Talk:Austin State Hospital

Some Personal Recollections

I worked at the Austin State Hospital in 1966 - 1968 while attending the University of Texas, a common experience for generations of students. I can't cite any references for my own experiences so I'm adding them here.

It was a common thing for students to work at the Hospital, usually on the graveyard shift. At that time, at least, there were three eight hour shifts: 7AM to 3PM, 3PM to 11PM, and 11PM to 7AM. Many students preferred 3 to 11. During the summer of 1966 I started on the day shift and changed to the graveyard when classes began. My day shift was on a three story rectangular building holding wards 21, 22, and 23. I was usually on 22. When we changed to graveyards there was usually a stint on the Medical and Surgical ward in the hospital...the fourth or fifth floor, I forget which, where people were dying. My permanent graveyard shift was ward 7 in a building holding wards 6, 7, and 8. This was an L shaped building.

The two ward buildings seem to have been demolished; they were stone and concrete structures with barred windows and heavy wooden doors, built in the early 1900s. Both had restrooms, showers and laundry rooms, seclusion rooms in which to put agitated patients, offices, and caged porches. Garbage cans, usually the type people had in their yards, were on every ward. The building with 21-23 had large dormlike rooms for the patients' cheap metal framed beds, the other had a series of smaller rooms. There were TV rooms or TVs in dayrooms. The furniture was heavy, made of wood, too heavy to be picked up and thrown. The TV would usually be bolted down. The attendants carried rings of almost theatrically large keys which they passed to the next shift; the head attendant would count the narcotic type drugs to which only he had the key at the beginning of his shift. At night the attendant had to call the Hospital switchboard and give his name and ward number every hour.

There were separate wards for male and female patients, with only female personnel on the female wards except when some real muscle was needed. Patients who were allowed to be outside on the grounds could mingle, of course. A few incidents were recorded between retarded patients who weren't clever enough to hide.

Usually the patients would get up at about 7AM. They swept and mopped, jobs sometimes performed by those who preferred to. They would line up at the dutch doored office to get medications. Three times per day they lined up and were led to a lunch room and back. A couple of times per week they would get shaves, maybe haircuts. Around 10PM they went to bed.

When I started attendants wore white pants and shirts with black ties, and white oxford shoes. While I was there policy changed to street clothes. The hospital had an arrangement with some store or other -- I forget which one -- to sell them. More than, as I recall, two sick days required a doctor's excuse. A Dr. Hamer, across Guadalupe from the Hospital, would hand them out for a fee.

I remember a few of the other employees. As I recall, in the first building there was a Mr. Jordan, nurse technician, a Mr. Walton and Mr. Butler, who were in their 50s and were in charge of their shifts; they seemed to have some kind of rivalry dating from elementary school and lived in Georgetown. Walton's son also worked at the Hospital. Others I can picture mentally but no longer identify. In the second building a Mr. Barrett was the day shift head. A man named McAtee was on the 3-11 shift. A young personable fellow named Radley worked on ward 22. I recall another attendant named Koenig; the night supervisors were a man named Larvin and a female supervisor named, I think, Marzek. Of the psychiatrists I recall only Dr. Denny in the first building where I worked. It was said that doctors who couldn't pass state exams to practice medicine could be certified if they worked there a couple of years. The same supposedly applied to foreign doctors, at that time mainly from Cuba. Most of the career attendants seemed to have been country boys -- who were actually in their 50s and older. Some may have started during the Great Depression when jobs were scarce, but it's likely the Hospital wanted to hire physically strong men with black and white morals to handle patients in the days before powerful anti-psychotic drugs were developed. One person at least was pointed out to me as having worked at the Hospital for about 40 years and then committed himself when he retired. Calypsoparakeet 14:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

