Scouting An Abandoned Mental Asylum: A Visit To The Rockland Psychiatric Center, Part 1

Found some written material to include a death certificate for my mothers paternal grandmother who died at this hospital. The stated cause was pneumonia and additional info provided included simple senility and some dementia psychosis. I wanted to look up the facility because I seemed so far away for someone from uptown Manhattan, and I think I was hoping she was in some suburban utopia far from the city’s rat race. I guess I’m correct in a way but reading some of the stories makes me wonder if she had the serenity, love and care that 89year olds deserve. The consolation is that she was only there for 5months before her passing so regardless of whether her death was completely natural or sped up by perhaps the lack of care or otherwise, it wasn’t a long haul for her. The most curious thing of all was finding the wire to my grandfather notifying about her death as well as notifying him that he needed to sign a consent to have her body used for scientific research…wth?! Not a request for consent but rather a demand that before you claim the body you have to sign this. My grandfather was pretty savvy, so I’d like to think he didn’t but then again, when people come at you from a position of supposed authority…you never know. May she rest in peace.

I currently work at RPC, and I usually spend my lunch breaks wandering around the campus and checking out all the abandoned buildings. In addition to the hospital buildings, there’s what looks like abandoned houses and apartments on the south side of the campus just outside of the gates. There is even what looks like an old abandoned mansion with a detached garage. Almost all the abandoned buildings have “Danger! Asbestos!” signs on them. Although RPC is has a number of new modern buildings and is certainly still functioning, most of the campus is a ghost town. It’s mind-blowing to read about what used to happen there and what it used to be like.

One thing that is unfortunate is that if you are transferred there, you lose your New York City residence status. RPC has a deal with Bellevue that if Bellevue decides not to discharge you, you can’t go to Manhattan State unless you have a drug problem.

As for some of the oversight agencies – specifically CQC -they think the “residents” have nothing better to do with their time than to lodge false charges against the staff. Many of the residents have suffered injuries due to the violence of the staff. I have only seen this addressed once, when it was taken to a lawyer, and the bruises were visible. As for me, I was shoved onto a mattress where a worker put his knee in my spine, and put so much weight on it that I couldn’t breathe. “Safety” (Rockland’s own security guards) were right outside the door, looking the other way. This injury has never healed, and when I presented the staff with a bill from a chiropractor that documented the injury, the response was, “The statute of limitations has run out.”

Again, when you bring up anything to the CQC that the staff does, the staff, of course, will cover their as***, and the agency will say it’s a matter of credibility. The staff has claimed that they like it when the residents call the CQC, because they end up getting time off.

I understand that James Bopp, the former Executive Director, has moved on. When he was in charge, it seemed like his primary purpose was to exploit the finances of those who ended up there. He would often run a “Statement of Net Worth”. As for me, I had an SSD case suspended pending a new representative payee — they made themselves the payee, and when I asked to be taken to the Social Security office to protest this matter, RPC refused to take me. They kept the majority of accumulated benefits to pay themselves, and kept me there until they could milk every last dollar from Social Security that they could.

After i was discharged into the community and found out there was nothing in Social Security left for me to live on, I contacted RPC several times and told them that if they did not release the money, that I would end up homeless. They didn’t, I did, and ended up back there.

I am very sensitive to all types of psychotropic medication, and despite one of the medical directors being aware of that fact, they insisted that I take these drugs anyway. At medication time, I was often under personal attack from the staff that I am only taking “one drug”. Other seem to get an array of what appeared to be about 8 or 9 different medications – often spoon-fed with applesauce to make sure they can shove it down their throats.

Although ECT is alive and well at Rockland (I’ve never seen anybody actually benefit from it), it seems like they just want to profit by putting expensive medication into unwitting residents. Not only do they constantly inject medication to control people (it doesn’t calm them down – it only shuts them up), but the effects of being there long-term causes “institutionalization” in one’s head. For me, it totally knocked out my insides, which took a long time to get back.

Also the mentality of some of the staff and the focus on physical appearance (mind you, the residents are all coming from other facilities) make Hollywood seem like a place of depth and substance.

Hope this place closes pronto.

I remember the stories my mother told me of being committed to Rockland State Hospital. My grandfather had been an abuser of his children. My mother was raped by him, beaten, and constantly belittled, and abused. She approached her mother at about 8 years old and looked to her, to rescue her from the abuse. Her mother who’s only support was her husband looked at her with great fear, and anger and called her a liar. She ran away from home a number of times and was brought back time, and time again by the police and beaten over and over. She stole money to be able to hide out in the movie theatre to stay late until my grandfather had fallen asleep where she would slip back into the house late at night hoping not to awaken the monster that abused her. At age 9 her parents had talked with a social worker and they put together a story accusing my mother of being a liar and a troubled child. The social worker convinced them to make her a ward of the state where she was interned or imprisioned in the Rockland State Hospital. Upon entering into her ward or cottage as they called them (3 cottages for girls, and 3 for boys) she was not let out of the building for the next year. Never to walk on a play ground or feel grass underneath her feet, seemed to bring a feeling of helplessness and anger at the world. The staff seemed very distant and uncaring. More like babysitters, or prison guards, who had many forms of punishment for those who got out of line and became discipline problems. It was more like being a prisoner of war than just going to prison. The punishments she received were being stripped, and put into an ice bath, or ice sheets, a very dehumanizing punishment. Many times she was put into isolation, A small room with a single bed where you barely could put your feet to the floor on the side of the bed, and a toilet (no sink or bath). The window had bars on the outside but you couldn’t see out since the window was frosted. The door was split at the middle and had no window, only a slot that opened at the center to place a meal for the patient. There were no books to read or anything to do in there . More or less days spent staring at the walls and ceiling and being alone with ones thoughts. Electroshock therapy as it was called, was one of the more severe punishments where the patients were taken out and later came back confused and crying. Some had memory lapses of what had happened that day, and some couldn’t remember their own names, but eventually after a few hours returned to somewhat a normal state, although they seemed different, in that they withdrew from the others for a while. Their were stories, and threats of the most severe cases being labotomized although she never personally witnessed this punishment. It was a fear of many there. For the most part she felt that most of the girls in her ward were like her. Not mental patients with some mental problem but more just abused children that were discarded by family’s looking to get rid of the problem they created. As for her relationship with the other girls,, she says their was a social order determined by how tough you were. At night when the staff locked the patients in and they disappeared, the challenges of position thru fights in the cottage would begin. My mother participated in a few of these fights and she had obtained the fourth position but decided not to bring challenge any further to the top three girls. Not that she would have lost but she felt she didn’t need to go further than she had. After a visit from her grandmother, her grandmother seeing the conditions there and being in fear of her granddaughters life there, went to my mothers parents and demanded them to get her out. For a time she stayed with her grandmother who tried to give her some peace from the life of hell she had been victimized in for so long. When my mother and father met she was a bitter and angry person and her father even told her she was too guy for anyone to care about her. Truthfully she was no at all ugly but was made to feel worthless and it took years before her life became stable in her mind, and she was able to forgive those who abused her, although the scars are still on the inside, and out.