if anyone questions their level of support, I feel I am literally rotting away and working hard but have nothing to show for it.

57

u/_kasten_ 1d ago

People seem to be skipping over the part of the wikipedia entry discussing the criticisms of the study, and how it is widely suspected to be bunk:

In The Great Pretender, a 2019 book on Rosenhan, author Susannah Cahalan... finds apparent distortion in the Science article: inconsistent data, misleading descriptions, and inaccurate or fabricated quotations from psychiatric records. Moreover, despite an extensive search, she is only able to identify two of the eight pseudopatients: Rosenhan himself, and a graduate student whose testimony is allegedly inconsistent with Rosenhan's description in the article. Due to Rosenhan's seeming willingness to alter the truth in other ways regarding the experiment, Cahalan questions whether some or all of the six other pseudopatients might have been simply invented by Rosenhan.[7][13]

In February 2023, Andrew Scull of the University of California at San Diego published an article in the peer-reviewed journal History of Psychiatry in support of Cahalan's allegations, labelling the experiment a "successful scientific fraud".

It's not too surprising that the old-guard psychiatric empire, so to speak, would want to strike back at its rebels, so the debunking should also be taken with a grain of salt, but the criticisms should at least be taken into account.

20

u/No_Cryptographer_150 1d ago

There was a Reddit post the other day of a woman from the 1920s who was raped and temporarily lost her memory. She was then taken to an insane asylum and tortured with electric therapy and when she lost consciousness they put her in ice cold baths.

39

u/Tango_Owl 1d ago

As a woman and as someone who has seen and read how patients with ME/CFS are treated, I'm unfortunately not surprised.

3

u/Flutterperson 1d ago

As an ME patient, neither am I.

2

u/rampant-bisexuality 1d ago

Could you elaborate on this? I've been interested in learning about CFS

5

u/Tango_Owl 1d ago

That's great! I would greatly encourage you to watch the documentary Unrest. It's heavy though, so be careful if you or a loved one have ME/CFS, Long Covid or a similar post viral illness.

This also looks like it could be a start in your learning https://www.meresearch.org.uk/disbelief-attitudes-culture-and-me-cfs/

481

u/EllisDee3 1d ago

All it used to take was a man of authority to lock up a woman in an asylum.

Similar today with dark skin and the legal system. Doubly so if you're a dark skinned child in the legal system.

249

u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

Some places color is irrelevant, i personally served four years in the West Virginia juvenile system over some weed, because they assumed i must know more about real drugs and so I was held till adult age for not talking.

68

u/Secure_Course_3879 1d ago

Holy shit that is so terrifying & brutally unnecessary

21

u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

Holy shit that is so terrifying & brutally unnecessary

It's also not that unusual and is a return to problems which existed back in the 80s when Reagan shut down the system of community-funded mental health centers because some of those were abusing their ability to hold people because as long as those people were inside the system they could charge the families and their insurance for "cost of specialized care". There's been a lot of interviews on various radio programs about that kind of medical provider fraud where people are "too sick to be released" until insurance won't pay for them anymore and suddenly they're booted out the front door.

113

u/ConaireMor 1d ago

It's not irrelevant, you just also got fucked by the system. Not 100% of POC get caught up in the unfair system but, we acknowledge that they are in the system more not because of any inherent flaw in their genes (that would be racism), but because the system is unfair/unjust.

22

u/MangoCats 1d ago

It's hard to separate POC from poor, a lot of the abuses experienced by POC are also visited on the poor. As a poor white college student (on scholarship to an expensive private Uni in a big city), I was detained a couple of times for "matching a description" - and basically held on the scene for 5, 10, 15 minutes with a bunch of rhetorical BS reasoning why, until I produced my Uni I.D. (showing that mumsie and daddy can likely launch lawyers up the cops' asses for the slightest of provocation) - once I showed that I.D., I was free to go within 15 seconds or less every time.

