Letchworth Village

Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries, Tales from Appalachia. Welcome back. Hello.

Oh, that was so spirited. Hello. Hi. Hi.

We don't have water here. Yeah, it's been an interesting time. Oh, sorry. I'm tired all of a sudden.

Bless it. Yeah, no, there's no water. So I've already peed once. No pooping.

There's no pooping. I only peed one time. I pooped. Blush the toilet.

I always might just fell into her face. That was weird. She's like, this one, that's all crazy. That's right.

That's that one. No, I like, refilled and I'm a little scared that like, now there's no water next time, maybe precarious. Yeah. Yeah.

And if you hear a weird sound in the background, we've got the little, mini-beater going because it's kind of cold down here. It's a little chilly. No, I just, I wonder if we have water now. I texted my neighbor because I was like, please, because it's been very cold.

Yeah. I was like, I hope it's not the pipes frozen or something, you know, and I texted my next door neighbor. And I was like, Hey, y'all, do you have water? And she was like, no, we don't.

We're like, Oh, good. I got it. I got it. I was like, that's a good thing that she doesn't have water because then it's not an expensive problem.

It's not a you problem. Yeah. That's a city problem. That's not you.

Exactly. So I got it. So I got it. So I mean, like, I'm on city water where I live.

And that's the good thing about city water. Absolutely. I guess. Yeah, because if you have a well, I mean, the pump goes out.

I am shocked you don't have a well. Now we're on city rent, city limits. I am shocked you don't turn better. I've never turned butter.

I've been buttering a plastic bag before. You've been on that or a jar? I made it a jar. No, or a plastic bag.

Was that an other thing you did in school? No. Oh, maybe it's just as mountain children. You made it a jar?

They thought I'd make butter in a jar. Never. I thought I'd already shake it. I didn't make butter.

Shake milk, butter milk and something else. And they put some things in a jar and we shook it up and it made butter. Can't say that I do. No.

It's good. I think it was a little house on the Prairie Day. No. We learned how to make crystal meth, but right.

I mean, that was another day, but that was not a house on the Prairie Day. No, we did that. We all got to wear, um, we wore like prairie costumes. Oh my gosh.

We made butter and we, they made biscuits and we tried molasses and we went on a hayride. That is so sweet. Yeah. And little prairie children.

A little weird, but looking back, a little strange. Yeah. Wow. Where are the little prairie children?

Little prairie children. And then around. What grade were you in? Like third.

That's really sweet. It was like third grade. Yeah. That's really sweet.

I'll never forget. I'll never forget. And I think it was actually at your school. I'll never forget.

Were you there when we were prairie children? It wasn't when you were a prairie child. This was when you were, you would have been in kindergarten. I would have been.

So yeah, you would have been in kindergarten. Um, I was visiting this, what's sort of third or fourth grade classroom and they were doing show and tell and this little boy, you don't remember. I was a little more city full. I was a little bit more city.

And so I'll never forget this little boy they were doing show and tell. He had something in his Ziploc baggie and I didn't know what it was. And he brought it out and he was so excited and people had shown like the book that they brought or whatever. You know, they're stuffed animal and he was like so excited and they were like, okay, a church urn.

And so he comes and he brings out this bag and he brings it out and he was like, all right, me and my daddy, we got this this weekend and I'm so excited. And he pulls it out and he was like, this is 20. This is the bird that I shot this weekend with my daddy. And he was like, look, it's still bleeding.

And he was like, I just want to show it to all y'all. And he was like, you won't pass it around and hold it. And so these children are holding this bleeding dead bird. And he was like, you want to hold it?

And I was like, nope, no, I didn't. I was like, sure don't. And I was like, put that back in there. I was like, ew, like you need to porel your hands.

Like, no, like no, we're not touching this. And he's like, what's she talking about? My daddy said I could bring it in that all the kids would look like, where am I? What is happening here in the mountain school?

