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Subject is exactly medicine

IV-"Christmas Means Joyless Tension in Locked Ward" - Frank Sutherland - Nashville Tennessean

There was little joy to the world of Central State Psychiatric Hospital Christmas Day.  Tempers got shorter and the patients stopped talking with each other; most of us knew we would not be going home for Christmas. My Christmases have always been joyful celebrations with family and friends.  I never hope to know another time of sadness like Dec. 24-25, 1973.  I posed as a patient at Central State for 31 days, including Christmas, and I watched with interest the real patients around me.  As the day of "joy" approached, I watched their spirits diminish.  This was a time when most of my fellow patients felt their absolute isolation from the real world. About 80% of the patients in my building could not go home for Christmas. Of those who stayed, only a handful had visitors.  This angered me.  "Where in hell are their relatives?" I asked myself. Some members of the staff made attempts to brighten the holidays, but the rejoicing never occured with any intensity.

The Nashville Tennessean  1974-01-23

II-"Reporter Finds Hospital Stay "Demoralizing" - Frank Sutherland - Nashville Tennessean

It is impossible for a person who is sane to feel the same way about entering a psychiatric hospital as a person who is mentally ill. But the feelings of apprehension and loneliness uncertainty and even fear which I had in Central State Psychiatric Hospital cannot be escaped by the sane or mentally ill. Any human being must feel those emotions. As I entered the hospital Dec. 14, I had to wonder, does the mentally ill inmate really know what is happening around him? If he does, he realizes that the hospital is unaccredited and that more than half of its doctors are unlicensed in tennessee.   While I had the advantage of knowing this before I entered the hospital, all of us living there knew the physical facilities and the general atmosphere of the hospital are demoralizing and depressing.   I entered the hospital mentally healthy with a task of observing what happens there, but the buildings, the system and the people worked on my mind, constantly pulling me down.  It was an emotional drain just to exist there. I found that not only was I working to report what goes on there. I was working to survive.  

The Nashville Tennessean  1974-01-21