ABSTRACT
This chapter explores women's first-person experiences with the mental health establishment. New York State Psychiatric Institute is a teaching hospital, better than most state institutions. The Institute is built into the side of a cliff along Riverside Drive. The head nurse emerges pushing a metal cart on which jiggle bottles of pills. Medication is the rule, the burning absolution. Sometimes people demand more medication between times, begging for it tearfully. Christmas holidays approach, a turbulent parting of the waters. Some patients get passes to go home to their families; among those left on the ward, spirits are low. The image of that motionless dog haunts him, reminding of the senselessness of death, something he experience all too often in my life inside. Manhattan State Hospital is a warehouse for lost souls, located on an island in the middle of the East River.