Apparently, and I'm in the public school, but in the mountains. It was. And I remember going back and thinking, I'm in the twilight zone. I, because the teacher was like, this is tip, but this is normal.

And this is typical. And I was like having a conemption like what this, what? Yeah. Yeah.

I just got you really prepared for when we had to remove the swirl. Fucking live is true. But when we were told to give it CPR, we said no. And then a lovely person who was attending the training, then picked the squirrel up and chucked it into the bushes.

Yeah. Yeah. I sure as seance had been made. Yes.

A prayer to the squirrel and just and a shrine had been erected. That's right. We then had to take the shrine down and chuck it to the dumpster. That's right.

That's one of the best memories ever of, you know, I then I did had to go teach that. That's like what? I think, you know, being individuals who have worked in the helping profession, when someone comes off the street into the building that you're working in an area that has a very high population of homeless folks and folks of mental illness. Yes.

And just anything could happen. And you're always working on the edge. And you have someone come in and say, please, please help someone's in the parking lot and needs help. Does anyone know CPR?

There were plenty of us who stood up and said, we all know CPR. Where's the person? We were gone out the door. We were ready to perform CPR.

We were ready. And then they said, and also, does anyone have a cell phone? We have to call the animal shelter. And I'm thinking, yeah.

I don't think we're like, oh God, they've had an animal like their dog walker or something like they've been struck down. I made eye contact with our friend Jen. And we, I was so ready to go. I was still like to the parking lot out.

We go. We sort of looked at each other and we paused for a minute. Hayley was excited. She was ready.

She was ready. She was going to ADD with some ADD. And she was ready. And then she was on to tell us how it was a squirrel.

It wasn't a human. It was a squirrel. And a squirrel had been hit by a car and was dying in the parking lot. And she wanted us to save its life.

And she was small enough. And she was serious. It wasn't. Yeah, no, it wasn't.

It was. She was serious. And I am a professional. And I am very professional on a normal basis.

And I understand mental health. And I take that very seriously. And as a clinician, all the things, I couldn't look at our friend Jen because we made eye contact and we both started chuckling. And I just looked down and I just kept, like it was all I could do to keep it in.

And I tried to keep my laughter inside and so did she. And the lady just kept going on and on. And kept saying, is no one going to save this for us? There's nothing we can do, ma'am, you're welcome to call the human site.

Exactly. And it was, it was one of the greatest memories among many that we had. And then our, one of our participants in the training walked into the building and said, um, there is, there's like, there's some sticks and some plastic, like in a TP formation out in your parking lot. Just wanted to know if you're aware of that.

And I was like, Oh, that's for the squirrel. No, this lady has erected a shrine to the squirrel. So we should probably go and remove said shrine. Like, I don't know if that's disrespectful, but we've got to get out of parking lots of people in park.

So we went out there and I'm like, Oh yeah, that's where it was dead. That thing is dizzy. So that is rigor mortis has set in that guy's gone. There's nothing we can do.

So I'm looking for something like the piece of plastic to scoop it up and get out of the parking lot. I'm like, at least put it in the bushes. Because there's a part of me, I've been around dead things, rats in particular, and sometimes they look like they're dead and then you go to move them and they are not dead. And that thing will come back and bite the crap out of you.

So don't, not going to risk it. So I was like looking for plastic and looking for something. I'm like, we got to scoop and dump. Um, no, our participant walked up with her bare hands, picked that sucker up by the tail and chopped it in the bush.

I was like, well, that is one way to do it. She's like, I could tell her had been dead for a minute. I'm like, was it dead before she came in here? She's like, if she came in here in the last hour, absolutely.

That thing's been dead. Like, oh my God. It didn't matter. She thought we were going to save the time.

No, I was dead. That got that. She thought we had faith in our abilities. And 80.

We're magical. That did not end well. All righty. Sorry, y'all.

No, well, speaking of the power that we have power that we have and places. Oh, maybe I don't know. The power that I can go in for like mountain places. Here we go.

