In some countries, they call them the "abandonados," the
abandoned ones. They're the impoverished mentally ill and mentally
disabled patients being warehoused in psychiatric asylums that are
more run-down, more uncaring than the most brutal American prisons.
Confined in cage-like cells, tied to beds soiled with human waste,
medicated to the point of senselessness, or wandering naked in
unheated and garage-like wards, they live in what can only be
called the shadows, their plight unseen and too easily ignored by
the rest of the human family.
Working first as a journalist, later as a volunteer for the
human rights organization Mental Disability Rights International,
photographer Eugene Richards gained access to psychiatric
institutions in Mexico, Argentina, Armenia, Hungary, Paraguay, and
Kosovo. His wrenchingly intimate images reveal the often inhumane
treatment suffered by the mentally disabled. Offered little that
would qualify as effective care, patients are denied even the most
basic human amenities: privacy, protection from harm, clean
clothing. Accompanying the book, A Procession of Them, is a DVD of
a short film of the same name. Directed and narrated by Richards,
this unique and expressionistic film speaks of the chaos,
claustrophobia, and loneliness of these living hells.
Making us face some hard truths, A Procession of Them drives
home the point that when it comes to the plight of the mentally
disabled, "no one much cares." As Richards concludes, it's "as if
there is a kind of worldwide agreement that once people are
classified as mentally ill or mentally retarded, you're free to do
to them what you want."
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