– by Wood Institute travel grantee Sharlene Walbaum, Ph.D.*
Imagine this: it is 1750. You work a farm near Philadelphia. Your child, now a young adult, hears disturbing voices, is suspicious and fearful, and sometimes lashes out violently. It is terrible and sad. You feel the weight of responsibility to your child and to others. What are your choices? There are no emergency rooms, mental health care clinics, psychotherapists, or antipsychotic medications.
Families and communities were responsible for someone experiencing mental illness, although the ways in which that obligation was met seem cruel today. If the person was dangerous to self or others, he or she might live chained in a shed or a hole dug in the earthen floor of the kitchen that was covered with a grating. Or, he or she might face a potentially worse fate – jail or the almshouse. If danger was not a concern, he or she might be left to wander out of doors and depend on the kindness of neighbors. Confinement, incarceration, homelessness – how different are options today?