Recalling The Human Face Of Patient Care At Fairfield Hills

By Kendra Bobowick

Former Fairfield Hills Clinical Psychologist James Bergeron, PhD, sees many misconceptions about the mentally ill.

“The mistake a lot of people make about someone who is emotionally disturbed or mentally ill is that underneath is a personality. A patient could be a manic depressive and a very nurturing person underneath,” he said.

Nurse Chris Beaudoin followed the thread of humanity among the mentally ill. She made “connections” by crossing the line in front of the patient and discovering the person underneath.

“It’s not us and them and when you realize there is not a barrier you can connect with patients on a different level,” she said. They were “people who were willing to share everything.”

 Ms Beaudoin saw the sacrifices imposed by mental illness and concealed within the brick walls of Fairfield Hills. Many patients were people “who had lost everything in their lives, but not their spirit.”

Remembering them from a compassionate perspective, she explained, “They were just so happy to have someone to pay attention to them.”

Often families “couldn’t contend with them and the stigma was so great and such a burden for them to be home,” that they turned to Fairfield Hills, she said.

“It was a warehouse and [patients] would be dropped off and many would never see their family again,” she recalled. “We became their family.”

Ms Beaudion also reached an understanding gleaned from her years spent at Fairfield Hills from 1971 to 1995 as she “grew up” with the residents.

“I learned so many life-lessons from those folks who had nothing,” she said.

She characterized her interaction with patients as “life changing,” for her and offered a view of “how ill people were, and how good the staff was.”

Occupational therapist Linda Hinckley lived on campus during her employment from 1974 to 1978. She also saw the isolation patients endured. She worked with about 80 male patients from Shelton House.

“A lot of men would come back not so much because of mental health issues, but there was just no other place to go, no other place for them to be,” she said.

Sadly, residents were forgotten during holidays.

“I remember about times at Christmas Eve, we would have an influx of patients because no one wanted them,” Ms Hinckley said. “We were their family. It broke our hearts.”

Who Were They?

“They were just regular people,” said Ms Hinckley, whose daily interaction with patients allowed her to see the men and women in a way the public could not.

“You might think, ‘Oh, the stigma,’ but they were men and women who had lives before. They were fun,” she said.

As part of the occupational therapy, staff members often took field trips off campus to the high school pool, for example.

Ms Hinckley said, “One minute they were in a locked ward, and the next they were doing cannon balls off the diving board.”

When they were away from their clinical lockdown, patients “were just like everybody else,” she said. “We could tell them to stop acting crazy. If you expected them to act crazy, they would.”

Similarly, Ms Beaudoin — a registered nurse at the time she entered Fairfield Hills — is now an advanced practice registered nurse (APRN). She offers a view often cut from Hollywood scripts.

“The media portrays [the mentally ill] as violent and aggressive, but they were so timid,” she said.

Her attachment to patients went beyond the reach of a stethoscope or prescription pad. She testified to strong bonds forged between staff and residents.

 “I know I wasn’t supposed to have favorites, but there are patients I will never forget,” said Ms Beaudoin. “I was in my 20s when I went to work there and we ‘grew up’ together.”

Many patients never left the hospital after they were admitted. The hospital she remembers was not an outpatient facility, but permanent residence for most, she said.

Some were favorites and others were unforgettable for Ms Beaudoin.

Speaking about a “very emotional” experience, she said, “There was a patient who was living under a bridge in Waterbury. It’s so sad, he was so ill,” she said. Ms Beaudoin explained that the man, a father, was schizophrenic.

She said, “With the right medications and the right diagnosis he did very well.”

After he was well, she said the man took his daughter to see the movie Gremlins and sadly, his daughter said, “That’s you daddy.” His daughter was frightened. Gremlins were mischievous, alien creatures portrayed in a children’s movie.

“She was just a little girl,” Ms Beaudoin said.

Upset with the way she said movies portrayed mental illness, she said, “It’s a chemical imbalance, and people have been maligned for a long time. It’s such a stigma.”

Penny’s Story

“I will never forget the one Christmas Eve when we were taking a tour and going around to units,” said Ms Beaudion. She was showing the facility to visiting nurses and Penny, a staff nurse, had an audience of the elderly mentally ill gathered around her.

“Penny had them in a circle in their wheel chairs and she was softly strumming ‘Silent Night,’” said Ms Beaudoin as she also explained that many in the group didn’t necessarily communicate.

She said, “Life came into their eyes. They recognized the song and we were all getting weepy. It was so moving to see folks who were so withdrawn from life able to connect.”

The story about Penny took place in the 1980s, and some of the people “moved in the day [Fairfield Hills] opened,” Ms Beaudoin said.