All right. We're going to talk about as this transition we are getting into the power that we have in mountain places. Mountain places. We're going to go to New York.

Okay. We're in rural New York. So we're going into the mountains of New York State. Okay.

And we're going to Lechworth Village. I have no idea where that is. I did not either until I started looking at it. It's in Rockland County, New York.

And we're going to talk about the history of this place and some of the spookiness. I love spookiness. Okay. So this place was a residential institution.

Okay. Yep. Located in Rockland County, New York. And it is, it was built for the physically and mentally disabled of all ages from the New York to the elderly.

No, okay. We're going to be to you. Okay. We'd like to thank Wikipedia for their sport.

Okay. So this place opened in 1911. And it's peak. It consisted of over 130 buildings spread out over many, many acres of land.

That was huge. Yeah. So this is not like an institution. It's a village.

It's a yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. So it was named for William Pryor Lechworth, who really kind of started some of the reform in the treatment and the care of the quote insane, epileptics and poor children. So probably children without parents made up.

Okay. Orphan children. Yeah. As opposed to orphan parents.

Not orphan parents. Just orphan children. Oh, man. I would love to be an orphan parent.

Would you? Some days. No, but I mean, my child maybe just like visiting, you know, just like visiting, like relatives for like a day or a week. Just like, like giving me some space.

Being like, came on, you're on your own. You're on your own. I think I could make it on your own. You could be orphaned by your child.

Yeah. I think I could make it. Yeah. I think totally.

Yeah. I have a job. Yeah. You could do it.

Yeah. All right. So there were some reports of inadequate funding and improper care of residents, including children. This is not surprising.

And those were present dating back to the 1920s. Account surfaced of residents being found unclothed, unbathed and neglected. In addition to rampant abuse among the institution's residents, staff also suffered abuse with the hands of co-workers, which included incidents of rape. Oh, the institution gained national tension in 1972 from an expose by Geraldo Rivera.

So, Geraldo. Not Geraldo. Geraldo. Yeah.

In 1996, the institution was permanently closed down and many of its abandoned structures have since fallen into disrepair. This thing went on for decades. A year before I was born, I closed. Wow.

Even after Geraldo revealed it all. Yeah. Wait on. Wow.

All right. So we're going to talk about, we're going to go back in history and talk about it from beginning to its end. So it opened in the 20s? It opened in, let's see.

Yes, in the 20s. Okay. So around the end of 1911, though, the first stage of construction had been completed. Okay.

So we started out kind of in 1911. Oh, that's a long time. Yeah. But the main site was huge.

Yeah, it's huge. It was completed on the 2,362 acre site. This was a state institution for the segregation of the epileptic and feeble-minded. So I guess I would have been there.

I guess I would have been there. I guess I would have been there. I guess we won't be sharing that straw mattress. No, Bobby, you know, out there in the sticks.

Okay. So the architecture was modeled after Monticello, Monticello, which is Jefferson's home. The picturesque community was lauded as a model institution for the treatment of the development of the disabled. It was a humane alternative to high rise of siloms, having been founded on several guiding principles that were revolutionary at the time.

Keyword there at the time. All right. So there were separate living and training facilities for children, able-bodied adults, and there was kind of protocol that they were not to exceed two stories or house over 70 inmates in whatever building they were in. I'm sure they didn't pay attention to that.

Until the 1960s, the able-bodied labored on the communal farms, raising enough food and livestock to feed the entire population. Wow. So they worked. Yeah, and worked and worked and worked.

Yeah. Okay. So this was conceived by the progressives of the time as a major departure from, you know, the asylums of the 19th century. The facility was thought to have a great potential and was a great improvement from past facilities.

It was a farming village of nearly four square miles. In the words of the 1972 Rockland County Red Book, it was subdivided as far as possible in order to avoid the tendency toward institutionalism. So the grounds to run the building were very plentiful and created some leisure spaces for patients. As late as 1958, the patients grew their own crops, intended cows, pigs, and chickens, and they made toys and sold them at Christmas.

