This is the story that I wrote for National History 2013 in my school. It is 1,513
**This is now posted on my other account NotSoSunShineyDay
People felt that they could treat the mentally and physically disabled harshly and/or unfairly because they were unable to stand up for themselves like a person without and disability could. Everyone should be given the same opportunities and no one should be treated differently because of a disability. People with disabilities were beaten, sterilized, and forced to take unnecessary medications, just because other didn’t care about them or they thought they were helping when in reality they were doing no such thing. This is a turning point because as people became more tolerant of one group they began to accept others and see them as equals
A disability is defined as a long term (six months or more) sensory, physical, mental or emotional condition that makes it difficult for a person to perform daily living activities.
Part 1: Mental
A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological pattern or anomaly, potentially reflected in behavior, that is generally associated with distress or disability, and which is not considered part of normal development of a person's culture.
Sterilization was common among disabled citizens. Foreign born patients were more likely to be sterilized than a native born parent and an African American is more likely to be sterilized than a Caucasian. In 1909, California became the third state to legalize the sterilization of the feebleminded and insane and then repealed it in 1979
‘”I found one case, which they didn’t know about, where they had sterilized the same man twice”, Dr. Paul B. Popenoe wrote Ezra S. Gosney from Stockton state hospital “He was an unintelligent Italian, and I suppose he didn’t know enough to tell them that he had been through the mill before, and they missed that fact in their records”’. Many doctors were care less and forgetful as they sterilized hundreds of thousands of people. Two sterilized women died in pain from kidney poison because a doctor made a mistake in their sterilization.
‘Edgartown found that only a fifth of those interview approved of the operation and most of them were unmarried men. Nearly all women were devastated. Many were abandoned by their families. Those who married generally didn’t tell their husbands what had been done to them. “Of all the things they endured in the state institutions, what has stuck the longest and most is their sterilization,” Edgerton said of his subjects.
‘"I do not believe I have been benefited mentally by the operation; perhaps my 'pride' still resents the thought," one man wrote. "I did not and do not quite understand the motive or 'purpose' for compulsory operation. Hope you can realize my viewpoint."’
‘"Doctor, if you write my son do not mention the sterilization operation to him as he does not know it was performed," wrote another patient's mother.’
‘"It was all a mistake," wrote a man who had been sterilized at Stockton state hospital. "I would rather not be sterilized as I do not think there is the slightest danger of myself being responsible for any weak or feebleminded children, and I shall ever bemoan the fact that I shall never have a son to bear my name, to take my place and to be a prop in my old age.”’
‘Another said “I love kids. Sometimes now when I baby-sit, I hold they baby up to myself and I cry and I think to myself, ‘why was I ever sterilized?’” Sterilization in the United States continued until the early 1970s. Another common occurrence in mental hospitals is patient abuse. In 1923, St. Elizabeth’s had been investigated three times for mismanagement and charges of patient abuse, physically and mentally. Dr. William Alanson White let the hospital beginning in 1903. He introduced physcotherapy and psychology and promoted research and scholarship, and new programs and departments including internal medicine and social work.
