The Mental Patient–Body Disposition Interface

According to Andrea Stone, Groups seek to give dignity to dead, USA Today, June 8, 2007, at 3A, there are

hundreds of thousands of former mental patients in unmarked or numbered graves on the grounds of mental institutions. Many date to the 19th or early 20th century, when the mentally ill were often warehoused in state hospitals until they died. For those whose family didn’t claim their remains, a pauper’s burial awaited.  * * *

Mental health advocates met Thursday [June 6, 2007] in Washington to finalize plans to honor those nameless former patients with a national memorial garden on the grounds of Washington’s St. Elizabeths Hospital, which opened in 1852 as the nation’s first federally-run psychiatric institution. * * *

Some states have changed their laws to allow the names of former patients to be released publicly, including Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin. In March, Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski signed a law allowing release of the names of patients whose ashes have lain in storage as far back as the 1880s.

Some states still refuse to divulge the identities of the buried. They say it would violate laws that protect patients’ privacy. Nebraska last month became the latest to refuse to open records when the attorney general rejected a request from the historical society in Hastings.