Henry Idema: Should we bring back state mental hospitals?

EDITOR'S NOTE: The views and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not of Ottawa News Network.

As part of my training for the ministry in the Episcopal Church, I did a year of clinical pastoral education (CPE) at Boston State Hospital. At one time, Boston State was one of the largest state hospitals in the country, and it once had over 5,000 patients.

I was there in 1976, and lived on the hospital grounds and ate my meals with the patients. Surprisingly, the food was pretty good. I had many interesting conversations during these meals, even with murderers. They taught me a lot about human psychology at meal time and on the wards, which was the point of the training because churches are filled with people who struggle mentally, and clergy are at the forefront of much of the mental illness in our society.

During my year at Boston State, it was obvious that this large state hospital was being downsized. In fact, this was happening all across the country. One reason was to save money. Another reason was the belief mental hospitals were cruel and patients were abused with shock treatment and lobotomies. It was thought that community mental health was better, but it was underfunded.

When I returned to Grand Rapids to work in a church in Sparta, I volunteered weekly to work in a soup kitchen on Division Avenue in Grand Rapids, underneath the Guiding Light Mission. It was called Capital Lunch.

In a short period of time, the soup line was overwhelmed with the mental patients who had once been in our state hospital system, now shut down. The violence increased. The Roman Catholic nun I worked with said to me, "Let me break up the fights."

The homeless crisis really began in this period. The mental hospitals let out their patients, and most had no place to go.

I do not have data to support my view that the gun violence and crime we have experienced in recent years is directly correlated with the loss of our state mental hospital system. However, I believe this to be so.

Many families who have a member struggling with a mental illness have no place to turn for help, no affordable place for this person to be hospitalized and treated.

Now add into the equation the isolation of so many today, and  their obsession with social media. Contributing to mental illness in our society is the decline of church communities and other forms of social interaction. Freud saw that happening in the early 20th century and linked the increase in mental illness with religious decline. That link has only intensified in all the decades that followed.

At Boston State, the patients had community, treatment, a clean bed, good food and chaplains like me to sit down with for regular discussions. We also conducted church services.

One way of thinking about mental illness is this: Like a car, we all have engines, and those engines are our sexual drives, our aggression, our hate and love — our passions. Most of us have brakes that we apply to check our engines and keep the engine under control. However, some of us lack such brakes to control our engines or the brakes completely fail. Then those energies in our engines get unleashed upon society.

Our state hospitals once housed hundreds of thousands of people whose brakes had failed. in one way or another. Now they are among us, and most do not get adequate care or decent housing and food.

After each mass murder, our politicians tell us the problem is not access to guns but a lack of mental health care. OK. Will these same  politicians allocate enough money to build safe, state of the art state mental hospitals? I doubt it.  

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Let me close with this insight from the famous psychologist William James, who said this over a hundred years ago: "Man is simply the most formidable of all the beasts of prey, and, indeed, the only one that preys systematically on its own species."

As  I said, most of us can control our drives and passions, that engine I mentioned. But we need state mental hospitals, generously funded, to help those among us whose brakes have failed and need help controlling their hatreds, anger, sexual passions, and feelings of inadequacy.

Boston State Hospital was eventually shut down and turned into a condo development, as was the state hospital in Traverse City.

— Henry Idema lives in Grand Haven. He can be reached at henryidema3@yahoo.com.