Eric Mink column 3/18/1993 (Asylum)

EXCERPT:

​Eric Mink
 
Excerpt from column
 
 
“They don’t get any worse than they get here,” says a worker at Patton State Hospital.  “Were the bottom line for the treatment of psychosis.”
 
With that, HBO’s American Uncover series launches its latest effort, “Asylum,” a one-hour documentary airing Thursday night at 9:15.
 
The film focuses on some of the people at the California institution for the criminally insane, interviewing them about the crimes that put them there and how they feel about them now, talking with medical staff about various therapies, and sitting in on a review board meeting considering a patient’s release.
 
“Asylum opens dramatically, with personnel handling the arrival of a severely disturbed patient, Kathryn Hernandez, who previously set fire to herself and her husband.
 
Hernandez is in the middle of a psychotic episode that has her babbling about Lionel Richie, among other people and things.  Thirty minutes after getting a shot of powerful medication, Kathryn is sitting calmly and discussing her situation.
 
The theme of managing patients’ conditions and working toward their release back into society runs through this cinema-verite-style production.  Sooner or later, we’re told, most of the people at Patton get better and get out.
 
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine.  Paranoid schizophrenia seems to top the affliction list at Patton, and some of the afflicted still appear to be utterly disconnected from reality.
 
Meet, for example, Baldemar Galvan, who was judged criminally insane after attempting to murder the owner of the Bank of America.
 
“One of my great delusions!” Galvan exclaims.  Figuring out just how good a hold Galvan has on reality clearly is a difficult task.
 
What to do, too, with Rebecca, a woman coming to grips with having suffocated her infant daughter because she thought the child was possessed by the devil.  Rebecca talks poignantly about the incident and describes her feelings before and after the tragedy, and since undergoing extensive psychotherapy.
 
Among other things, “Asylum” is an antidote of sorts to the sensationalized depictions of mental institutions that tend to command the public consciousness.
 
Whether the dank, underground isolation cells in “The Silence of the Lambs” or the TV-movie hell-holes where sane people are unjustly held for nefarious reasons, what we usually see seems a far cry from what executive producer, Dave Bell, producer Shari Cookson and director-photographer Joan Churchill have come up with in “Asylum,” and that’s undoubtedly a good thing.
 
--
 
 
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
3/18/1992
Page 67
 
 
Transcribed By: S Cookson