She recalls the moment when she “connected” with otherwise noncommunicative patients.

She had said “good morning” for several years when one day, “They responded with ‘good morning,’” she said.

Another landmark in her career still leaves her baffled. Ms Beaudoin said, “I was taking a nurse around, and she had not been there in 25 years, but there was a connection made.” The other nurse came across a patient she had known 25 years earlier.

“[The patient] remembered her, and she was so severely ill that no one believed she was capable of thought,” Ms Beaudoin said.

From A Judge’s Perspective

 Former Newtown Probate Court Judge Merlin Fisk reaches into his vault of memories labeled “Fairfield Hills” and selects one that stands apart.

“There was a case of a man [who was] committed because of murder on his own admission,” said Mr Fisk. He said the man “pulled out a gun and shot the person…I think they found him playing cards when they arrested him.”

Although he kept the man’s name to himself, Mr Fisk tells this story as an example of his often unusual time spent at Fairfield Hills as Probate Court judge. Each Thursday morning for 12 years (1979–1991) he would hold hearings “for patients asking to get out or sign in voluntarily,” he said. Other patients opened doors to the hospital with court orders.

Regarding the man Mr Fisk remembers, “It was decided that he needed to be in the hospital. He shot his neighbor. It was cut and dry.”

He was considered mentally incompetent, he said. Mr Fisk explained that by law those incarcerated at the state hospital earned the right to request a determination hearing after one year. After two years hearings were mandatory.

Incidentally, the man accused of killing his neighbor “had been there several years,” said Fisk.

He came before Judge Fisk for his hearing and those staff members who “knew him intimately” were present. During the course of the hearing, Mr Fisk “learned that the man was allowed to walk the grounds unattended and would return at the end of the day and on Fridays was released to go home. He would come back on Sunday.”

The man was obviously a trusted patient for years, he said.

Doctors had decided that he was no longer a danger and the man no longer needed to be held at the hospital.

Mr Fisk said, “I couldn’t keep someone on a whim when the doctors agreed that he was no longer a danger to others. I had no grounds to keep him, so I released him.”

Remarkably, Fisk noted that, “He had killed someone, everyone knew that.”

His decision sent a ripple reaching the state attorney’s office, he said. On his way home he heard his own name on the radio.

“I heard, ‘Judge Fisk released a prisoner,’ and it was unnerving. The state attorney was up in arms,” he said. “They had [the patient] arrested and said he needed another hearing. So, I called another hearing.”

During that second round “that was really well attended, it was the same story; he was trusted and not a danger. I released him again,” Mr Fisk said.

Still wondering what happened to this man, Mr Fisk said, “I never heard of it again, I don’t know what happened to him.”

Patients necessarily were accompanied by a doctor and attorney during hearings, he said, “and I decided on the spot if a patient should be released or stay. Sometimes I would release, and sometimes I wouldn’t.” Fairfield Hills hearings took up at least on quarter of his duties a probate court judge at that time, he said.

Not all of his hearings spotlighted docile patients, however.

A completely opposite situation took place with one patient who demanded a hearing.

Mr Fisk said, “We had moments of fear. Patients often became very angry if they learned they had to go back.”

He tells the story of one volatile patient.

“I had a woman who brought all her things in a bag and when I told her she had to stay she swung that bag and I got a hand up just in time,” he said.

Despite any snags, Mr Fisk assessed his experiences, saying, “It was a marvelous hospital staff and the social workers were exemplary.”

He also talks about the facility saying, “I had the key to all the locked wards and could go in and out at will and I never had any trouble.” Laughing, he said, “Except for once in a while.”

He simply hopes to relate an “interesting portion of his judicial life,” he said.

Treatments including therapeutic labor out on the farm on campus altered with the advent of psychotropic drugs.

“That changed treatment considerably,” said Mr Fisk.

These Days

Today’s care is often insufficient, Ms Beaudoin believes.

Costs are prohibitive, and “people don’t have to go,” to facilities like Fairfield Hills. Worse are those who choose not to take medications or maintain counseling sessions, she explained.

“If they don’t want to take meds, they stop and unless they’re a danger to themselves or others, they continue to devolve,” she said. “I just wish there were a way to intervene, otherwise they get to a point where you can’t help them and they’re more and more ill.”

“There is a need for that level of care,” found at Fairfield Hills, she said.

She now works at Danbury Hospital with patients — many from Fairfield Hills.

She said, “They want to go back, maybe just sit and reminisce in the place where they felt safe.”

From those patients she hears words like “acceptance” most often echoed to describe their former home.