In 1989, an outpatient from Connecticut Valley Hospital (CVH), a mental institution located just over a mile east of the University, stabbed a nine-year-old girl on Main Street.
Eighteen years later, residents of Middletown remain somewhat uneasy with the hospital’s presence. According to Director of Community Relations Frank Kuan, memories of the incident continue to perpetuate strained relations with CVH, the largest of five inpatient psychiatric treatment facilities funded and operated by the Connecticut state government.
“[The hospital] still raises such harsh and negative feelings,” Kuan said. “At the same time, the hospital is a large employer of people in Middletown, and helps generate economic support.”
The facility, originally called the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane, first opened its doors in 1868. It was renamed the Connecticut Valley Hospital in 1961. According to Jim Donady, director of the Health Professions Partnership Initiative (HPPI) and a professor in the biology department, the buildings that previously housed mentally ill patients were fitted with metal bars up until the 1930s, a stark indication of the negative beliefs held against the mentally disabled that continued well into the 20th century.
For the past four years, Donady has taught a course called “Integrating Clinical Experience and Life Science Learning,” in which students combine classroom lessons with volunteer work at CVH. The course is offered through the biology department, and many students who enroll are biology, neuroscience or psychology majors on a pre-med track.
Students taking the class are placed in one of the hospital’s three divisions: General Psychiatry, Addiction Services, or the Whiting Forensic division. Forensics, the largest division of the three, is a maximum-security facility that treats and houses up to 248 patients who have had conflicts with the law. As required by state law, each student must undergo an extensive background check, as well as a rigorous orientation.
According to Donady, there have never been problems or difficulties in interactions between patients and students. Tension between Middletown residents and the psychiatric facility, however, is not as unusual.
“On the one hand, there are pressures financially to move people out [of the facilities], and at the same time, [the hospitals] want clients to be stable enough to survive outside,” said Assistant Professor of Psychology Matthew Kurtz.
Kurtz does consulting work with patients suffering from schizophrenia and schizo-affective disorders at the Cedarcrest Regional Hospital in Newington. Other mental illnesses treated at Cedarcrest include severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), drug-abuse or bipolar disorder. Many severely impaired patients have little support from family or friends; some were homeless prior to being institutionalized.
Treatments offered by psychiatric hospitals for the chronically mentally ill include social skills training, basic job skills training and anger management, often in conjunction with medications administered by a psychiatrist or medical doctor.
“I am always struck by the amount of services offered by these hospitals despite the limited funding that they have,” Kurtz said.
Assistance from University students complements services offered by the hospitals themselves. At an event called the Tuesday Night Dance, about 200 patients are allowed to attend a social function as part of privileges earned during their stay at the hospital.
“Volunteers dance with them, play pool and cards as if it were any social function,” Donady said. “Student volunteers invigorate the institutional lives of these patients.”
According to Donady, such interactions emphasize the essential humanity of those suffering from mental illness. In Donady’s class, some students participate in a training exercise called “hearing voices.” Participants are each given a set of headphones and a tape recorder, and are asked to complete a variety of tasks such as drawing pictures, writing or having a conversation with someone as they listen to voices similar to those heard by some people suffering from schizophrenia. These expressions range from vicious, hate-filled statements to kind and soothing voices.
“Students invariably find that they are significantly impaired in doing the simplest tasks,” Donady said. “What immediately becomes obvious is what anyone hearing voices is battling.”
As students continue to take Donady’s class, mental illness becomes more than just a mystery.
“It has taken a very long time for people’s attitudes to change about the mentally ill,” Donady said.
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