Anecdotal, from a former Danvers State Hospital employee.

*My first impressions? I didn't realize what kind of place I was going. I knew it was a hospital of
course, but I'd never seen a mental hospital. We got most of our training at the school, they only
shipped us out for our psych rotation and our communicable disease rotations. So my girlfriends
father drove us there, and you know you turn onto that driveway and the whole place is just right
there. Well, we pulled in and my girlfriends father started to unload our suitcases from the trunk, and I
happened to look up and you know, during the day they...the patients...were all out on the sunporch.
That's where they spent all day. And they'd watch for new trainees coming in and they'd put on a
show for them. Well of course at the time I didn't know it was a show, and so I'm looking up at the
people on the porches, they looked like cages you know, and all of a sudden WELL! They started
yelling and hooting and hollering and shaking the screens and jumping around and don't you know it
was a pretty scary sight! I just said "Oh no. No I don't think so." and I went around back and started
putting our suitcases back IN the trunk! Of course now he didn't notice me doing this, and he's
unloading and unloading and unloading, and he finally said "how many bags do you girls have
anyway!" and of  course then he realized what I was doing. But that was my first impression. I didn't
want to go in there.
Ended up loving it. And do you know I was the only one in my class that was offered a permanent job
t here after I'd completed my training? I didn't take it of course, because my father had such a fit
about m y going to work in a "lunatic asylum" and I regret that to this day.  I lived and worked there
for four months and I loved every second of it.
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Anecdotal from a former student at Danvers State Hospital

What was strange was when the students became the patients. That place seemed to eat up a lot
of students. I was in school with one girl who for whatever reason had some kind of breakdown and
ended up a patient where she had previously been a student. I was walking down the ward one
evening, all the beds were in the hallways by that time, the only patients in their own rooms were
either violent or had some other special circumstances, and she said to me  in a really loud stage
whisper "come here" so I went over and sat down on her bed, and she said "if i tell you something
will you promise not to tell anyone else?" of course i had to tell her that it depended on what she
told me, of course. She thought about it for a while and then she said "ok" and reached up her
sleeve and took out a couple of big pieces of broken glass. She told me she had been planning to
kill herself with them, but then she saw me and remembered some of our conversations in school
and thought she'd better give the glass to me instead. I felt really good that she'd done that. I asked
her where she got them. She told me that someone had broken a bottle. They'd thrown the glass
away in the med room like they were supposed to, but then later someone had emptied the trash
into the main trash barrell and it hadn't been taken out yet. She'd just reached in and put the glass
up her sleeve. It was that easy. And it was supposed to be a safe place!
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Anecdotal from a former student at Danvers State Hospital

I remember the closet on C ward. It was only a supply closet but it was good sized and it was one
of the doors we were supposed to make sure was always locked. One night after rounds I just
had that feeling that I should check the door again. I dont know why, I must have noticed
something off about it without realizing it. I went to check it and sure enough it was unlocked. Just
to be safe I opened it to check inside before I locked it, and there were two patients inside. Two
women. One of them was standing on a supply sink with a noose around her neck. Somehow
they had the rope hooked around something up above, something hooked to the ceiling, I don't
remember what it was. The other patient had the other end of the rope in her hands and was
pulling on it, trying with all she had to hoist the noosed one up off the sink! Now, I was just a
student and nobody had trained me on what to do when I found one patient trying to help another
patient hang herself, and I never even had a chance to think about it. I just said "WHAT do you
think you're doing?!" and I grabbed the girl that was standing on the sink and pulled her down,
and shoved her out the door and then slammed the door on the one who had been holding the
end of the rope, and locked her in and then ran to get my supervisor. I"ll never really know why I
locked her in instead of dragging them both out, but my supervisor later told me it was the
smartest thing I could have done, because the girl holding the rope was in there because she'd
"snapped" and killed several people and was furious that she'd been prevented from "helping"
her friend this time and probably would have brained me. The other girl had been a nursing
student. She'd been failing school and was so distraught she ended up a patient. I think a few
years later she really did kill herself."

