Seager - Behind the Gates of Gomorrah - a year with the criminally insane. Comment.

 

The notorious NAPA State Forensic Hospital in California for the criminally insane known as Gomorrah, comes to life, almost too life-like, in this, at times, hard to read text by Doctor Stephen Seager.

After the second chapter, Doctor Seager positions himself as a victim; a job he agreed to take on because he and his family are in financial straits. The gratuitous violence is rampant in the hospital, and the good doctor is attacked on his first day though he keeps coming back. Why? Dr. Seager explores these feelings to no, really, rational outcome, apart from a sad altruistic "ideal" explanation he gives, revealing more about the author than the book's subject.

We are given a lesson about mental ill facilities over the last two hundred years. A sad indictment of western values and how we have treated each other over time. For example, in the infamous "Bedlam" hospital in London, during the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the staff would put their worse cases on display in cages, conducting "tours" for the general public and charge a substantial fee. The criminally insane hospitals are a relatively new creation, and those sent there are terribly violent, and no real safety measures are implemented, thus the violent deaths of the hospital's staff from time to time, and no real handling of the perpetrators, that are simply put back in the system.

We also learn:

What is the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath? (There is a difference.)

Why do the Rights of the patient override the Rights of the carer?

It is obvious that our current institutions for the criminal insane are lacking in so many ways, so what can be humanely done about these very dangerous individuals?

Honestly, reading this text was akin to watching a train wreck: wanting to look away, but looking, anyway.

Mental illness has been with us since time began. This little book reveals that society continues to not fully understand the phenomenon. And, more so, productively deal with these violent and lost souls.

A text worth exploring.