So they're like, so outwardly, it sounds amazing. Right. It sounds like this is a self-sustaining place, which like we've talked about in other like asylum episodes that we've done, where like the idea was for it to be the self-sustaining institution. And this may be the closest we got.

What was this one? So the real question is, if we've got all these positive things externally going on, why aren't we making progress? Where is it falling apart? We'll get there.

All right. But we are first going to talk about the polio vaccination. Oh, okay. Just a side note here.

Okay. In February of 1950, while Lechworth was still enjoying a good reputation amongst health professionals, despite some rumors of overcrowding and maltreatment, the other rumors though, just rise. Lechworth's Dr. George Jarvis asked Dr.

Hillary Kaproski to test his live virus polio vaccine at Lechworth Village to compare it to the alternatives available to them. On kids, Dr. Kaproski had tested the oral vaccine on himself and a laboratory assisted two years earlier. At Lechworth Village, he gave a dose to an eight-year-old boy.

When he experienced no side effects, the vaccine was administered to 19 more child patients, none of whom are known to have had any side effects. Lechworth showed that 17 gain antibodies, three of them apparently already had the antibodies, and Kaproski viewed these experiments as a positive first step toward a better polio vaccine. We're experimenting on children. So now we're saying, hey kids, you are unwittingly, you are guinea pigs.

This is inhumane. What the heck? Right. Yeah, great.

Not great. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about kind of the structure and how this all was laid out.

Okay. So there were several, you know, buildings that consisted of small dormitories, a hospital, dining halls, and housing for staff. And it was built on, you know, thousands of acres of countryside in Woodland. So in accordance to guidelines set by Lechworth himself, the institution was being planned.

The buildings that were originally designed as dormitories were mostly single-story and the most, and at the most, two-story buildings designed to house anywhere from 16 to 70 residents in total per building. And then they were also subdivided into smaller dormitories. So the buildings, the dorm buildings were required to be at least 200 feet from other buildings, and each to have its own attached playground. If you're housing, most of the kids.

Right. Yeah. Each playground had at a minimum of basketball court. Most of the basketball courts are kind of, looks like they're still kind of maintained.

They still have their nets, and they are available for public use as of August of 2021. Really? Yeah. Okay.

A few of the playgrounds also have remnants of other play equipment that has since been removed. So these guidelines were rigidly adhered to, as late as 1933. By 1944, however, overcrowding the results in residents being housed in buildings that were not originally designed nor intended to be used as dorms. So the overcrowding was partially a result of the newly constructed Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York, which had been built to relieve overcrowding at Lechworth and the other state institutions being turned over to the United States Army during World War II before it ever actually accepted any of its originally intended patients.

So they built this swanky new hospital over on Staten Island, World War II breaks out. The Army's like, nah, we want that. So they take it over and let's just back up. And so that means that we're going to get a little bit more crowded.

Yeah. Okay. Yep. So Lechworth was villagers closed in 1996, and most of the structures are pretty much falling apart.

The roof of the administrative building bears the name of Dr. Charles Little, the first superintendent of Lechworth, and many of the buildings and structures have been vandalized, and some have even been burned down as an act of arson. Wow. Yeah.

Okay. So on there on this property, we have an old cemetery. We'll talk about it. All right.

From 1914 through 1967, residents who died at Lechworth Village and his remains were not claimed by families were buried at a clearing in the forest, a short distance off of Cal Hollow Road in Stony Point, New York, which is about a mile away from the 2008 group facility. It's hidden from the road by trees. The cemetery is presently owned and maintained by the town of Stony Point along with volunteers from the community. So it's still there.

We wanted to go visit. I think we should. I think we should do. There were numbered steel grave markers that were used as like the show now, the original graves.