At the time I was there several treatment methods were used. There were persons who had had lobotomies, but the practice had by then been discontinued. Those who had them seemed a bit subdued and characterless but I can't be sure how much of that was due to the operation and how much to being institutionalized schizophrenics. Shock therapy was still used, though I never attended any actual applications. Persons who had it seemed dazed and gradually came around. They said they couldn't remember the actual shock or anything for some time afterwards. Strong anti-psychotic drugs were the standard treatment by the time I was there. Actually their purpose was as much to subdue people as help them. I asked some of the patients if they still heard voices and suffered other symptoms; they said they did but it didn't bother them when the medication was working. The main drug I remember is Thorazine, in pill and liquid form; others were Stelazine and Artane. Some patients also had to take anti-convulsants. These individuals had epilepsy or some other seizure disorder but were in some way -- retardation or whatever -- incapable of managing their lives. I recall one smallish fellow of bucolic background and maybe in his early thirties having fifteen or so siezures in a row while the professional attendant stood and watched with the victim's head resting a while on his shoes. Talk therapy was also used, but since most of my time was on the graveyard shift I saw little of it. One psychiatrist who treated teenagers believed their problems were cause by poverty. He said to allow them to somehow get booze and dope and engage in sex in the parking lots (on the hoods of employees cars at times) because he believed this would help them. What was termed occupational therapy was available. I'm guessing that this involved something like arts and crafts and maybe practical skills, but I never saw the actual classes or sessions. The idea was then shifting from institutionalization to returning the patient to the community. I wasn't working there when this was fully in effect, though I returned to Austin and saw some persons from the wards I'd worked on walking about town and riding the bus.

The patients' charts were kept (in brief versions)in a rolodex on the desk and in fuller versions in folders in file cabinets on the wards. We were supposed to familiarize ourselves with them, and actually the college students had a good deal of fun laughing at the psychoanalytic drivel in many. The attendants made notes in the charts, usually consisting of a stock phrase: "Eats good. Sleeps good." Too much information by attendants might cause problems with administration. There were also large green ledger books that each shift used to record routine matters and any unusual events on the ward. What eventually became of these records I don't know, though there were reputedly cellars and tunnels full of them under the Hospital.

Visiting relatives would spend time with patients in some room of other for that purpose. In the building where I spent the few day months I worked this was in the basement. They would present the ward with a form filled out in the office and, I suppose, by the psychiatrist, and give it to us. One of us would conduct them to the room and leave for the hour or so. Some had passes to go to town with relatives. Patients sometimes escaped despite the counting in the morning, at mealtimes, when receiving medication, and in the evening. They were usually recaptured fairly soon, especially if their medication wore off.

The state supplied their clothes, shoes, and medical care. At the time smoking was a universal, accepted habit and the wards were stocked with cigarette tobacco and rolling papers. We had rolling machines and sometimes spent idle time rolling cigarettes for the patients.

Several kinds of committment were possible, which I don't completely recall. Persons could commit themselves, but I am not sure of the procedure. Many were committed by a court because they were arrested for various offenses ranging from vagrancy and "disturbing the peace" to rape and murder. As I recall, committments were for 90 days unless legal action made a committment permanent. At the time there was a courtroom or a room where a judge appeared and held hearings. I did conduct one person there but stayed with him outside the hearing, where in fact I am not sure a judge was actually present. He was kept another 90 days; he did seem a bit "out of it" to me, though inoffensive and harmless.

A variety of persons were there. Many were schizophrenic, often "institutionalized" and thus doubly incapable of taking care of themselves. Others were "mentally retarded" as it was termed then. At least one person on ward 7 I knew was misdiagnosed as retarded when he was actually deaf; about 20 years old and committed as a child, he could hear the airliners flying overhead and would come to the office with pictures of airplanes from magazines. Some people had "character disorders" and fewer had obsessive-compulsive and other rarer difficulties. A fair number seemed to be alcoholics and what were called "bums" who were picked up by the police and had no place to go. A few were simply dumped for being old, and some were accused of crimes but gotten into the Hospital by lawyers. On a medical ward were people with such conditions as hydrocephalus, born before shunts were inserted to correct the condition: persons whose bodies and heads were actually almost the same size. There were also people with Huntington's chorea and Alzheimer's disease. I know of one man over 100 years old who was there simply because of his age and poverty; his mind was still sharp and normal. Many of these persons were bedridden and had bedsores so bad their bones came through the flesh -- or rather the flesh was absent and the bones showed. An interesting matter in the room where autopsies were performed was a brain collection kept by a Dr. Coleman de Chenar. Among the brains I remember seeing was that of Tower sniper Charles Whitman.

As with the employees, I remember many patients, including their names and background. It would be wrong, however, to record them and the persons' problems. Calypsoparakeet 15:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Blog About Hospital

150 Years at the Austin State Hospital: http://www.jsbankston.com/site/archives/97

--Calypsoparakeet 01:17, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Name of the Hospital in 1940

According to the 1940 Census for Howard County the Hospital was named: West Texas State Hospital for Insane. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.80.235.228 (talk) 21:30, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

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