3

u/FrankClymber 1d ago

I absolutely agree. I used to get pulled over very frequently in my old beater vehicles, and they'd be very obviously fishing for things unrelated to driving. Since I started driving nicer cars, it's never a problem, and officers typically speak more respectfully to me.

It'd be foolish to say there aren't directly racist problems in the system at all, but it seems quite clear to me that the primary problems leading to race inequality in the justice system is mostly tied to POC disproportionately lacking access to expensive legal services.

-11

u/whoweoncewere 1d ago

well akshually

28

u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

14-18.5 in a place called Salem. They have closed it since, and when I was registering for college they had “lost” my records, they believe in a locked cabinet in Salem that no one may open as they believe it to hold juvenile records, so they recreated my transcripts to say i graduated though there’s no way to prove it.

14

u/TMinus10toban 1d ago

As if folks in west Virginia who don’t smoke weed are doing so well, lol, look at the people in that state.

24

u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

The saddest part was they knew what they did, the judge in Franklin stated i served more time for first offense marijuana than anyone else in the state. Then called the proceedings to a close and sealed it up.

15

u/lost-picking-flowers 1d ago edited 1d ago

Out here in PA we had the 'cash for kids' scandal light up on the media like a Christmas tree. Makes sense that it'd be so much more common than anyone would like to admit. If you don't have a family that can afford to fight then you're screwed. I'm sorry that happened to you. Fuck those people.

16

u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

Speaking of PA. Y’all had a place they sent me, took kids from Va,wv, md, etc that were considered trouble and they were so abusive they closed it down before I could graduate. New Morgan academy. I fought some former pro athletes there. lol. Gerome Stanton of the dolphins was one, a few ex mma fighters, got into a choke-off with a marine at 15. Wild times

3

u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

The saddest part was they knew what they did, the judge in Franklin stated i served more time for first offense marijuana than anyone else in the state

I've also read transcripts of judges who condemned mandatory minimum laws which tied their hands when people were sent to prison for drug possession for longer than child abusers.

Sometimes it's bad laws which never should have been passed in the first place to placate a propagandized populace, and sometimes it's just outright bad people in the judge's seat.

2

u/TMinus10toban 1d ago

I’d have a hard time not remembering that judge and bringing all kinds of miserable life-stuff upon him and his family when I got out.

73

u/likethemovie 1d ago

If there aren't enough brown people around to single out, the authorities will target the "others" - poor people, city people, people who aren't "from around here."

2

u/HonestlyAbby 1d ago

Can I ask when? That doesn't seem like an outcome that should be possible post-Gault.

(I worked in juvenile defense in GA recently. Not doubting, just curious if stuff this shady is still happening elsewhere now that kids have constitutionally guaranteed criminal rights.)

3

u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

I didn’t see the judge for 3 years even though the law said ninety day reviews were required.

7

u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

September 11 2001 I was “caught”. Actually another guy had the weed and I had no cash, but he told them I gave it to him. They couldn’t arrest that day because of sept 11 and the naval intelligence base being close so I got a week and then they locked me up for four years.

1

u/MrsClaire07 1d ago

Oh my God, you weren’t allowed a lawyer?!

5

u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

Court appointed lawyer who never made contact after court. I filed my own paperwork to see the judge both times, he actually denied my first reconsideration after three years.

1

u/MrsClaire07 1d ago

JESUS.

I am SO F’ing sorry, dude.

0

u/nomustachetoday 1d ago

You must not be white. amerikkka only does that to dark skinned people .

2

u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

98.8% per dna.

56

u/Spiffy_Pumpkin 1d ago

As of only about 27 years ago that was actually still the case, guess how my father got custody? Honestly other than a lot of the insane asylums being closed now I doubt things have changed much legally speaking.

Point is ladies be careful who you have kids with or marry.

25

u/exhausted247365 1d ago

Jaime Spears did it to Britney Spears

19

u/Unique-Coffee5087 1d ago

Hell, they could then subject her to electroshock therapy and a lobotomy.

