The film 'Mental Hospital' shows life inside a 1950s Oklahoma psychiatric facility
Discussed in great detail here in a great article by
Actually, Fred is a character in “Mental Hospital,” a film produced in 1953 that shows what life was like for patients in Oklahoma’s mental health institutions.
From what I can gather, the film was produced by the University of Oklahoma for the Oklahoma State Department of Health and the state mental health agency.
Interestingly enough, the film was produced the same year that the agency now known as the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services was formed.
The agency was established through the Mental Health Law of 1953, although publicly supported services to Oklahomans with mental illness date back to early statehood.
“Until the mid-1960s, the primary means to treat mental illness was institutionalization in large state hospitals. On an average day in 1960, nearly 6,400 Oklahomans were in the state’s mental hospitals,” according to the agency.
The film “Mental Hospital” gives us a glimpse of how mental illness was viewed and treated 61 years ago.
I should note: Over the past several years, treatments have changed, and there’s more focus on understanding mental health issues as medical conditions.
Viewers follow Fred from the day he’s admitted to discharged, including the “insulin shock therapy” that he receives to treat his schizophrenia. This happens about 12 minutes into the film.
The preferred name for this treatment was “insulin coma treatment,” according to this long historical guide on the treatment. By 1962, most of these units had closed throughout the U.S.
Once stable, Fred is offered a job as a grounds keeper.
"What a difference it makes,” the narrator says, “At last, Fred can be outside once more, working, enjoying the sun and the seasons."
Not long after Fred gets his job at the hospital campus, wife Betty and his friend George come to visit him.
At 17:24, we see a psychiatrist talking with Betty and George.
"It's not too long 'til the psychiatrist decides that Fred can try it for a while at home,” the narrator says. “He talks with Betty and with George, helps them to understand that they too have vital roles to play in aiding Fred to adjust successfully to the world outside."
This is something that so many family members say gets left out of present-day treatment.
In interviews I’ve had, people have said they’ve been quoted federal health care privacy laws and left out of their loved one's discharge plan. Sometimes, their family members are discharged without them knowing.
By the end of the film, Fred’s doctor gives him a cigarette, and he collects the crafts he has made at the facility. We learn that Fred has been there for six months.
"If I'd come here sooner, I might have been out in three,” Fred says. “But all I could think about was fear, the way everyone was all against me, how much I hated George. How wrong I was. Or no, not wrong — sick. And now that I'm well again, I can't help feeling just a little sad, the way you always feel when you leave a place where you've lived, learned and grown, but I am well, and I know it."Of course, they will try to paint a positive pretty face on all of this. Even though this was a period of history renowned for their failures. (I'm looking at you Lobotomy)
