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A Canadian architect, Frank Lewinberg, and a psychiatrist, Paul Garfinkel, have teamed up and planned for a nice new neighborhood for "the mentally ill".
They acknowledge the limits of their vision, writing that “
the history of urban planning is littered with idealistic projects that withered in the harsh light of everyday living.”
A recent article in
Canadian Architect quotes Garfinkel:
"People need to be treated in a respectful, dignified, holistic manner that sometimes requires them to be confined in a hospital voluntarily or involuntarily. The more we normalize the hospital stay, in keeping with safety and security, the better it is for the person's recovery, and ultimate reintegration. Normalizing starts with an urban village, like the rest of the city, but it gets into the nature of public space, treatment space, what our hospital rooms look like. We want to make [the hospital] a more homelike setting, just as you would want in a normal community."
Dr. Garfinkel claims to be especially critical of the "biological reductivism" fashionable in psychiatry for the last 30 years, a theory that lays great emphasis on medication--often, he believes, at the expense of the patient as a whole person, and at the expense of the settings of his treatment.
I have worked with, and on behalf of, people with psychiatric disabilities for over 20 years. I remain skeptical about the plan. This isn't a plan for a new neighborhood, it is adding more office rental space while tossing a few bones to the clients and community.
Not only because the rationale behind building the great Victorian-Era behemoths that housed "the Insane" was based on providing mad people with sylvan settings; but also due to the fact that the plans ~ as extensively described ~ show more effort going into office space for clinicians than to actual housing. That housing seems to be limited to three "
"alternative milieu" dwellings: 72 motel-like rooms, with private washrooms and lockable doors, for patients who still need hospital care, but who have progressed beyond the acute stage of their illnesses."
• "Housing" people in "motel style" accommodations does little to restore a sense of normalcy to one's life, yet that seems to be the only client housing being given serious consideration in the multi-blocked endeavor.
Moreover, if are planning a community, why is there only circumstantial mention of cultural amenities? Instead "
...the exact nature and placement of the non-hospital uses have yet to be determined, a grocery store and health club, scientific institutes and laboratories, cafés and private residences have been mentioned."
During the reconstruction phase,
The Workman Theatre, a popular visual and performing arts gathering place, "
...a space much loved by local residents and others throughout the city...," operated and managed by people with psychiatric disabilities, [and funded, in part by the
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Canada's largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital and the agency that stands to benefit from reconstruction] will be demolished.
• To destroy the Workman Theatre without having prioritized a replacement structure ~ is patently absurd! It is a popular gathering place, run by clients and former clients of mental health services. Across the continent theatre groups run by ex-patients have shown themselves to helps bolster self-esteem, foster independence and self-determination. Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) partially funds the theatre group; it is a bafflement that CAMH management would even consider razing a structure so integral to helping mental health service clients in recovering.
• That single action alone speaks volumes about the arrogance of clinicians towards the clients the agency supposedly serves, and makes a lie of any claims that CAMH may make about "...
advocating for public policies [and practices]
that are responsive to the needs of people with addiction and mental health problems." Why eliminate the Workman Theatre, a truly integrated service, that actually provides supportive services that CAMH claims they want to offer?
If Lewinberg and Garfinkel really wanted to help developing a community that helps "normalize" life for people with psychiatric diagnoses, and help folks integrate into the larger society, why then act like just a real estate developer hawking densely packed office buildings? How about affordable housing and street level spaces for small businesses. So much for an clinical commitment to
the Recovery Model. And practically nothing to promoting "Community."
It was during the height of the Cold War, and before Vietnam and it was still common practice to conduct air-raid drills during the school day.
Afterwards, it seemed that Popular Culture became obsessed with knowing that the Kremlin and the White House would be in contact with one another ~ using the eponymous "red phone" ~ to avoid a nuclear war. The decades continued tense, but by the 1990s ~ even with other nations acquiring nuclear bomb making technology ~ we were lulled into imagining that a nuclear annihilation could be remote. 
I work at a large inpatient psychiatric facility. As readers may surmise, of late, I've also been spending a lot of time at a large medical hospital. I can't help but find myself intrigued with the contrasts. 
From Make magazine: How to design and create things without a computer. It is wonderful that we have the technology we do today, but it is a shame that the cost is losing the true craftsman. 
Biodegradable gel being studied as treatment for esophageal cancer. The investigational drug, called OncoGel, is made of two major components, the ReGel drug delivery system, which is a gel made up of ingredients used in biodegradable stitches, and paxclitaxel, a well established, FDA-approved anti-cancer chemotherapy agent. Patients receive a one-time injection of OncoGel during an endoscopy.
FOX 8 News reporter, Shelley Brown asked: "This is where the crabs live, on the bottom?" "Correct," answered Ladner and Mayne."
The directional signs remain unclear, though it is possible to guess their instruction. 
""The price of freedom is visible here"
My camera shy friend is suffering after a recent discovery of cancer cells within his body. His less than camera shy pals [Big Boy and Little Guy/Tiger, both shown here] anxiously await his return home. 
Right now Bill is at the VA Hospital in West Haven under the scrutiny of oncologists and surgeons. 
It's been a little more than a week since the 20th Anniversary of the passage of the [US] Americans with Disabilities Act. 
One of the principal authors of the bill, Justin Dart, [and one of my personal heroes] was also given posthumous recognition by the speakers. .JPG)
But my interest is in what little progress has been made to recognize the rights of people with so-called invisible disabilities. 
What ideas come to mind when confronted with a table in the middle of text?
• Ethan Persoff's Collections. "Political ephemera, drug hysteria, vintage sex & health items ...other miscellany; Delivered to you in a timely, inappropriate manner since 2001"
• Chick Cartoon Tracts "Publishing cartoon gospel tracts and equipping Christians for evangelism for over 40 years."
And the sign-in-blood contractee gets whisked abruptly to a sentence of eternal damnation and horror.
• A Canadian architect, Frank Lewinberg, and a psychiatrist, Paul Garfinkel, have teamed up and planned for a nice new neighborhood for "the mentally ill". 
• A Founding Father [the one that the Texas Republican Party has eliminated] on the Banking System and on Religious Demagoguery Quote: 
• Another example of discontinuities with laws across the planet comes from Marie Claire, a hair care and fashion mag, with nary a mention in the media a dishonorable "Honor Killing" takes place in Arizona. a gruesome tale of a father's failure to assimilate and of the "punishment" meted out on his daughter for doing just that. Abigail Pesta, author of the article, is the editor-at-large of Marie Claire. I'm impressed at Marie Claire for their effort! 