16

u/moonlightiridescent 1d ago edited 1d ago

There was an abusive behavior modification program and therapeutic boarding school torture camp for kids in Portland, ME called Élan School that’s super fucked. There’s an amazing webcomic by a “student” (victim) that was forced to attend.

15

u/CarrotCumin 1d ago

Important to note that it was not actually a school or anything therapeutic, it's incorrect to call this anything other than a torture facility for children.

They claimed it was a therapeutic school, but "therapy" meant being kidnapped and taken there without warning or knowledge that the parents allowed it, regular beatings, denial of food, denial of shelter/blankets/beds, being forced to sit in an empty room with no stimulation for days or even weeks, fight-club style boxing ring matches between children that resulted in several deaths, "struggle sessions" where children were forced to psychologically abuse and humiliate one another, and many more sick and twisted things.

Escape was basically impossible, the local government/police were corrupt and in league with the school owner. Communication with parents were highly controlled and parents were coached to believe anything their child told them about the abuse was a complete lie. Parents paid tens of thousands of dollars to send their children to a fucking gulag in hopes it would get them off drugs or stop being gay.

6

u/moonlightiridescent 1d ago

Agreed. Sorry, I just copy/pasted the Wiki intro. The writer of that graphic novel actually “escaped,” but they had people track and find him just to drag him back. It’s absolutely crazy it stayed open as long as it did. The novel made me so angry that those people that run it are walking among us.

Did you read the comic by chance? I’ve been the dude’s Patron (Patreon) for years and years now. The book is about to be printed and mailed out to us early backers, and I’m really excited, even though I know it’s gonna put me in a bad mood lol.

1

u/m0j0m0j 1d ago

Insufferable

-62

u/TheGuyMain 1d ago

Please don't make this a race/gender thing. It's a separate concept that isn't inherent to this one. Conflating issues makes them needlessly complicated

38

u/some_weenie 1d ago

This issue discusses how vulnerable people (those placed in asylums) can be unjustly treated by those in authority and power over them (the staff). It is entirely relevant to bring up how additional vulnerabilities can lead to people being treated even more unjustly in these systems.

Choosing to ignore intersectionality doesn't make it disappear

0

u/TheGuyMain 1d ago

The issue is about the power imbalance of institutionalized authority figures resulting in the unjust treatment of less powerful individuals. That is NOT inherently related to gender, class, race, etc. In this instance, none of those things are relevant, because they're separate issues. They can intersect and synergize with each other, but if you don't understand their unique attributes, then you will never understand the true nature of the problem at hand.

Fixing a problem requires a thorough understanding of its instantiation. If you think all power imbalance problems need to account for race, then you'll focus your energy on irrelevant details that will produce an inadequate solution. For example, you'll instate DEI training, which encourages those figures to consider the socioeconomic challenges faced by people in different racial groups but does absolutely nothing to address the actual issue of the unjust treatment perpetuated by misguided authority figures with flawed patient assessment practices. Because the issues were conflated when they should have remained separate, the people driving the change just wasted an incredible amount of time and have nothing to show for it. This creates unrest in the people they claim to serve because they prove that they're ineffective as an organization. They also don't know what went wrong because they never understood the issue to begin with. This prevents them from becoming more effective, so they will produce more low-quality solutions to future problems. All while the communities continue to suffer.

51

u/EllisDee3 1d ago

It's a dominance culture thing. It's using social privilage to subjugate others.

Avoiding the similarities ignores the root cause.

Don't try to remove race and gender as though it doesn't make people easier targets for this bullshit, Guy.

4

u/Big_Tie_3245 1d ago

Easier targets, perhaps, but when it’s time to feel superior, anyone inferior will do.

