Revisiting the Scene of a Crime
Last week I received an invitation from The National Empowerment Center for an event on November 8th in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. They have a great program planned but I couldn’t focus on it because I got stuck on the venue – The Red Lion Inn – right across the street from a psychiatric hospital where my daughter spent nearly a year.
It was from The Austen Riggs Center that she fled for her life in February, 2009. She has spent the last year and eight months withdrawing from the truckloads of drugs they had her on and trying to see herself as a person with a soul worth saving.
Back when we were still duped by the psychiatric industry and searching the country for relief for the problems which seemed to escalate with each admission and expulsion from hospitals and treatment facilities, I spent hours pacing the rooms of the Red Lion Inn.
On each visit, I found my daughter worse than the time before. I sat in those rooms searching the internet for information on drug combinations and learned for the first time about tardive dyskinesia after watching my daughter’s right arm slashing out into space over lunch.
The Austen Riggs Center lures their clients in by telling them that they are the “premier facility” for the “treatment resistant patient”. We were desperate after years of being told that my daughter was “non-compliant”, would be medicated for life and would never live on her own outside of a residential treatment.
What we discovered was that Austen Riggs is no different than any local psych ward. Despite their unlocked door policy, they rely heavily on drugs to subdue their clients.
It has been a struggle to come off all the psych drugs but my daughter has made it and is living competently on her own in New York City.
I wrote a note to Leah Harris one of the organizers. When I didn’t hear back from her after a couple of days, I assumed she wrote me off – an overwrought mom or a random person looking for a fight. The thing is, this is not where I expected to continue my “fight”.
I have quickly become a vocal advocate for change in the mental health system. I am not shy and have been very present on facebook and in the blogosphere – writing rebuttals to ridiculous pieces in the in the Huffington Post by DJ Jaffee and Craig Garner, recently searching the net for the first publications which talked of overhauling the psychiatric system and I have opened up about my conversion from a “follower of the doctor’s orders” in revealing and often difficult posts.
Is Austen Riggs affiliated with this event? If so, WHY?
This was my question to Ms. Harris. I could get over the fact that I never wanted to see the quaint, historic streets of Stockbridge again, even if I think it is appalling that they subject people to staying in the only available place for visitors to the Austen Riggs Center. But, tell me – why Stockbridge?
I don’t think you’re overwrought at all to feel about this like you do. I’ve missed out on a lot of events, because they were located at hospitals, and/or because some of the speakers were mainstream shrinks, or just, well, consumers. It’s tough enough to listen to them on TV, or read what they’ve said in one or the other article on the net. But there you always can zap/click yourself away when you’re about to puke. You can’t do that, placed in the middle of I don’t know how many people, listening irl.
I went to a conference in September, arranged by Intervoice and the Danish HVN. It took place at – a hospital. I could make myself go only because it was a hospital without a psych ward, because I knew it to be very unlikely that I would have to listen to the usual illness bs, and because I knew I would be among friends. So, I felt relatively safe. Anyhow, I mentioned both the effort I’d had to make to overcome my own fears/reluctancy, and my concern that some people might decide to stay away because of the location to one of the organizers, and she said they’d actually been aware of the problem alone the location could cause people, who’ve been traumatized in a hospital setting, but that they hadn’t been able to find another suitable location after their first choice, a conference center, hadn’t been available.
I’ve never been hospitalized myself, nor have I directly witnessed anyone as close to me as your daughter is to you be mistreated the way she was. I’ve only had the threat hanging over my head, and have heard people talk about their experience. But it’s still enough to send shivers down my back (and to make me want to google the recipe for a certain cocktail, or get hold of a giant bulldozer) whenever I just have to pass a psych hospital by car.
To me, your feelings about this are just sooo understandable, especially since you don’t know whether Austen Riggs maybe even is somehow involved, and I wonder whether Leah Harris and the people at the NEC are as aware as the HVN people of the fact that location does matter. If not, it’s time they are made aware of it. I hope, they’ll read your piece, and take note of it.
(All of a sudden, I’m not as envious anymore as I was of everybody who’s got the chance to attend the event… )
Kristin, I use to get catalogs from Country Curtains and always wanted to go there. Now I know what you wrote I am taking it off my Bucket LIst.
Your daughter is a hero to me. Please tell her that. One day at a time. ONe little day at a time.
Austen Riggs is a complete fraud. Perhaps at one time they ran a good operation, but that is no longer the case. Over $250,000 was spent on my adult child and we were then told that they couldn’t help her after initially being told they were “specialists in treatment resistance” and “they don’t give up on anyone”. This is total PR nonsense. Austen Riggs is a complete fraud. Perhaps at one time they ran a good operation, but that is no longer the case. Over $250,000 was spent on my adult child and we were then told that they couldn’t help her after initially being told they were “specialists in treatment resistance” and “they don’t give up on anyone”. This is total PR nonsense. The staff runs for the exits at 5PM and they hardly, if ever, return phone calls. The administration is a disaster and unresponsive and uncommunicative unless they want more money.
Yes, Country Curtains is not worth a visit to this wonderful inn. the Red Lion Inn does have a couple of good restaurants. The rooms are cozy and the staff is nice. It is just the scene of such agony. I cannot be the only family/loved one of a client of Austen Riggs who stayed there and learned to see the New England charm as a frightening mask for unspeakable horrors happening across the street.