Remebrance of a former nurse at Danvers State Hospital

You could never count on size to guide you. You'd be in the room with the patients and you'd
feel pretty comfortable because there was nobody in there who was huge, or especially strong.
You just had to keep in mind that when someone was having a psychiatric episode they weren't
thinking clearly and so it could make them seem stronger than they really were. Because they
didnt censor anything they did. I will never forget the time I was hit so hard I saw stars. Literally
saw stars. And it was by a little old lady who was something like nintey years old.
The place was so overcrowded you know, that nobody could ever lay in bed or hang around on
the wards. The wards were literally the bedrooms. So every morning we got everyone up and
out. They went to the dining room and then they went out to the sunroom. This particular
morning this little lady didnt want to go. She said she was tired. Tiny little old lady. I suppose I
was a bit condescending to her. "Come on dear" I said, "out to the sunroom now..." and I put
my hand on her shoulder to guide her out. This little bitty elderly thing swung around on me and
belted me in the head so hard I literally saw stars! I just stood there, between laughing and
passing out, while she looked at me and said "THERE MISSY!" and turned and in a very
dignified way walked out into the sunroom. I spent the day being evaluated for a head injury,
that's how hard she hit me! And laugh! I've never been so shocked in my life, but I had to hand it
to her, she showed me a thing or two. I still laugh when I think about it. But it does go to show
that we underestimated them.

From a former nurse at Danvers State Hospital

There were times you ran into things nobody could have ever prepared you for. I think you'd run
into that at any mental health facility, but something about Danvers made it happen more often.
I think most of it was just that it was so crowded. We didn't have the space or the safety
standards we should have. Like transporting people. The only way to the dining room was
through the wards. People weren't allowed to eat in the wards, not even the violent people,
because there was just no way to feed them up there. There weren't enough people to get the
food there or enough staff to handle it all, so everyone had to go to the dining room. Since the
wards were all connected, and we couldnt take our ward of people through another ward
without disrupting them, we had to use the tunnells. Now I've seen pictures and believe you me,
there were no fences seperating staff and patients in those days. You had a nurse in the front,
then a whole ward full of patients, and then a nurse in the back. Female on one side, Male on
the other. That's what those fences were for then. And you'd be going to the dining room with
yoru ward full of women, and a ward full of men would be coming on the other side of the fence,
and you had people stripping their clothes off and trying to do the nasty through the fence!
Meanwhile, while you're trying to get them to knock it off and get back into their clothes so you
can get to the dining room, the rest of your ward is revving up for chaos because they're being
made to wait, and you can hear another ward coming on down the tunnel and you know that
any minute now things could get totally out of control. It was just so crowded and understaffed,
even with all the trainees and students we had. And it was even more dangerous on the wards.
I used to have to give the ten o'clock meds. It was Halcyon then that everyone took I think.
Something like that. Anyway I'd have to go up to the third floor to give the nighttime shots, and
that's where the "bad" ones were. You'd come in the door, it was locked and you had to unlock
it, way down at one end of the ward. The nurses station was all the way at the other end of the
ward, and all of the beds were lined up in the hall. So you had to literally walk through a corridor
of beds full of people to get to the nurses station. There were times when people were restless
that you'd come in and so many of them would get up you wouldnt be able to see the ward
nurse. You could only hope she'd noticed you were there and was working her way to you from
her end. Well one night I went up to give the shot, and as I opened the door I saw this gal
JUMPING from bed to bed, on the sleeping patients. She got to the door before I could close it
and stuck her bare foot in the door and said "Are you the one who gives me that shot every
night?"
"yes, I am" I told her.
"are you the one who gave me that shot last night?" She asked me.
"yes, I am" I told her.
"well." she said, "I'm not going to let you give me that shot tonight. I"m going to kill you before
you get that shot out of your pocket"
Well. Now the ward nurse was all the way at the other end of the ward, and this one had
everyone all riled up because she'd been jumping on them to get to me, so there was no way
she was going to reach me. So this gal has me by the front of my uniform and is threatening to
kill me. The first thing that came to mind was to say "well, if you're going to kill me you'd better
get your bare foot out of the door so it doesnt slam and cut your foot off when i die."
She was so surprised she did pull her foot back out of the door , and I yanked away from her,
slammed the door and then ran like hell all the way back down to my supervisors office.

An observation from a former employee at Danvers State Hospital

We don't really think about our mental patients as being human. I know it sounds bad but it's
how it comes to be. Sometimes though they would remind us. I got lost one day, when I was
just a trainee. I was supposed to be going to one of the womens wards and I got lost in that
place, because it was mammoth and so easy to get disoriented, and I ended up on the male
ward. Now, in those days female nurses NEVER attended males. It just didn't happen. So there
I am, lost. I opened the door, because my key opened all the doors, and I found myself on the
ward and there are all of these men. Now one of them is lying on the floor, swearing a blue
streak at the ceiling. Another man looked up, saw me, and his face broke out into a look of
absolute horror. He JUMPED up, jumped ON TOP OF the man who was swearing, and yelled
"DON'T YOU USE THAT KIND OF LANGUAGE!!! There's a LADY present!" and proceeded
to beat the hell out of him! That's all I saw because there were suddenly three male orderlies
surrounding me and escorting me off the ward.
I never knew who that man was who would so enthusiastically as it were, defend a ladies
sensibilities.