Labels

When we prep the documents for the camera I don't have a lot of time to look at what they are.  This week I did pick up a pretty good sized probate file and thought that this must be someone who had a substantial estate.  As it turned out, it was actually commitment papers to the insane asylum.  I will be sharing more about what are in probate files in a later post.  As I started opening various documents in the file I kept seeing insane, insane, insane on everything.  I was thinking at the time, "was he really insane?" or had other issues, or someone who wanted to get him out of the way.  I know these thoughts are probably a little dramatic but I don't think history will always look at asylums in a good light  during the earlier periods of time, nor the admitting requirements. One of the last documents I picked up was a handwritten request.  It was a letter written by a brother of the patient a number of years after he had been committed.  The gist of the letter was that the brother requested that his brother have the label of "insane" removed from his record. He stated his brother was not insane he just wasn't capable of taking care of himself.  I don't know if this was an older or younger brother but apparently he was old enough to get involved in his brothers case.  I know I was proud of this stranger who cared about his brother and wanted people to know who he really was and what his abilities were.  I guess coming from an education background I am sensitive to the shift in parents who use to fight us when we dealt with special needs of a child because they didn't want the stigma associated with certain words.  Then I saw a shift when we began dealing with parents who came in demanding that their child be labeled ADHD or autistic, or some other issue.  I have thought after reading the request of a brother if some of our so easily labeled children will have someone do that for them.