What's was the mistreatment of Disabled People in the 20th century?

I have a project and I need information on how mentally disabled people were mistreated in the 20th century. I know when they were babies they were put in institutions, but what else happened to them? Were they abused physically in there? Were they put in prisons right away?|||Until the 1950s children with disabilities were hidden away or put into institutions. This was better than the previous century when they were put into prisons/poorhouses with common criminals. In the late 19C and early 20C it was decided to create more humane places for people with disabilities. People would not live in separate institutions where they would get manipulated by people who could because of literally no supervision. Separate institutions created another sort of abuse. Instead of being abused by fellow inmates - they were neglected horribly by the people who were supposed to provide them care.





This sounds quite awful and it was, but at the time it seemed more humane than the previous alternatives.





In the 1950s parents wanted their children to have a different kind of life. They started to try to get more humane institutions where children would be taught. They wanted cleaner places. They wanted schools. All this did eventually happen. And at the time seemed quite forward thinking and amazing.





In the late 1960s and early 1970s I worked in an institution for people with disabilities as a teenage volunteer. I saw things most people have never seen or admit to. The place was big and sprawling with cottages to give people a sense of family. I worked with kids 3-18 years old with multiple disabilities. What the place was like on the days parents came and when the doctors came was entirely different from what it was like day to day. I did things as a volunteer no teenager should do.





Twice a day I was a part of diaper changing races. The 'nurses' on duty and myself would see how quickly we could get the diapers changed - and that person got a longer break (or in my case a candy bar.) This meant kids got little person attention and neglectful care. I only knew people with disabilities in this context and didn't know until I was older how inhumane this was.





Feeding was the same. All the food was pureed and most smelled horrid. We would spoon the food in the kids mouths as quickly as possible - not caring how much fell on to their clothes.





Children would lie in bed for hours and out of boredom would paint the walls with their diaper contents. Kids would be put on the toilet and forgotten for hours. Sometimes only remembered when they fell onto the floor.





The place was horrid. But I didn't know or think that these people - these disabled people were worthy of better treatment - because these adults in my life said this was the way they were supposed to be treated.





When I left high school I became involved in this new concept called special education. Build schools where children can go during the day, so their parents will keep them at home. The days were long and most kids went to school year-round. In the beginning this segregation seemed like a good thing. Keep them safe - from other kids - and other kids from them. Try to cure them of their disability. The inherent abuse in that concept took a long while for me to grasp.





Then I became involved in mainstreaming. Another good idea gone wrong. Kids with disabilities who could prove they were more OK than the other kids with disabilities. They could go visit the classes of kids without disabilities. Not academic classes, but art, music, and gym. Eventually the parents and their kids demanded that their kids have access to academics too. But mainstreaming never really worked because the kids never belonged in their classes - they were just visiting. And they just saw those kids in school - not in after school events. So this was yet another subtle form of abuse.





Now comes inclusion. I see 2 kinds of inclusion. One should be called dumping. Kids are dumped into regular classes. They get very little support and have very little success. They are unlikely to make friends. Teachers are frustrated because they don't know what to do with them. They don't get support either. Dumping is abuse. Inclusion doesn't have to be that way.





Mistreatment of people with disabilities has often been done by well meaning people who thought what they were offering was better than what was available. It was, but not good enough.





Abuse happens when people look sideways when abuse take place. People whose voices have been silenced need people who look straight on to what they see and pull the alarm. Abuse takes place because people are complacent. It happens when people are hidden away. It happens when we think we are better than someone else because they are disabled and we are not (or less disabled.)|||You need to look at a book called Christmas in Purgatory.





A photographer named Burton Blatt and then-Senator Robert Kennedy went inside institutions--which was where people with disabilities were most often kept at the time.





The stench of human waste ultimately was so overpowering that they had to burn their clothes after leaving.





Washing their clothes did not successfully remove the odor. It was that over powering.





Blatt's investigation photographed people lying in their own waste, starving and denied adequate appropriate human contact or education of any kind.In prison-like conditions, these people's only crime was having been born with a disability!!





Such haunting images helped ultimately generate disability rights laws, including eventually special education. The public was horrified that these conditions were existing. Many people honestly assumed that institutions were 'good' places staffed by caring people.





These images shattered a lot of illusions.





While 19th century reformers had (ironically) originally envisioned institutions as a place for people with disabilities to be sent as 'protection' away from the larger world, Blatt's work...etc factually demonstrated that institutionalization simply brought in another danger to people with disabilities.





And they created a new set of laws and ways about thinking about people with disabilities. Our living in the larger society, in public view, was safer than being away in cages.|||During Nazi Occupation, many disabled people especially ones with mentally disabilites were rounded up and taken to places such as Hartheim Castle in Austria and Hadamar in Germany. They were sterlized and killed. The use of gas is infamous for killing those in the concentration camps. However it was trialed and started with killing the disabled.|||I know second hand of a man with Down's Syndrome kept in an institution until recently moved to a group home. He was kept in a cement room similar to a cell where it could be hosed down (literally, with a drain in the floor) and he was given food only at certain times with no regard to his needs. As a result (it is believed) he has severe pica (where you eat non-edibles). Down's people are naturally affectionate and he was not allowed human contact. It is heart wrenching to hear and see such horrible abuse of the innocent, especially since I have a 7 yr old Down's brother. I do not know about info, I am sure you could google it, but thank you for doing this paper and making others aware of these things that happened only a few years ago, and are probably still going on.|||http://www.realms.org.uk/bedlam/