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The Ones We Sent Away
11–20 of 76 posts
Re: The Ones We Sent Away
#12My dad had an Uncle Charles (probably born around 1910) who didn't live with the family. He was what was called a "spastic" -- probably cerebral palsy. The family (out in the bush) couldn't look after him so he was committed to an institution. My dad visited him as a kid. Uncle Charles had never been taught to read or write but he was an excellent chess player and (like his brother, my grandfather) could do complex a…
I know a guy with CP, who is quite rich. The thing about CP, is that it usually only affects the body (sometimes, with deadly results), but the mind is often quite sharp.
This guy was (and still is) a serial entrepreneur. Really sharp. I would not be surprised to find out that he has used his visible handicap to lull people into thinking he was easy meat.
Re: The Ones We Sent Away
#13What a story. I got to the end a complete, sobbing wreck. To send your own children away to abominable, putrid institutions at the advice of doctors is something I can't even imagine. And it really wasn't that long ago.
Definitely. I like to play a game sometimes... more or less based on the idea that bloodletting and rectal feeding and wound probing were medical "best practices" of the past and now seem so obviously ludicrous to us now. So I like to look at something that I think is obvious, some "best practice of our time", and wonder how it might in 100 or 150 years suddenly seem totally ludicrous to posterity with the revelation…
Mental health care is still in the dark ages and the medicine we have are mostly crappy. I just got off SSRIs - the most prescribed mental health medication. It messes with your whole body since serotonin has hundreds of different uses in the body. And we don’t know why it works! It’s basically bloodletting or eating the village healers herbs
Re: The Ones We Sent Away
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely. I like to play a game sometimes... more or less based on the idea that bloodletting and rectal feeding and wound probing were medical "best practices" of the past and now seem so obviously ludicrous to us now. So I like to look at something that I think is obvious, some "best practice of our time", and wonder how it might in 100 or 150 years suddenly seem totally ludicrous to posterity with the revelation…
Mental health care is still in the dark ages and the medicine we have are mostly crappy. I just got off SSRIs - the most prescribed mental health medication. It messes with your whole body since serotonin has hundreds of different uses in the body. And we don’t know why it works! It’s basically bloodletting or eating the village healers herbs
Indeed, I've seen multiple people end up with their lives completely and utterly detailed, as well as wrecking their family and fiends (yours truly included) and a result of such prescriptions. I don't understand how this goes totally ignored by the public at large.
Re: The Ones We Sent Away
#15Re: The Ones We Sent Away
#16>the most commonly cited rationale for institutionalization in those years was
>that neurotypical siblings would suffer—from shame, from attention starvation—
>if their disabled siblings were kept at home.
There is alternative perspective of "Young Carers" or "きょうだい児" in Japanese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_carer
I don't think it was a easy choice then, or easy choice now.
Seems to be a relevant subreddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/siblingsupport
Re: The Ones We Sent Away
#17What a story. I got to the end a complete, sobbing wreck. To send your own children away to abominable, putrid institutions at the advice of doctors is something I can't even imagine. And it really wasn't that long ago.
Definitely. I like to play a game sometimes... more or less based on the idea that bloodletting and rectal feeding and wound probing were medical "best practices" of the past and now seem so obviously ludicrous to us now. So I like to look at something that I think is obvious, some "best practice of our time", and wonder how it might in 100 or 150 years suddenly seem totally ludicrous to posterity with the revelation…
> A major theoretical discovery of K="computers can't do XYZ" would be another such thing for all of us who in the modern world chase these fads about computers reinventing finance or art or the modern economy. You'd have people in the year 2100 saying "can you believe only 75 years ago, everyone would just believe that computers were magically going to fix X and then they wouldn't and everyone would suddenly believe they would now fix Y and then they wouldn't and then Z and they wouldn't and and and... straight faced rationalist businesspeople acting like 'Tech-Jesus is coming' on August 1st, oh sorry it's September 1st, sorry -- October 1st? November? Maybe in the coming year? well SURELY this decade."
This might be a higher-level thing that you mean given that I'm not sure it's something "provable" or "disprovable", but I'm constantly amazed how incredulous people are that I don't expect any car to be fully self-driving (like in the sense that there wouldn't even need to be a steering wheel and someone without a license could ride in it alone) any time in the next few decades. To be clear, I'm not claiming that it's something that _definitely_ won't happen, but I don't think it's super likely, whereas the vast majority of people I share this opinion with (even people with similarly high levels of technical expertise) seem to think that it's almost a foregone conclusion that this will be solved within maybe 30 years.
Re: The Ones We Sent Away
#18What a story. I got to the end a complete, sobbing wreck. To send your own children away to abominable, putrid institutions at the advice of doctors is something I can't even imagine. And it really wasn't that long ago.
Definitely. I like to play a game sometimes... more or less based on the idea that bloodletting and rectal feeding and wound probing were medical "best practices" of the past and now seem so obviously ludicrous to us now. So I like to look at something that I think is obvious, some "best practice of our time", and wonder how it might in 100 or 150 years suddenly seem totally ludicrous to posterity with the revelation…
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Re: The Ones We Sent Away
#19I knew a lady who was born with very complex spina bifida. Her parents were wealthy and had very manicured lives. They signed her over to an institution at birth. She grew up with people with profound mental retardation. She receive no education. At 20 she was found by an uncle who always suspected something had happened that was not being disclosed. He began to visit her and teach her to read. He explained that she had a right to leave and helped her start her life. In a couple of years she was able to enter University and graduated despite the lack of any education before 20. She developed a friendship with a lady with CP and they were housemates when I met them. She died of pneumonia several years ago due to constricted lung size. She was a lovely friend.
Re: The Ones We Sent Away
#20I worked in a facility like this for the first 5 years of my career Many of the clients are very aware they’ve been abandoned. Especially so because there are a select few who do get regular family visits. It was crushingly depressing to work holidays and have the regular crew of kids that never went home or had visitors. If you work with adults it was significantly worse, many of them had no visitors for literal dec…
Can you tell me what these facilities are called? I volunteer on all holidays and I’d be glad to keep folks company or help out the staff.