Raising Awareness: Mental Institutions

(People who know these firsthand, let me know if I get something wrong.)

What is an Eastern European mental institution?

From what I can gather, a mental institution is basically a place to shove all disabled people--the physically and the mentally disabled--out of sight so society does not have to deal with them. These institutions are "homes" for those between the ages of five and eighteen, or in some cases, five and 35. The "lucky," higher functioning inmates spend their days trapped in closed rooms or sitting in sheds with nothing to do but torture themselves, e.g. biting themselves until they bleed.The unlucky inmates spend years lying in cribs, forgotten and neglected by the staff, also with nothing to do.

Of the little children transferred to these awful places, many die within the first few months. Some lose their will to live; some literally die of starvation. The rest quite literally spend the rest of their lives in cages: in one video I watched, I saw a shot of a 21-year-old man curled up in a crib.

As I write this post, I am literally sick to my stomach because of the horror of this situation. Readers, this is what we're up against. This is why I am a prayer warrior. (Although "my" currently assigned child is in a country without institutions [I think; in any case she is not in one], "my" previous assignment was a little boy who was rescued by his new parents in the nick of time.)

I once read a blog post on someone else's blog who described her son's former institution as "more like a concentration camp than an orphanage." I will never forget those words.