September 2, 2008
Recent talk about how to commemorate the patient cemetery of Western State Hospital, where patients were buried for 160 years with only a number on their tombstones, once again calls attention to the sporadic dehumanization of the mentally ill. In this case, among other things, the separation of a body from its name. Burying patients without clear identification was standard practice across the country. Nonetheless, stumbling across one of those grave sites unexpectedly - like the