Here at b5media’s Health & Wellness Channel, we’re always doing something.

This week, we’re rounding up our “Top 5″ posts.

Some bloggers are focusing on their top five most popular posts, their favorite posts, and even posts that aren’t very well known to their readers.

Because Mental Health Notes is still celebrating its one-year anniversary, I thought I’d go retro with it and list the top five posts I had the most fun writing within the first five months Mental Health Notes was live. (Five just seems to be a common number here, so I’ll stick with it.)

So, without further ado…

May 2007 – Brush Up On Your Health Literacy – This post was actually part of a Mental Health Month series I ran in May 2007. For each day of the month, I offered a “tip” to help better manage mental health. The main reason I enjoyed writing this post is because health literacy was, at that time, completely new to me. So, I was learning while I was passing along information to you.

June 2007 – Is There a Line That Separates Politics and Human Compassion? – I had some trouble choosing a post from this month. Initially, I wanted to select DMB Takes a Stand Against Inadequate Mental Health Care because – hello – Dave Matthews Band is the best. band. ever. However, the related petition was expired, so I moved on to Is There a Line That Separates Politics and Human Compassion? While the information in that post isn’t exactly up to date, it’s still very relevant in today’s politics. And it was fun to write, because I just don’t like Ann Coulter.

July 2007 – Harry Potter: A Cure for Depression? – Choosing a post for this month presented a dilemma, too. I thought about highlighting Damage Control: How To Deal With Losing Mental Health Care Coverage (it is extremely beneficial information, after all), but I ultimately chose the Harry Potter post because it was the funnest to write.

August 2007 – Reduce Stress The Interactive Way – This was by far the funnest post to write during August 2007, because the research that went into writing this post was fun!

September 2007 – Long Abandoned Suitcases From A State Mental Institution – I didn’t have to think too long about this one. Writing about the Willard Suitcase Exhibit was not only fun; it was fascinating.

That’s all for the top five posts I had the most fun writing during the first five months of Mental Health Notes. Did I include any of your favorites?

Image: Newscom

Remember! You have until May 31, 2008 to enter the Mental Health Notes Birthday Giveaway, and forever to join the This Is Why I ROCK! series!

Post from: Blisstree

Top 5 Posts I Had The Most Fun Writing For Mental Health Notes

According to The Charleston Gazette article Groups protest ‘lunatic asylum’ name, a pre-Civil War mental hospital in Weston, West Virginia has – after undergoing several name changes spanning the 19th and 20th centuries including “West Virginia Hospital for the Insane,” “Weston State Hospital,” and then simply “Weston Hospital” – gone back to using its maiden name of “Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.”

Unsurprisingly, many mental health groups in West Virginia are outraged. Folks from the Mountain State Direct Action Center, the West Virginia Mental Health Consumers Association, the West Virginia Mental Health Planning Council, and the West Virginia Americans with Disabilities Act Coalition have either already spoken out or are expected to in the near future.

What may be more surprising is that I – both a consumer, an advocate, and a ninja against stigma – am not at all outraged. I’m actually intrigued.

Lots of people are fascinated with mental health-related subjects. I’m one of them. Terribly fascinated. I don’t know why, really. Our brains, our thoughts, what makes our brains work the way they do, what makes us think the thoughts we think…all of it. I’m just terribly fascinated. It’s probably sick, really. So, when I read the article in its entirety and learned that the hospital’s new owner, Joe Jordan, and the facility’s historical consultant, Edward Gleason, have plans to develop “educational exhibits showcasing the ‘renaissance in psychiatry,’” I was, well, fascinated.

I want to learn more about the history of mental health. I want to be exposed to how mental illness used to be treated. I want to view the time line and appreciate how far we’ve come. Is that so wrong? No, I don’t think so.

Although Gleason stated -

“In America, we strive to present our history as it really was, blemishes and all,” Gleason wrote. “We are not the Soviet Union, which invented the past by altering names, places and events, to support what had been judged politically correct by contemporary powers.”

- Scott Miller, the director of the Mountain State Direct Action Center, says Gleason and Jordan are trying to “glorify” what was once a “living Hell.”

