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Fotografie: Darby Penney

Werken van Darby Penney

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Geboortedatum
1952-12-10
Overlijdensdatum
2021-10-11
Geslacht
female
Nationaliteit
USA
Geboorteplaats
Oceanside, New York, USA
Plaats van overlijden
Albany, New York, USA
Oorzaak van overlijden
cancer
Woonplaatsen
Albany, New York, USA
Opleiding
State University of New York, Empire State College (B.S. ∙ writing and literature ∙ 1976)
State University of New York, Albany (M.L.S. ∙ 1980)
Beroepen
librarian
director of recipient affairs, New York State Office of Mental Health
Korte biografie
Darby Penney is a national leader in the human rights movement for people with psychiatric disabilities and a former state mental health official who has experienced the mental health system inside and out. Currently a Senior Research Associate with Advocates for Human Potential, Inc., she was Director of Recipient Affairs at the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) from 1992-2001, where she was responsible for bringing the perspectives of people with psychiatric disabilities into the policy-making process. From 2001-2003, she was OMH Director of Historical Projects, where she oversaw the collection of ex-patient oral histories, state hospital cemetery restoration, and the Willard Suitcase Project. Darby is president of The Community Consortium, a non-profit group of ex-patients and their allies working to promote community integration for people with psychiatric labels. She was honored for her work promoting the human rights of people with psychiatric histories by being named a 2005 Fellow by the Petra Foundation. She has spoken, published and consulted nationally and internationally on psychiatric disability and rights issues. Darby did an illustrated slide lecture on the Willard suitcase owners at the World Federation for Mental Health Conference in Cairo, Egypt, in 2005. From 1991- 2004, Darby was publisher (and her husband, Ken Denberg, was editor) of The Snail’s Pace Press, a literary small press that published a journal, The Snail’s Pace Review, and books of poetry and short fiction. Her own poetry has been published in a number of journals.

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What an amazing story of the lives of 10 people who ended up in the Willard Asylum in Ovid, New York, which ran from 1869 to 1995. When the facility was closed in 1995, four hundred and twenty-seven suitcases were discovered in the attic. Researchers got permission to those suitcases and their medical records, as long as they agreed to change their names to protect the patient’s identities. In this book, the first names are real, but the last names are not.

I absolutely loved how the research and their stories were put together. The author gives you a brief, but very important, part of each patient’s life leading up to the day they were admitted into the asylum, along with a picture or two of that person. Most were immigrants from the 20’s and 30’s with high hopes of making it here in America. Their younger photos will break your heart; they were so young and beautiful with a full life ahead of them. Their stories will make you question every psychiatrist’s knowledge of what he ‘thinks’ he really knows about human life because they never even considered the history of any of the individuals. They had one word for just about every patient, every potential free worker of the state, “paranoid schizophrenia”. How scary it must have been to have someone you had a riff with turn you in to be checked out mentally, and then you find yourself locked into the system with no way out.

If you compare their stories with what you hear about on the news today, you would think half of America should be locked up or need some kind of psychiatric help.

The images in the book are online, along with a few extra photos:
http://www.suitcaseexhibit.org/index.php?section=about&subsection=suitcases
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
MissysBookshelf | 15 andere besprekingen | Aug 27, 2023 |
I think I would have preferred more photos and folks profiled, but this one was touching and a way to connect with a concern that is still current.
 
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Martialia | 15 andere besprekingen | Sep 28, 2022 |
interesting read about the workings of a state mental hospital. Research was based on suitcases that were left abandoned in the attic of the hospital after it was closed. Only gave it 3 stars because it read more like a research paper or thesis than a novel which was what I had exoected.
 
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Jen-Lynn | 15 andere besprekingen | Aug 1, 2022 |
I don't buy the authors' premise that mental illness stems from trauma, or that these patients did not need medical care, but I enjoyed reading a bit about patient lives. I do wish the authors had not tried so hard to justify everything the patient's did as a normal reaction to life.
 
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SSBranham | 15 andere besprekingen | Sep 17, 2020 |

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Statistieken

Werken
1
Leden
428
Populariteit
#57,056
Waardering
3.8
Besprekingen
16
ISBNs
6

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