ALYSSA - Reflection 2006

I've been interested in Fairfield Hills since I was a little girl. For me it wasn't the same curiosity that strikes most people. For me, it is the pure fact that I have a connection there... inside those buildings. No, I was never a patient there, but my brother was, and on February 12, 1990 he committed suicide in the adolescent psychiatric ward.

My family had an ongoing wrongful death suit, and that has never been resolved. My brother took his life in his room and wasn't found until 8 hours after he had passed away. The staff there were also the ones who gave him the tools to kill himself, and ignored his suicidal behaviors.

When my brother was at Fairfield Hills, he was drugged up and put through many different kinds "therapy". I believe that suicide would not have been his fate, if it weren't for how he was treated and neglected there, at Fairfield Hills.

NANCY - Adolescent Patient 1974 - 1976

I was a patient at Fairfield Hills from 1974 to 1976, in Bridgewater House (I think). At that time, there were two programs there: ADAM House - Adolescent Development And Maturing, and EDON House - End Dependence On Narcotics. Adolescents under the age of 18 were admitted to ADAM House, whereas the adults and criminal offenders on their way to prison for drug offenses went to EDON House.

I spent 18 months in ADAM House. The place was a hellhole! At night, we could hear the patients that had been there, some for over 20 years, screaming. My experience there saved my life, but it also left me with some horrible, horrible memories.

RUSSELL - Reflection 2006

Since I have found this site dedicated to the existence of Fairfield Hills State Hospital, I have spent countless nights shifting through this website and gazing on the script I wrote. Somehow I am transfixed on the fact that I have spent some time here and that Fairfield Hills State Hospital became my portal to other institutions. The pain in which I felt there is so powerful and difficult to articulate in words. For 4 years of my life I wasted away in the State's care that was sworn to protect me. Instead of love and nurturing, I was given drugs, time in an isolation cell, and mean staff who didn't give a damn. The only reason I was sent to Fairfield Hills because I defended myself from a mother who beat me during many of her alcoholic rages. I endured 14 years of this.

One fateful day in September, I was involved in fight with my mother. During this fight she received a fatal injury. I went from one hell into the abyss of another hell. Not even counting the fact that my mother hated me at birth, because she was widowed by my father who was murdered when I was four. I write this and somewhat I ask myself... how can a person experience so much loss and hurt in a lifetime? This is not fair. For me that loss and hurt didn't stop on that day in September. Family as I know it ended that day. All my family members shifted and abandon me. I had one Aunt who only became partially available, not for genuine concern for me, but the conflict and guilt inside herself, for not acting on my pleas for help before that catastrophic event.

Now I am 30 years old. My life is so different now. I presently live in Manhattan. I have gotten a University degree. I have attended Southern Connecticut State University, University of Connecticut, and Penn State during the course of my college career. I have traveled abroad and was fortunate to lived in Barcelona, Spain and Belgium as a way of running from my demons and past. Fifteen years later, I am sad, angry, and alone. Even for my accomplishments, they don't cover the pain and hurt I must carry each day. I have many friends but often I feel so isolated because they don't understand me further fueling my hatred for life. How did I survive all this? I ask myself this question all the time. I wish I was died because being a survivor, having a different life, and seeing that I deserved better then what life has given me hurts. My mind is clouded with these bad memories. I have begun to loss my youthful resilience. I have been in and out of hospitals for the past 6 years with diagnoses of Manic Depressive, Borderline Personality Disorder and Major Depression. Right now as I write this I have a migraine headache because of the mood stabilizer Lamictal. I have tried most of the anti-depressants with no such luck often relapsing in my treatment.

Why am I writing all this? No one understands me. When I gaze at the script I wrote for this site, I feel that those words of that person inside of me understands this struggle. I can't relate to my college friends and the friends I meet abroad. It pains me that their lives are often uneventful and they are achieving continuous life success and all I get is fail work attempts, jail time, hospitalization, situation that just don't workout, and a scar on my wrist that reminds me that I hated my life that much that I wanted to end it. I often think about the friendships that I had on the inside with kids that face similar fates… what happen to them?

Fairfield Hills State Hospital can look from the outside like a university campus very peaceful. On the inside, it's a different tale. There are cells where we were locked away for hours or even days. There are beds in which people were tied down. Us kids watched in horror these barbaric acts of physical and mental torture daily. We saw what happens when your family disowns you and you come to your breaking point. For many, Fairfield Hills became their resting place, and for others the beginning of a painful journey. Russell.

RUSSELL - Adolescent Patient 1990 - 1994

Probably there aren't many people who survive their experiences at Fairfield Hills. Many are no longer with us, locked up in another institution, or on the streets that we pass everyday. My memories are very vivid. Many of the people who shared their lives with me come from very broken lives. I don't know how I survived my four years being institutionalized. For those who may read this or have some curiosity about life in an insane asylum, life here was far from normal. I can still hear, see the sights, and the screams of the kids who were abused, injected with thorizine a.k.a. slow juice, put on all kinds of meds, tied in a four point restraint to a bed, locked up in a cell to unanswered cries of help. It was never a day that this never happen.

At night, during breakfast, many kids watch in horror that their lives will never be the same as we lost our innocence and entered a world of institutionalization with meds, doctors, psychic techs, families and society that left us here to waste away our lives. God forsakes us... while normal kids grew up to have proms, parties and the normal stuff of living, we got to see slit wrist, abuse from staff, kids doped up on so much meds that they are just lost souls, and other forms of botch suicide attempts. Kids who were so broken or damaged by life, often re-traumatized again, again, over and over, in a system that is barbaric and a society that is ignorant to people who are helpless at best. I was able to come out with minimal damage than most, but I am often haunted by the screams. In my head there is no peace. I come here today and tell these stories because somehow I am trying to reconcile with my past that I often wish to bury and burn away, but it there and here to stay.

I am 29 years old and my journey in Fairfield Hills began in November 1990. I managed to go to college when I was officially cut from the state's care in May 1994. With no family, homeless, ex-girlfriends who became my family one point in time now turn their backs, unstable work history, often fired for my bad temper, police involvement of civilian and military, failed suicide attempts from hanging, overdose, and slicing of my wrist. I hate my life at best. I am so lost. Then in the back of my head I hear the past, the demons. I thought I wasn't affected by my past, but my life would have been so different if I never had entered the doors of Fairfield Hills and other institutions. I wouldn't be tying a belt around my head, take my meds which I have become so dependent for my survival, with a plastic bag to suffocate, or having a dull knife trying to gain the courage to slice deep to severe an artery, and enduring stays in a psychic ward for help, but only giving fuel to hate my life even more.

This is my life! This has become of my life today, botch suicide attempts, psychotropic medicines, psychiatrist, therapist, and life advice that just doesn't help or make sense. I am crashing hard. This site is away for me to come face to face with my demons and educate those who are willing to listen...

MORE PATIENT ACCOUNTS COMING SOON...

THIS PAGE LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2007