In The Lives They Left Behind, the contents of ten of these suitcases are skillfully examined and compared to the written record to create a moving and devastating group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care. This discovery led the authors-a psychiatrist and an ex-patient advocate-to conduct a detailed study of the lives of the suitcase owners, to curate an exhibit at the New York State Museum in Albany that attracted more than 300,000 visitors, to speak to audiences across the country about the lives of the suitcase owners, and to write this book. If not for the discovery of 400 suitcases filled with patients’ belongings in the hospital attic when the facility closed in 1995, their lives would have been lost to history. Some were released to their communities after decades of institutionalization, but many more died there. Willard State Psychiatric Hospital, overlooking Seneca Lake in rural upstate New York, housed more than 54,000 people during its 126 years of operation.
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