Camarillo State Mental Hospital was touted as the largest psychiatric hospital this side of the Mississippi when it opened in the mid-1930's. At Camarillo, ground-breaking "cures" for "insanity" were claimed to have been discovered, while Camarillo was simultaneously being accused repeatedly and constantly of patient abuses and negligent deaths. Most of their more celebrated "treatments" such as lobotomies, electroshock treatments, hydrotherapy shock treatments, isolation in restraints, etc. were later found to be inhumane and have since been banished. It was a Dark Ages in medicine at Camarillo, and electroshock therapy there finally ended in the 1970's. The 1940's movie, "The Snake Pit," was filmed on the grounds of Camarillo, and due to its disturbingly realistic portrayal of what goes on in mental institutions, 26 states changed their mental health laws after the movie became popular. Some of the more marked changes to come from the changes the movie inspired were people no longer being locked up indefinitely without some opportunity for reviews of their cases, and nonconsentual psychiatric treatment came under much greater scrutiny, as did the "treatments." In the 1970's, Camarillo routinely overdrugged incoming patients with something they simply referred to as a "Number 1," which was mixed shots of Thorazine, Stelazine and Hyosine, or Serentil, Stelazine and Hyosine, according to a Nov. 17, 1976 L.A.Times article by Ellen Hume. This tranquilizer cocktail was discontinued in March 1976, due solely to people dying from it and grand jury inquisitions as to the circumstances of suspicious patient deaths at Camarillo.
Unit 26: Room at Camarillo State Mental Hospital. This ward was built in 1937 and used for "psychiatric treatments." I took this photo on January 22, 2010. The dark lines on the walls are the shadows from the bars on the windows. There is a light on the wall at the height of a bed, and these lights are in many of the rooms on this ward. This room is only as wide as the left side of the door in the photo.(Photo: K. Anderberg)
Looking in the Los Angeles Times archives, I can see that a wide swath of society ended up in Camarillo State between the year it opened in 1936 until 1997, when it finally closed: teenagers, women who rebelled, men who drank and did drugs, the criminally insane, the questionably insane, sometimes even just people who did not speak English ended up there, as reported by Nadine Scolla, in her book about being a nurse at Camarillo entitled Keeper of the Keys...It is also clear from these archives that brutality and deaths haunted Camarillo throughout its years. An L.A.Times article from Nov. 11, 1976, has the headline, "Hospital Laxity May Have Caused Deaths." The article says in Sept. 1974, A. Cross, 35, "died of smoke inhalation in a small "seclusion room" after apparently setting fire to his sheets with matches." The "psychiatric technician" (!?!) on duty that night, Francis Hartwell, said that he and one other nurse were the only ones supervising 45 patients that evening, and according to the hospital rules there should have been at least 4, he said. Additionally Hartwell said he was pulling his second 8 hour shift in a row that evening. Hartwell testified in front of a Grand Jury that "staffing is not proper so you can't assure a safe (shift) out there." The night that Cross died, testified Hartwell, he was "kind of disoriented and disturbed," and "roaming the halls," and then he testified that "the patient accepted medication to calm him down and agreed to sleep in a private seclusion room." Hartwell said he "believed" he had taken the matches and cigarettes away from the patient before placing him in the seclusion room, but the fire inspectors found two cigarette butts and burned matches on Cross' floor after the fire.
In another sad testament to Camarillo's incompetence and danger to its patients, a Nov. 16, 1976 L.A. Times article writes that Thomas Riddle, 37, had committed himself to Camarillo's drug and alcohol treatment center for detoxification, yet two hours after he was admitted in Nov. 1976 as a patient, he was "found dead, shackled at the hands and feet in an isolation room at Camarillo's acute psychotic ward." The autopsy said he died from "asphyxia due to compression of the neck and multiple drug overdose." Apparently the patient was full of vodka, methadone, valium, and barbituates when he was admitted but the staff did not check for other drugs in the system before they gave him a "Number 1" cocktail of heavy tranquilizers including Serentil, Stelazine, and Hycocine to "subdue the patient." The article says "Riddle was subdued by five hospital employees, locked into leather cuffs, and tied down to a wheelchair. He was wheeled to the acute psychiatric ward." The staff "psychiatric technician" on duty that night, Mr. Borel, told the grand jury that "he did not feel there was enough staff on the ward to subdue the patient without the heavy tranquilizers." The psychiatric technicians on duty that night all testify that no one choked the patient or went near his neck, yet the autopsy shows someone constricted his airflow at his neck. In an L.A.Times article published one day after the one just cited, more information emerged. "only one witness, psychiatric technician Ronald Willis, failed to deny having seen a "bar strangle hold" or choke hold at the hospital. Such holds allegedly are used in some mental facilities to subdue patients." When Willis was asked if he had ever used the hold on a patient, or seen others use it on patients at Camarillo, he twice pleaded the 5th Amendment, saying it could incriminate him.
Unit 28: "Isolation," "solitary," or "seclusion" rooms at Camarillo State. This ward was built in 1937 and used for "psychiatric treatments." (Photo: K. Anderberg, Jan. 22, 2010)
On Nov. 13, 1976, in the L.A.Times, Ellen Hume wrote, "more horror stories about staff shortages, the mixing of dangerous drugs and possible incompetence of some employees at Camarillo State Hospital emerged Friday in the 4th day of public hearings before the Ventury County grand jury." One of the cases cited in this article was the death by starvation of Steven Miller, 33, who died at Camarillo in Sept. 1974. The man in charge of the ward the night Miller died said to reporters that the ones to blame for Miller's death were "your senators, your Dept. of Mental Health, and your governor." He also said there is "just too much paperwork." In another case from the same Nov. '76 article, a "30 year old retarded patient" died on June 8, 1975 by "choking on her own vomit, after the nursing staff tried for 24 hours to get a staff doctor to look at her. The nurses said the patient had gained 15 pounds in 4 days due to drinking water, and eventually the patient died before the doctor showed up to help. This 1976 grand jury was investigating 13 suspicious deaths at Camarillo since 1973, over a 3 year span. Also cited in this article, in 1974, "20 year old Michael Rogers, also a mentally retarded patient, died. The testimony from Camarillo staff said that the patient had two "superficial lacerations" on his face, and when the staff went to stitch them up, the patient panicked and "five male employees struggled to hold him down," and he then went into cardiac arrest and died. The autopsy said his cause of death was he choked on his vomit, and the staff on charge that night says if they had it to do over, they would have put him in restraints, not tried to hold him down with people. After studying the patient's chart, it was found that the night Rogers died he was given an alarming cocktail of drugs from Dr. Moore, on duty that night. Dr. Moore gave Rogers Thorazine, Hyosine, Repoise, antihistamines, antiepileptic drugs and other tranquilizers, and the Physicians Desk Reference of 1974 warns about mixing some of those drugs together. Dr. Moore testified to the grand jury that Hyosine had been banned at Camarillo three months prior and that it may have been found to be linked to deaths.
Unit 24: Abandoned, barred rooms at Camarillo State Mental Hospital. This ward was built in 1937 and used for "psychiatric treatments." (Photo: K. Anderberg, Jan. 22, 2010)