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360 15 “Scandal Results in Real Reforms” The November 12, 1951, issue of Life magazine published another article by Albert Q. Maisel on state mental hospitals. This time the news was positive: “Scandal Results in Real Reforms.” Maisel reviewed the exposés of the mid-1940s and argued that they had made a concrete difference: “Five years ago shock and revulsion swept the country as one reporter after another dug up evidence proving that most of the public mental hospitals of the U.S. were little more than filthy, brutish concentration camps. Newspapers, magazines (LIFE, May 6, 1946), books and movies backed the exposures with demands for reform. Such crusades have been seen before in the U.S., but all too often they have quickly run down, leaving things pretty much as they were before. This time it was different.”1 Maisel reported that many states had increased funds for mental hospital renovation and construction and additional physicians, professionals, and attendants. Spending for mental hospitals had increased 100 percent. The number of mental hospital employees had risen from 79,740 to more than 100,000. More important than increased spending, argued Maisel, had been a shift in philosophy at many mental hospitals. They were moving from a custodial philosophy to one that emphasized intensive care. More and more patients were being treated and then released from mental hospitals. Maisel cited the work of the Menninger brothers and the Menninger Foundation’s psychiatrist training program as exemplifying this new emphasis on treatment and therapy. Characteristic of Life articles, Maisel’s story was accompanied by a dozen photos. The most dramatic of them were before and after photos of institutional wards. The beginning of the article juxtaposed a photo of Byberry’s A Building published in 1946 with one taken at the same building in 1951. The 1946 photo showed a corner of a dayroom filled with roughly thirty men, almost all naked and sitting on the floor or wandering around the room. The room had no chairs or benches. Puddles covered the floor. This photo was captioned: “1946: Nakedness and Idleness.” The 1951 photo showed about twenty men in the same corner of the dayroom. Now all of the men were clothed. The room had more than enough chairs for the men, and it also had a bench and a table. Most of the men were “Scandal Results in Real Reforms”   |   361 looking toward a distant part of the room. This caption read: “1951: Chairs and a TV Show to Watch.” Maisel highlighted the significant strides that individual states and mental hospitals had made in improving patient care. Minnesota governor Luther W. Youngdahl was singled out for his commitment to reform. During a visit to one of his state’s mental hospitals, Youngdahl was appalled by the conditions he observed and committed himself to improving the state’s care of mental patients. He established the Governor’s Citizens Mental Health Committee and appointed Justin Reese to direct it.2 Reese was one of the COs at Cleveland State Hospital who had exposed conditions at that institution. After the Civilian Public Service, he worked for the National Committee for Mental Hygiene and then became director of the Minnesota Mental Health Society. On the Governor’s Committee, Reese helped draw public attention to the need for changes at Minnesota’s mental hospitals. Youngdahl advocated for the state legislature to increase funding for mental hospitals. He was successful in doubling funding for the operation of the state hospitals and obtaining an appropriation of twenty-eight million dollars for hospital repair and construction. He established a new position of commissioner of mental health for the state, and the person appointed to this role led a campaign to dramatically reduce the use of restraining devices at the state hospitals. Maisel’s article ended with a photo of Governor Youngdahl setting a torch to a pile of straitjackets and restraining devices outside of one of the state hospitals. In December 1949, the National Mental Health Foundation hosted a dinner in Youngdahl’s honor in Philadelphia.3 Maisel acknowledged that most state mental hospitals were still overcrowded and that only a small handful met the staffing standards of the American Psychiatric Association. He concluded, however, that two-thirds of the nations 207 mental hospitals had made substantial progress during the previous five years. The exposés of the mid-1940s led many states to increase appropriations for mental health and to pass new mental health laws. Reforms were...

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