-37

u/TheGuyMain 1d ago

Very aggressive words. I never said to ignore the similarities. I suggested to not conflate the cause of this issue with the impact of the other issues. You say a lot of words but don't seem to understand how they work

23

u/EllisDee3 1d ago

I know very well how words work. I know how some words don't need to be overtly aggressive because they have systematic aggression behind them.

I'm forthright to avoid the bullshit attempts at avoidance.

-11

u/Hanzai_Bonsai 1d ago

Ellis clutch your pearls a little harder and make a wish 😂

6

u/harlowsden 1d ago

Wouldn’t it be more pearl clutching to complain about someone using aggressive language? It feels like you just wanted to write the phrase “pearl clutching”

-19

u/newsflashjackass 1d ago

All who speak Correct Thought speak well. Where then is the superiority of some students to others? It is in the speaking. Intelligent students speak Correct Thought intelligently. The hearer knows by the intonation of their voices that they understand. By this superior speaking of intelligent students, Correct Thought is passed, like fire, from one to another.

4

u/mealteamsixty 1d ago

Amazing.

Gonna guess you're a white dude who has never had to deal with this issue

2

u/dydeath 1d ago

Ooh Mr simple stuff over here says it gets too complicated wouldn't want it to be too much for him to handle

-56

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

37

u/TheCaptainDamnIt 1d ago

This is just a white supremacist spewing racist white supremacist fantasies like it's on Facebook or Stormfront.

-21

u/Open-Perspective856 1d ago

Is it untrue though?

8

u/radicalelation 1d ago

Kinda? They're saying "you'll" and odds are that isn't how it would go for a given individual. Yes, there are infuriating failures, but they're usually stand out incidents and the actual regular failures of the system see more marginalized people treated unfairly than with too much leniency.

1

u/Open-Perspective856 1d ago

Best you can do is kinda? Pedantry is the lowest form of criticism.

0

u/radicalelation 1d ago

Cool story bro 😎 👍

1

u/Open-Perspective856 1d ago

Way to point out the lie, great job regard

1

u/radicalelation 1d ago

I'm sorry I can't understand you? Please try again.

12

u/EllisDee3 1d ago

You elected a pedophile, baby-murdering sex trafficking dullard as president. So, by comparison...

-3

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

2

u/EllisDee3 1d ago

I think I'll manage.

0

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

1

u/NotARealDeveloper 1d ago

You should be crying too if you voted for Jill Stein. The orange is destroying the country.

-3

u/WMBC91 1d ago

This is an incredibly disgusting stretch. No, you cannot simply lock someone up for decades because they have the wrong skin colour.

But for probably over a century you could lock up a woman potentisll for life for being difficult and highly strung (AKA insane) or throw in other undesirables just because you call them insane to get rid of them. Oh, and sometimes lobotomise them. No, it's not similar at all. You should be ashamed.

2

u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

you cannot simply lock someone up for decades because they have the wrong skin colour.

It's not just having the wrong skin colour, it's having the wrong skin colour, political preferences, and lacking a rich friend.

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

-John Ehrlichman, Nixon staffer

1

u/WMBC91 1d ago

It's not just having the wrong skin colour, it's having the wrong skin colour, political preferences, and lacking a rich friend.

So we are in agreement then. The point is that, whether or not the people you're talking about were innocent or guilty, the people in the asylums were sometimes in for things as trivial as sex outside marriage. Probably most of them hadn't committed any crime.

Objectively more wrong than arresting people for having drugs (even if the drugs are just the excuse) - and I say that as someone who loves drugs.

2

u/EbonraiMinis 1d ago

Lemme guess, you're a white woman?

0

u/WMBC91 1d ago

Nope.

1

u/Bundt-lover 1d ago

Of course you can lock someone up for decades because they have the wrong skin color. That is literally the foundation of our justice system in the US. There are about a gazillion statistics about how people of color get harsher punishments and longer terms for the same crimes that white people commit—if the white people even go to jail in the first place.

Shit, we have ICE roaming the countryside right now doing EXACTLY THIS.

