Notes in a Mirror

The year is 1950. The place is Hillside State Mental Hospital located outside of Chicago. At the time, the treatment of the mentally ill was archaic, consisting of hydrotherapy, electroshock therapy, Insulin coma therapy, and, in the extreme, pre-frontal lobotomy. Tranquilizers were not yet available.

Mary Lou Hammond and Kate Stephens were among the student nurses taking their three month psychiatric rotation at Hillside.

Mary Lou is an extremely sensitive young lady. She begins dreaming about a woman in the early part of the century. The dreams tell a continuing story. Soon Mary Lou finds messages in mirror image writing from the woman in her dreams, Margaret Montague. She claims to have died in 1911. If this entity does exist, what does she want from Mary Lou?
As the students go from one terrifying experience to another in the institution, Mary Lou’s dreams intensify, and so do the messages. She becomes obsessed with finding proof that the woman did exist as the story escalates to its life-threatening climax.

ISBN: 978-0-9824876-1-7
Will be available November, 2009
Weaving Dreams Publishing
www.weavingdreamspublishing.com

Introduction

Before tranquilizers became available, the mentally ill were committed to large institutions where they were supervised and protected from harming themselves and others. One of these institutions was Chicago State Mental Hospital, also known as Dunning; after the name of the man who originally owned part of the land. It was located on Chicago’s northwest side.

The hospital opened in the early part of the twentieth century and officially closed in the nineteen seventies. During those years the poor, the indigent, and the insane, as the mentally ill were called, occupied the cottage wards on over one hundred and fifty acres of land. A tall wrought iron fence surrounded the entire complex. It was a self-contained world with its own treatment buildings, infirmary, power plant and bakery.
 
The treatments provided were primitive and sometimes dangerous, but at that time, considered ‘state of the art.’

Student nurses from many of the Chicago and suburban nursing schools spent three months at Dunning for their psychiatric training. That was a time most of them never forgot. The author was one of those students.

Today the mentally ill are no longer committed to large institutions. New buildings dot the original grounds of the state hospital. The Chicago-Read Mental Health Center is one of a number of State Community Centers utilizing today’s accepted concepts. The aim is to return patients to the community as soon as possible using medications, psychotherapy, and rehabilitation techniques.
The corner formerly occupied by Chicago State Mental Hospital now holds a shopping center erected where the entrance was located. It is called Dunning Square and is designed like every other strip mall featuring a Jewel, Osco, TJ Max, Burger King and Dunkin Donuts.

This story is fiction. Hillside Mental Hospital is based on the original Chicago State Hospital and the treatments described were those accepted at the time.