Searcy State Hospital is located in Mt. Vernon, Alabama. Prior to being a state hospital the old hospital has a long and dark history that is very difficult to find, but easy to see upon casual observation. The hospital is encased in long, chipped, white walls that seem as old as anything in the United States. From outside these walls, you can see a battered watchtower that gives testament to the fact that the hospital is in the same location as a 300 year old fort. The fort bears witness to American history. It was originally a French fort and then a Spanish Fort. It switched hands during the Louisiana Purchase and became a US fort. After the US took possession of the fort it was converted to a military arsenal and became known as the Mount Vernon Arsenal.
In 1900, the Barracks were transformed once again and the prison became a mental hospital. Searcy hospital was built as the African American mental hospital in Alabama. Conditions in the hospital were beyond questionable and at one time there were over 2000 patients in the crowded hospital and all were seen by one psychiatrist. All patients were expected to work in the fields. After I wrote my first story about Searcy, I learned more about the tragedies that took place here. I got numerous emails from family members of former patients asking if I had any access to records. Apparently, many African American families had family members taken from them, institutionalized here, and they were never seen or heard from again. I had an elderly lady write me asking if I could find out what happened to her mother. It broke my heart that I could not. She said her mother had been sane but had offended a white woman. The white woman had took her mother before a judge and no one ever heard from her again. The elderly lady just wanted to know where her mother was buried. Searcy was a place of unspeakable sorrow.
The Hospital was desegregated in 1969, but it’s history is all around it. Searcy to me tells the story of the tragedies in mental health. Mental Health's history is a history of stigma and bigotry. It is a history of trying to forget people who are inconvenient and do away with those who are embarrassing or different. In the 1960's, under the leadership of Thomas Szaz, a well meaning group worked towards deinstitutionalization and undoing the tragedies of the period when people could be locked up and forgotten. Unfortunately, this didn't work well. Deinstitutionalization quickly became an excuse to do away with all inpatient care and those that needed it have struggled to find it as it has become the tale of modern mental health care. Searcy was closed for good in 2012. Now, I work in outpatient psychiatric care and every day I have to tell people that really need more care that there is none available for them without a good amount of money. The pendulum has swung the other direction.
A year ago, a well meaning writer called me for what I think was meant to be a gotcha moment. She wanted to know if ghost story writers and collectors ever thought about the impact our stories have on mental health care. She said that we made things worse for the mentally ill by linking them to ghost stories and horror movies. I laughed and told her about my internship at Searcy. I told her about the ghosts that haunted the old buildings. I told her about the forgotten patients that had been buried there. I told her that the ghost stories could only help all of us remember that some things should not be buried, locked up or forgotten and that maybe the ghosts that haunt these places are there to remind us that we need to take better care of the mentally ill and treat them like people. They are there to remind us of all the living mentally ill that we try to forget, cut funding for, and who now end up in jail or homeless. Sometimes ghosts stay for a reason.
A year ago, a well meaning writer called me for what I think was meant to be a gotcha moment. She wanted to know if ghost story writers and collectors ever thought about the impact our stories have on mental health care. She said that we made things worse for the mentally ill by linking them to ghost stories and horror movies. I laughed and told her about my internship at Searcy. I told her about the ghosts that haunted the old buildings. I told her about the forgotten patients that had been buried there. I told her that the ghost stories could only help all of us remember that some things should not be buried, locked up or forgotten and that maybe the ghosts that haunt these places are there to remind us that we need to take better care of the mentally ill and treat them like people. They are there to remind us of all the living mentally ill that we try to forget, cut funding for, and who now end up in jail or homeless. Sometimes ghosts stay for a reason.
