The Asylum Freak Show - Mental Health Awareness Retreat

The Asylum Freak Show

Step right up! Step right up! Take a look at the worlds most craziest, bizarre, twisted people. Who cares about their pain, emotions, and humanity? Dignity? Respect? What do these words mean?......Ok sir/ma'm your holding up the line. Keep it moving! Keep it moving! We got a crowd to scare and entertain here.

As people enter the "asylum" they soon encounter actors with harmful objects in their hands, a girl holding some dollies, surgery tables that can give anyone the creeps, padded down rooms with only a bed inside it and a bunch of straps in representation of the torture that these lunatic, worthless patients will face for their illness. 

Oh be scared! Be very scared! Everyone knows that ALL mentally ill patients are horrible people. People that will kill you! 

Have you seen a real asylum? Heard real stories of an asylum? Well let me tell you about it a bit if you haven't. It is obvious to me that many people have a misconception in regards to the mentally ill and it will be my pleasure to clear up some things.

You should indeed be scared of past asylums but not of the patients, instead you should be scared of the professionals that served these vulnerable people. Did you know many therapist, psychiatrist, and psychologist raped their patients and then blamed their disorders, "a delusion", to cover their wrong doings. So that girl holding her dollies; think about it......She might have been a victim of rape. Perhaps not of a professional but of someone. Does her breakdown cause you pleasure? Does her cries, nightmares, flashbacks, dissociation, and hell make for good entertainment? 

Back in the days patients were forced to drink their medications including experimental ones that no one knew the side effects to yet. Basically a mentally ill patient didn't need to consent in order to use them as guinea pigs. Now let me clarify here as well that when I say mentally ill patient I am not referring to the most severe cases (which whether or not they were severe, I strongly believe that EVERYONE should have human rights to approve or disapprove of something such as an experiment). Back then ANYONE could have had you committed. Your mouthy? Lets commit him/her. Your talking back and expressing opinions and someone else doesn't like? You're committed! Your husband had enough of you? You are indeed! committed. But heeeeeeey go on and buy that $20 dollar ticket to the hunted house "Asylum" and be entertained by someone else's abuse and pain.

Many experimental surgeries were tried upon the mentally ill along with medication. Again, this was done to perfectly non ill people as well. Take the case of Howard Dully whose stepmother just didn't like him. His behavior was that of any other boy. Active, daydreamer, and fussed from time to time. Mrs. Dully had taken her stepson to other doctors who told her that there was nothing wrong with the boy. Yet she persisted and in doing so she got Howard a lobotomy with the hopes it will make him a vegetable. When she saw that didn't happen, she gave him to the ward. You want to be scared this Halloween? Read stories of REAL asylum abuse. Yes, this really did happen and not just to Howard but to many people. 

Want to be really scared? Willowbrook State School was an institution for children with mental learning disabilities. Kids who didn't have a voice and a say in the matter. The institute was overcrowded, filthy, and lacked food. The children were left to eat their own bowel movements. In order to find a vaccine for Hepatitis, experiments were conducted on these kids (again without consent or parental approval...heck many parents were taught to not love kids with learning disabilities by doctors and to put them in these institutions, which many did.). In carrying such experiments, many of these children contracted Hepatitis B. You don't believe this cruelty? Here is the video, BUT BE WARE! It is not for the weak of hearts.

So, if your joy in celebrating Halloween consists of asylums, then I must ask.... Do you then support such human abuse? Such evilness? Does others pain bring you joy? Is this the kind of entertainment you are willing to pay for?

Majority of mentally ill patients are NOT killers and are not evil... We are humans JUST like you! with an illness we never asked to have. Please help stop stigma. Attending to these side freak shows name asylums is only helping people keep the stigma around. It is helping them shine a bad light on mental health and spread lies and misconceptions. 

This Halloween I ask that if you support mental health, to not support any asylum build places. Human abuse shouldn't be entertainment for anyone!

And by the way, that padded room with the straps is still in use till this day except the rooms are no longer padded. While holding down patients to apply these straps, many people have suffocated and died in the process. 

Check out what I'm wearing from XIAJ and The Body Modification Event HERE 

UPDATE: I wanted to share this article I found in regards to the matter being discussed in this post. It is by NAMI, an RL organization for mental health. Are You Haunted by Halloween Stigma? Here's What to Do