So they really had like what headstones we just had these steel posts. That makes sense. So, yes, they were marked with T-shaped numbered steel markers. Families were allowed to erect headstones at their own expense, but most of the graves are still marked only by their steel markers.

So remarkably few of the markers or stones have ever been vandalized. Some of the graves, especially those of children, are regularly visited by members of the community who leave stones, flowers, or other items in remembrance of the deceased. It's really lovely. There's also a large memorial stone at the entrance of the cemetery erected in 2007 with a plaque bearing the names of those buried there.

Those names are not, you know, in like matching up to any graves. Like you can't like look at number on the plaque and find the number. Don't know why, but that's not how it works apparently. That's confusing.

Yeah. Many stones, small toys, other items are left on that remembrance stone, and remembrance of those buried there. In 1967, a new cemetery was opened near Thales, Mount Ivy Road in Thales, New York, and the bodies of those buried at the old cemetery were not moved. So we had new cemetery and we left everybody else over here where they should stay.

Yes. Yes. So, okay, let's talk about conditions and treatment. So, let's write what was described as an ideal center for them until they challenged and praised by the state as the first really new and upcoming progressive facility in term.

It was progressive. Rumors such as mistreatment of patients and horrific experimenting continued to circulate long after its closing. Former worker Dr. Little presented an annual report in 1921 that there were three categories of, quote, beable mindedness, the quote, moron group, the quote, imbecile group, and the quote, idiot group.

The last of these categories is the one that could not be treated, Dr. Little said, and so they should not be taken to Lechworth Village because they were unable to, quote, benefit the state by doing the various jobs that were assigned to the male patients, including loading thousands of tons of coal into storage facilities, building roads, and farming acres of land. So, unfortunately, because I would want to do any of that stuff, I'm going to be falling into the idiot group. Yeah, but I mean, this just kind of rings like prison labor.

Right. This is a doctor. This is a professional who is classifying these individuals as morons and idiots and. Yeah.

Yeah. So many of the patients were young children. In 1921, the 13th annual report list the numbers of patients admitted that year. Out of 506 people, 317 were between the ages of five and 16.

And there were 11 that were under the age of five. Wow. Oh my gosh. Visitors observed that the children were malnourished and looked sick.

The Lechworth staff claimed in the report that there was a scarcity of food, water, and other necessary supplies. But that was not the case. The children punishment. Yeah.

Children were often the subjects of testing and some of the cruelest neglects. And many of the children were able to comprehend learning, but were not given the chance because they were thought of as different. So patients were forced to dwell in cramped dormitories because the state would not complete the construction for more buildings. 10 years after being constructed, Lechworth's buildings were already overpopulated.

70 beds being cramped into the tiny dormitories. Nearly 1200 patients were present during 1921. And overpopulation was one of the harshest conditions at Lechworth, which is pretty common for mental health care at this time. Yeah.

But the 1950s, the village was overflowing with 4,000 people quoting a spokesman for the state office of, when it used to be called this, mental retardation and developmental disabilities. He confirmed that families abandoned their relatives there. Families of patients seemed to be just as neglectful as caregivers of the facility. In the 1940s, Irving Habermann did a set of photographs which revealed the true nature of what was going on.

Until this point, the conditions of the facility weren't apparent to the public. Habermann's photos exposed the terrible conditions of the facility as well as the dirty, uncam patients. Naked residents huddled in sterile day rooms. The photos showed the patients to be highly neglected.

These photos were pushed to public push the public to question the institution and demand answers. However, knew that these photos would bring attention to the Lechworth facility. So he went ahead and put him out there. All right.

So the Geraldo Rivera investigation. Geraldo. Geraldo. Not.

Yeah. That guy. Geraldo. Yeah.

In 1972, ABC News featured Lechworth village and its piece of Willowbrook, the last great disgrace, the documentary by ABC New York's investigative reporter, Geraldo Rivera. There you go. Looked at how intellectually disabled people, particularly children, were being treated in the state of New York. United States Senator Robert F.