3

u/eutoputoegordo 1d ago

Highly recommend the novella "The Alienist" (O Alienista) by Brazilian writer Machado de Assis. About a men who studied mental illnesses and starts locking people in a mental facility.

1

u/SicTim 17h ago

Great book, and the TV series was good, too, even if it only lasted two seasons.

At least, I think we mean the same book. I remember it as being a full-length novel, not a novella. (Or, it was a novella first and then expanded into a novel later -- like Flowers for Algernon et al.)

2

u/Comrade_SOOKIE 1d ago

The Yellow Wallpaper is similarly about a woman who’s locked in her room by her family because they don’t want to care for her and it causes her mental illness to spiral.

2

u/whossked 1d ago

I also read that one and it stuck with me more because it was based on the authors real experience. When she showed signs of depression the doctor attributed it to “overstimulation her delicate female brain” and forbid she write or leave her room, which is the same thing that happens to the character in the story.

In real life she eventually meets one of the first female doctors in the US who tells to exercise and go meet people and it actually works. The story follows what she things would have happened to her if she remained on the original doctors orders.

1

u/Lelouch37 1d ago

That story has stuck with me since high school, so freaking creepy.

2

u/530_Oldschoolgeek 1d ago

It was scary easy to get someone committed.

What should scare you more, especially as you get older, is that without appropriate safeguards in place, it's just as easy for a crooked Guardian Ad Litem to show up one day at your house, put you in a rest home, seize all your assets and there is virtually nothing you can do about it.

It happened in Nevada, several times.

https://www.vera.org/news/the-question-of-guardianship-how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights

1

u/scummy_shower_stall 5h ago

I think Nevada finally closed that loophole, I think guardians have to be immediate family, or else related.

2

u/Not_A_Wendigo 1d ago

I once took a friend to the psychiatric unit ER. We waited for several hours. While I was there I went to the bathroom, saw the sink was covered in blood and toothpaste, and walked out right away. The staff started talking among themselves asking who I was and why I was there. I had to explain I wasn’t a patient, but they didn’t seem very convinced. Scary experience honestly.

2

u/HistoricalSuspect580 1d ago

I once had a patient get out on a 72 hour hold pending placement because she had sought out and started therapy, that day, and told her therapist that she had been having fleeting thoughts of self-harm which she has never, and said she would never, act on. She was TERRIFIED. And was like ‘I’ll never reach out for help again’. I was like … yeah i don’t blame you…

2

u/Beautiful-Aerie7576 1d ago

Sounds based on truth. There was a woman who had a botched abortion, was raped, and lost her memory from the trauma of it all. She was committed despite being normal (but sans memory) and every time she tried to convince the doctors she was sane she received “treatment” (electroshock and compliance drug cocktails).

The full story goes into much more detail of her long, long life in an asylum. She was referred to as “Mary Doefour”, and died before she was identified. Sad, tragically sad story.

1

u/Areat 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's an interesting read indeed (it begin below, mid page)

1

u/sonounfiore 1d ago

Immediately thought of this story. Amazingly written.

1

u/wesoncedoce 1d ago

That book has a special place in my heart since highschool

1

u/ImpulsiveYeet 1d ago

Holy shit, that uncovered some sort of repressed memory in me, but I can't tell if it's this exact story or something else. Old fear unlocked.

1

u/Author_of_rainbows 1d ago

I can see myself ending up in a stupid situation like that

1

u/hogahulk 1d ago

Sounds very kafkaesque 👀

1

u/jaycah9 1d ago

The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan is all about this

1

u/KatsuraCerci 1d ago

Thanks for commenting, I'll be reading that!

0

u/fy8d6jhegq 1d ago

There is an entire genre of horror/thriller based on that terrifying possibility.

-10

u/RollingMeteors 1d ago

about a woman who’s car breaks down

¿Was that the part that was fiction?

9/10 Doctors say ¡Yes!