Theme
2:11am October 25, 2014

dendriforming:

There actually seems to be a very specific “institutions trying not to look like institutions” aesthetic style. The JRC’s “non-institutional” furnishings look eerily similar to the furnishings in the new pediatric psychiatric inpatient ward they’re bragging about here. Same with the pediatric psych ward at Johns Hopkins.

How long will it take for the combination of aggressively cheerful colors and geometrically ~innovative~ but ergonomically dubious furniture to become a known thing?

I remember writing years ago about how the moment I saw the decor in the JRC I knew it was not just a bad place but a very, very bad place. Most parents unfortunately don’t know how to spot that stuff. Institutional veterans do. There was a time when I begged to go to a state institution rather than this one place, and I ended up having to go to that place anyway because there were no beds at the state institution, but everyone thought I was just crazy for begging to go there instead. But what I saw was a place trying too hard to look good. And I was right. By the end of my 6-9 months there, my entire family used the name of the place almost like a swear word. And my mom actually, when hearing the name of the family therapist (whose job it was to tell my mom that she had caused my “infantile psychosis that led to schizophrenia in adolescence”) said “may she rot in hell”, which is extremely out of character for my mom. My family still uses that place as a benchmark of the most stress you could possibly be under. Like “it’s not just bad, it’s [name of institution] bad.” And they had beautiful grounds, beautiful everything, with a heart from hell.