Kennedy previously adored the Willowbrook facility in 1965 and called it a quote, snake pit. Kennedy was not allowed to take cameras into the buildings. However, so the average citizen had no idea how bad the conditions really were. Kennedy speeches about the conditions they are, although impassioned, attracted little attention and resulted in little or no improvement in conditions of the facility.

Rivera, though, arrived at Willowbrook with a full camera crew, and when the documentary was aired, there was widespread outrage at how the residents, many of them children, were being treated. Although the documentary focused on Willowbrook's state school on Staten Island, Rivera also visited Lechworth village, as well as facilities in California. When he found a great deal of progress I'd been made in caring for and training of disabled people in California, he saw the situation in New York's facilities as backward and cruel. Rivera accompanied at Brock's Congressman Mario Biyagi?

Sure. To Lechworth village? He arrived two hours early because Rivera correctly suspected the staff would be ordered to clean and dress the children before the camera crew arrived. The congressman described the children there as being subjected to the worst possible conditions I've ever seen in my life.

The documentary showed the residents of Willowbrook and Lechworth village, many of them living in awful dirties and overcrowded conditions with a lack of clothing, bathing, and attention to basic needs. Facilities were very understaffed and there were little to no actual schooling, training, or even simple activities to occupy residents. Rivera saw the overcrowding and neglect as a direct result of inadequate funding and the ignorant attitudes in wider society. The potential of individual patients was far from being realized, and this confronting report helped lead to far-reaching reform of disability services throughout the US.

I'm googling pictures now. It's, uh, wow, terrifying. Pretty scary. All right, so we had some later reform.

So the attention from the documentary did little for the immediate needs of those living at Lechworth village. The institution were made inadequately funded and managed, but public pressure led to reforms by the end of the 70s. Funding was significantly raised, focused mostly on those who worked in direct care. Various efforts to reduce overcrowding were underway by the late 1978s and to increase privacy for individuals in the living areas.

The office of mental retardation and developmental disabilities attempted to obtain group homes. Opposition was strong on the parts of many local residents who attended town hall meetings to express their fears of group homes. Yeah. Lechworth had already initiated learning programs that were designed to train individuals in skills with the hopes of making their transitions easier.

Coupled with other community-based operations such as family care homes, the population of the village steadily decreased throughout the 80s and 90s. And then people, you know, aging out, also dying. They really helped with that as they weren't taking in by new patients. Lechworth was closed in 1996, leaving the buildings there to decay.

Many who worked at the village refused to speak of their experiences. Old-socile methods of segregating people with disabilities ended with a push for mainstreaming and inclusion in the society. Patients were moved to more up-to-date facilities in the country. So with all of that, there have been several accounts of like, you know, ghostly sightings.

Not a lot documented on it. I just think it's a spooky place. Yeah. But I'm sure there's like some, you know, spooky stuff.

I just don't think you can have that many atrocities happen and feel that much. Gosh, I don't even know the word I'm looking for it. Yeah, I don't know. Well, the town itself, where this place is located, is looking at, you know, redeveloping it and making it something that the community could use.

Yeah. So they've talked about putting in different things and some things have already been put in. So the Patriot Hills of Boffcourse and Veterans Memorial Park is on that land. Now, the town's interest is to develop the 18-acre portion of the property that houses the eight remaining buildings, and those were built between 1929 and 1952, for the Lechwood Village Developmental Center campus.

So five of them are vacant, and the rest have been renovated and have been in use. According to the town's 20-page request for expressions of interest, respondents may or may not include the existing buildings and their proposals. In 2003, the town commissioned a community survey regarding reuse of the property. The results showed that about 71% were in favor of the town partnering with private parties to jointly develop the site for combination of recreational facilities and private use to offset some development costs.