With what I know thus far, I certainly don’t think they’re trying to glorify anything. I think they’re trying to present history as it happened. (What’s the old saying? “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”?) Isn’t that why the Willard Suitcase Exhibit was created? To not only remember the patients for the people they were, but to also illustrate the “living Hell” mental health treatment used to be and help us appreciate how far it’s come?

Those of us with an ounce of class and intelligence don’t use words like “crazy,” “lunatic,” or “nut case” regarding mental health anymore; however, the class and intelligence we have now doesn’t erase history, and I’m all for any preserved relic of history that teaches us about the past and helps us learn and make better decisions in the future. (Of course, this isn’t to say that I’m for “Psycho Path,” the dirt bike race event held on hospital grounds. That’s just ignorant and I’ll of course be awarding an A.S.S. Award to whomever created it.)

Constant vigilance, my friends. We can keep sight in the fight against stigma without losing sight of what we’re fighting against.

For more information about the hospital, visit Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.

Image source.

Post from: Blisstree

Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum Upsets Mental Health Advocates

“To take away the stigma is to take away the fear.” – Nancy Devine.

Have any of you heard of the old Willard Psychiatric Center in New York? Until it closed in 1995, it went through several names, ultimately sticking with the Willard Psychiatric Center.

Anyway, once Willard was closed in 1995, hundreds of “abandoned” suitcases were found in the attic of one of the center’s buildings. These suitcases belonged to patients at Willard. Of course, the majority – if not all – of the suitcases were taken to and forgotten in the attic because the owners – the patients – died while at Willard.

After going through the suitcases, the workers gained insight about the actual people at Willard. Not the patients. Not the insane. Not the folks who eventually perished in a psychiatric hospital. The people, and their lives before Willard. I would have given my left pinkie toe to have been there! To have been able to wander through and get lost in the lives of those who were long gone, especially given the way in which their last years on earth were spent.

This fascinates the hell out of me. When I was a teenager, my friends and I would occasionally get wild hairs up our tails and sneak into the abandoned home of a man named Alfred Poochie, aka Old Man Poochie, to us. Anyway, this man was fascinating – dead, but fascinating. After we risked our necks (and arms and legs) crossing the rickety walking bridge over the water underneath, we’d get lost in the house. Old pianos, organs, letters, books, pictures, records, clothes – everything! (I don’t know why none of it was ever retrieved). Studying this man’s life using only the material possessions he left behind was awe-inspiring. Definitely one of the more educational illegal things we did those summers.

Anyway, as you can tell, I get hypnotized with this kind of stuff. Fortunately you can view the Willard Suitcase Exhibit online, or catch the physical traveling version of it. (Oh! How lucky that would be!)

The online version is – fortunately – pretty in depth about the goings-on at Willard throughout the years and includes interviews from former employees.

The suitcase exhibit includes the suitcases of nine psychiatric patients at Willard and their stories. You’ll be shocked when you read the reasons some of the folks were admitted to Willard (issues we’d now straighten out on our own with a good therapist and maybe a prescription). And you’ll shiver when you read that the same reasons kept the majority of the patients locked up at Willard until they died.

We’re talking 20, 30, and 40 years here, people.

Some of you may be thinking this is disrespectful; an invasion of privacy. Well, it’s not.

The suitcases – and lives – that were chosen to be put on display help to further advocate the fact that mentally ill people have lives. They’re real people, with real belongings, friends, families, interests, dreams, goals, etc. When patients died at Willard, they were buried in the nearby grounds’ graveyard, with nothing more than an unmarked piece of iron to let the gravedigger know where he could, and could not, bury the next body.

With nothing more than a piece of iron to mark their final resting places, don’t you think these patients – and their families and friends – would appreciate a bit more insight as to who they really were?

I think so.

The exhibit helps show just how far mental health treatment has come in America, and it helps take away the stigma. We can no longer be committed by employers, landlords, restaurant owners, or spouses from whom we’ve filed divorce – as you’ll find was often the case back then.

I strongly urge you to set aside an hour or so to view the Willard Suitcase Exhibit online, along with all the information about people in general who were admitted and why, what kind of “mental health treatment” they received, and how they responded to the state mental institution.

It’s fascinating stuff, I promise.

Image: Newscom

Post from: Blisstree

Long Abandoned Suitcases From A State Mental Institution