Chip Chick
If you’re fascinated by stories of abandoned and rundown hospitals or asylums, this one will surely stick with you.
The story of Willowbrook State School, the institution that held thousands of tortured children, which took far too long to close down, is quite harrowing but important to revisit in order to understand America’s complicated healthcare history.
Willowbrook was a large facility in Staten Island, New York. It was originally built as a facility for disabled children in 1942 but was instead first used as a United States Army hospital for those who fought in World War II.
After the war ended, the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene and New York Governor Thomas Dewey reopened the facility for its original purpose in 1947 and named it Willowbrook State School.
Governor Dewey claimed the facility would home mentally and physically disabled children who he argued would never be able to be functioning members of society.
Willowbrook State School only took in 20 patients from other institutions after opening. But by 1955, it was at full capacity with 4,000 patients. Despite the surplus of patients, Willowbrook was severely understaffed.
It is almost impossible to describe the horrible conditions of Willowbrook. Mentally disabled children were left alone to roam throughout their wards, often naked, without access to a bathroom. There was hardly any supervision, and it was as if the patients were left to rot.
Willowbrook claimed to be a school and offer an education to its patients, but only a handful of more well-behaved patients would get to go to school, and they were only taught for about two hours a day.
There were also terrible issues regarding hepatitis at Willowbrook. Throughout the first ten years of its being open, 90% of the patients would get sick with hepatitis as soon as they arrived at the facility.
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