Wow. So in 2009, the town hired a developmental consultant to look for a potential developer and a plan to build a stadium with hotels, a conference center, and shopping mall were proposed. Whenever the idea died, as residents were worried, they might lose those little league fields at the Veterans Memorial Park. What's that kind of cute?

That actually super cute. I was like, y'all protect those little league fields, man. We only know shopping mall here. No, and I feel like the kids need that.

Yeah, they need that. Yeah. So yeah, no super dwell documented ghosts, but I would have asked that to be something there. Some spooky things.

And I'm sure that you can feel it when you go there. There's got to be a sense of some heaviness. Yeah. I don't think that you could go there and not.

And just for me, I was googling like some of the pictures from the documentary and just googling in general. It's pretty terrifying. Yeah. And even the photos from the 1940s.

Yeah. Pretty terrifying. And it kind of goes back to the mentality. Like my mother, when my mother talks about the idea of like group homes, she has such a negative viewpoint of like group homes and that kind of thing that she just, you know, anyway.

And I think it comes from things like this. Like when she hears about individuals with developmental delays, like she's like, I've never, you know, put my childhood group home. I would never do this. Like, you know, how you thinking of how it was.

How it was. Yeah. And how cruel and I was like, you know, we've gone through a lot of mental health reform and we've gone through a lot of Medicaid reform and a lot of child welfare reform and like it's had like things like this. It's horrific.

Like it's horrific what we found. But thank God, someone has exposed this so that there could be change that's happened. So all in all, and I will say people who the individuals who are working in group homes, those are hard gigs. Yeah.

Yeah. They are people who are working in the PRTFs. Those are hard gigs. Yeah.

That's, that's a hard job. That's a really hard job. Yeah. That level care thing.

Yeah. And what's really scary right now is like, especially we're in a school system. Like I have at least two kids in my very small setting that need that level of care. Like they need group home level care and can't get it because there's no beds right now.

Like there's no facility that can take them. Yeah. And it's like, it's truly what they need to be successful because they can't right now cope or be managed in a home setting. And like, ideally, that's what you would want.

Like you want kids at home. Like that's where it comes to be is at home or in a home. But these like, you know, needing that level of care and not being able to access it is also a big sadness. Very hard too.

And being able to have parents who are trauma informed, being just kind of all things aligning to a perfect setting where they can be maintained within a home setting versus going to a group home setting. But then sometimes a group home setting is ideal because it creates the structure and the balance that sometimes is needed. Yeah. Yeah.

It's hard because it's hard transitions in. It's hard transitions out. Yeah. You know, working with kids who are both transition in and out of group settings, it's sometimes hard to, you know, break through some of that.

So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stuff.

And then there's that sense of one sure sort of in an institution for a long time, you sort of become institutionalized. Yeah. You can't break free of that. You know, like it's a challenge.

So anyway, yep. Yeah. All the way around, I feel like we've made a lot of great strides moving forward. We have huge, huge strides.

And there's still a lot of work to be done. Kind of work to do. But at the same time, we've we've come really, really far from where we were. Yeah.

Even 20 years ago. Yeah. So huge strides. So hopefully we'll just continue to do that.

Well, I think we've made so many medical advancements too. We're learning so much more about the brain and about, you know, our brains and our bodies and how connected, you know, everything is. Certainly with ASD. So autism spectrum disorder.

Yeah. And you know, particular intelligences and that kind of thing. And you know, versus things like back in the day, I mean, you were just an imbecile. You were just well, I mean, things like epilepsy.

I had childhood epilepsy. Like I've had my burger seizure when I was, you know, I was 12 or 13. And I had my last one, I think I was 16. And so for three years, I had, you know, a major seizure disorder.

They still don't fully know what caused it. And I remember just talking to my neurologist as a kid, like wanting to know, like, why is my body do this? And him saying like, you know, in 70% of cases are more than that. Like we never know.

