By Mary O’KEEFE

When Girl Scout Allison Smith (above) from Troop 5511 chose her Gold Award project she wasn’t sure how intense her research would be. But she soon found there was much more to her subject than she thought.

“I was focusing on the stigma of mental health throughout history and focusing it through the lens of Rockhaven [Sanitarium],” Smith said.

She looked at the history of treatments and how they changed over the years. Her Gold Award project required her to make a presentation of what she discovered, which she did at the La Crescenta Library on Sunday afternoon.

“I thought this would be a good way to make the public aware of mental health,” she added.

Nothing in her findings really surprised her except discovering that some of the extreme treatments are still being used today
in some areas, and how women were treated.

“They were treated a lot worse [than men],” she said.

Smith had to edit some of the information in her presentation because the extreme treatments were too gruesome for younger audiences; however, she still was able to share some pretty amazing stories.

“Most women [in the past] were admitted to sanitariums based on hysteria, which was an all-encompassing term that [ranged] from women who were too outspoken to those too opinionated about politics,” Smith said.

Some of the women were sent to mental institutions because they were in menopause, or because their husbands just didn’t want to be married, but didn’t want to divorce.

“These women weren’t treated well,” she said.

Some of the treatments included being put into freezing cold water or very hot water.

“Some [patients] were injected with insulin [causing] them to go into comas that some [medical personnel] thought would heal them from mental illness,” Smith said. “But it just made them sleep for long periods of time.”

There were surgical treatments as well, like lobotomies.

“And [some] were given injections of other diseases, like malaria,” Smith said. “Doctors had a theory that more than one disease couldn’t exist [in the body] at the same time.”

Smith decided to look at Rockhaven to see how its treatment, supervised by sanitarium founder Agnes Richards, differed from others.

“Upon further exploration, I found Rockhaven was more like a community of women that helped each other and that was a huge focus. Rockhaven was far ahead of its time. [Rockhaven] treated woman with dignity and treated people as if they were actual human beings,” Smith said.

Rockhaven used treatments that are often used in today’s therapy, Smith explained, like talk or group discussion therapy and expressive therapy by creating art.

Smith enjoyed researching and found there was a lot regarding the subject of mental health, and she discovered that Rockhaven’s philosophy was something that worked.

“I learned that treating people who have disorders is best if you go at it with a dignified, respectful way instead of treating people like subjects or something you could fix like a piece of furniture,” she said.

More about Rockhaven can be learned at its upcoming fundraiser and art boutique. Art on the Rocks, an arts and crafts fair hosted by Friends of Rockhaven, is on April 21 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at St. Luke’s of the Mountains Episcopal Church, 2563 Foothill Boulevard. The event will highlight women artists.

  Mary Okeefe