A new book compiles photographs and interviews from 1976 with patients at Oregon State Hospital’s Ward 81. Here, Jacobs talks about the project’s illuminating legacy
capturing deeply tender and jarringly raw moments, showing a vulnerability in her subjects that humanise them
The book depicts a nuanced perspective on mental health in a moving exchange between Jacobs and a Ward 81 patient named Beth. “Beth, how do you feel?” Jacobs asks. In response, she says, “If I didn’t keep hearing all these voices talking to me all the time, things would be a lot better.” When asked about what the voices say, Beth’s response is so earnest and candid, it’s almost jarring: “Oh, they tell me I should break up with Mona and all kinds of things, but I don’t listen to ‘em.
“What we were trying to do was demonstrate life there. It was kind of an ethnography because we were trying to demonstrate a different culture, which she and I had already been doing in our work: going to other cultures and societies. It was very stressful, but one of the things I insisted on is that every night, Mary Ellen and I would talk about what happened. What we thought about it, what we did right or wrong, what she would do the next day.
“You and I may still have doubts and worries and problems, but these people mostly came from really disrupted families. Many of them were abused in various ways. I wanted us to treat these people as people and be friends with them. To be honest, I think they were thrilled to have someone who was interested in them.
“We felt really sad to be leaving them. They didn’t want us to – they kept telling us, ‘don’t go, we want you here.’ But we knew when we came that we were going to stay about a month. We didn’t feel that this treatment – being locked up, electroshock therapy – was very healthy for people.Our intent was to be a pair of anthropologists. We were documenting a culture. We were seeing what was going on in a locked ward people couldn’t visit.
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