Like what triggers it, what causes it, why the brain does this? He said, you know, if we're lucky, we find a tumor. And I was like, that kind of was odd to me of like thinking like, if we're lucky. Oh, how lucky.

Because then at least you have something to look at, like something to like put like, oh, this is what's causing it. But for so many people, like myself included, like there was no, no answer to it. Like it's not a tumor. It was not a tumor.

Not a tumor. No, it was just a brain. Wow. That was weird.

So yeah, so I was like thinking the other day, it's like, I've been like, it's in 10 years. Wow. I've been seizure free. It's not fun.

Something here. Yeah. Well, it's like a felt like a celebration. Like I didn't really, like should we have a sea tree part?

Maybe just a cake. Maybe. Yeah, we can shimmy get a little shimmy. Shimmy shimmy over here.

Shake it off. Maybe. Yeah. I'm some Taylor's.

But yeah, I had multiple types of seizures. So I had the like the full body grandmole. Oh my gosh. Seagers.

I had vocal seizures. Not the febrile seizures though. No, I didn't have those. I had vocal, so like they usually start in my hand.

And then I had psychosomatic seizures as well, where I would worry myself so much that I was going to have one that my brain would like trick my body. And I would have all the symptoms. Like I would go full like don't like recall any of it because I was, you know, lost consciousness during them. But like would have a seizure, but there was no electrical activity in my brain causing it, which is wild to me.

Wow. Like it doesn't make so like when people say, oh, yes, psychosomatic symptoms, doesn't make it many less real. Exactly. Like because there's no way anybody looking at me could have told the difference between a true electrical seizure and a psychosomatic seizure.

They presented the exact same way. So I had to learn like to deal with the anxiety of it, which has a you know, 11 to 13. That's so hard. 14 15 16 year old is really, really hard.

I think so looking at it from the mental health side of it, when we're talking about things like generalized anxiety, this one, when you have had something significant happen to you, you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop because this is a pattern and because like in your case, this has happened before, you're like, okay, I know what's going to happen again. I'm just waiting. I'm ready. I know what's going to happen.

And because you are so freaked out and you are so anxious about it, yes, you're kind of talking yourself into it almost. You're just like, is this it? This is it? I know this is it.

You know, and it's hard to give yourself that like, it's okay. This is not, you know, it's hard to talk to yourself out of it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's wild. It's crazy. But yeah, so I would have been in this facility. I've been hanging out.

Oh, I probably would have worked there. Yeah. I would have fed you. Thank you.

Well, appreciate it. Would you close me? Yes. I probably would have been raped in the facility.

Right. Yeah. I should have fed me. Maybe.

Oh, great. Yeah. So I'm just bad times. I would have been abused.

Oh, yeah. It sounds like a horrible horrible place. Horrible times. Yeah.

I don't recommend that. It would have got, we would have rated it zero stars on Yelp. Zero stars, zero out of five stars. Yeah.

Trip advisor zero. So no to that. I would have said no to that room. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. Alrighty. Well, well, if you want to tell us about your generalized anxiety, or so much more or so many more things, you can send us an email at mountainistereseappelaction.com.

Find us on our Facebook page, Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Find us on Instagram, mountainisterese.appelatcha. And check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com.com.

It was super enthusiastic. And I was kind of forget that one. Alright, that's it. That's it.

Institution. Two of the group home. I do a three day hold somewhere. If I could be by myself.

Yeah. Just, I mean, that sounds good. Like locked in a room for three days. Yeah.

I'm good on board with that. I do what my electronic like just give me my phone in a charger. No, give me a book. I don't read.

We've established this. I hate to read. You know that. Give me my phone.

No, they should take those away from you. No, not on my site hold. For me, I'm special. Oh, okay.

You get your phone. I get my phone. I'm special. And your site hold.

Got it. Got it. Got it. Yeah.

Well, because it's only my parental site hold. Just for my parental sanity. Gotcha. Yeah.

Got it. So they're like, here you go. Here, honey. Like put your feet up.