I stumbled onto a site that tells an incredible story: the story of patients at Willard Asylum in New York state. Some of the stories are absolutely heartbreaking – the Japanese sailor who got lost in NY while in port and was wrongly institutionalized for more than 30 years because no one could understand him and thought he acted strange, or the former nun who was institutionalized and everyone thought she was lying about being a nun, or the woman whose children never visited her, though her daughter-in-law worked at the hospital. More than 50,000 people passed through Willard, and nearly half of them died there.
Go to the site. Read the stories. Remember the people whose lives were lost (literally) when they shouldn’t have been. Listen to the stories in the “Recollections” section.
I dare you to go through the site and not feel horror and heartbreak (especially for those who spent 50+ years at Willard).
