Idaho's State Hospitals
Idaho's State Hospitals is a short film from 1960 released on 16mm. It is held in the Prelinger Archives collection.
Early investigative report on the Idaho state hospitals. Interviews with psychiatrists and doctors particularly about the issue of mental and geriatric care. Great footage inside state mental institutions. Natural lighting and overexposed light entering through windows gives the mental hospital footage an expressive unearthly quality. Rows of sterile hospital beds. Good footage of early geriatric treatment in hospitals.
19:07:07:04 VS inside a mental hospital. Large room filled with beds and blackout blinds over windows half drawn ; patients lying in bed.
19:07:13:02 Nurses bringing food to older female mental patients in room sitting on couches and rocking on rocking chairs.
19:07:20:14 VS beds (cots) in rows filling large mental hospital room.
19:07:48:22 MS Mental Hospital Superintendent in suit and bow tie with two pens in his front pocket with hands folded on the table he is sitting at as he speaks into a microphone. Man appears slightly uneasy.
we are called a hospital but we rather look upon ourselves as being, uh, in having an institute in human and family relations. In other words, it could be rightly called a institute of living.
19:10:37:11 VS Men and women reading in library.
19:10:41:19 MS scientists in laboratory looks into a microscope; MS scientist stands in front of instrument with various knobs and controls.
19:12:08:00 Doctor wearing black and metal framed glasses in suit and tie holds mask over face of patient in hospital bed as nurses hold the man down. Camera pans up and down mans twitching body.
19:17:19:02 Camera behind white haired doctor (psychiatrist) seated at table with microphone speaking to patient beside him with only his shoulder in frame initially. Doctor and patient speak before an audience of nurses and psychiatrists seated at desks smoking heavily.
19:19:49:21 Sterile looking dormitory with white walls and two rows of beds with white sheets strewn along the wall on both sides.
19:20:56:24 Great shot of room flushed with light filled with about 15 rocking chairs. Five elderly people are sitting in the room. Light coming through the windows is overexposed. There is a TV in the center of the room.
19:22:25:11 Man being interviewed on the effect of geriatrics on the state hospital system. The men discuss the relationship between mental health and geriatric institutions.
19:29:27:06 Early investigative reporter in suit and crew cut speaking about the state of state run hospitals, standing in front of a projection of a state hospital.
But what of the nearly thousand other patients under the care of state health officials. These are the men and women, and some children, who for one of a score of diagnostic reasons are suffering from mental or emotional illness or perhaps the most tragic of all afflictions, that of being both aging and unwanted.
19:33:10:12 Pan through room with row of empty rocking chairs, clock in center of room in background; at end of pan on other side of room four women are seated in rocking chairs, one closest to the camera actually rocking.
19:34:28:05 Pan through crowded common room of male geriatric and psychiatric ward in hospital; old man sits at table with hand on chin, all look bored, one agonizes with hand over face, TV on without anyone watching, men playing checkers, reading the paper, smoking cigarettes. Many of the old men appear to be farmers or rural folk.
19:36:52:02 VS hospital cafeteria.
19:38:31:25 Scientist in front of instrument with many knobs, reading and marking print from machine.
19:39:03:21 Pharmacist counting and pouring pills into pill bottle.
19:39:50:07 VS Nurses restraining convulsing patient on hospital bed. Doctor inject tranquilizer into patients arm. CU patients trembling bare legs.
19:46:17:22 Nurses and cooks baking in hospital kitchen.
19:54:20:14 Reporter with crew cut in suit and striped tie stands on the far right of the frame in front of a photograph of an Idaho state hospital. Several good sound-bites.
After the fire hell of eighteenth-century Bedlam has come the ever growing light of modern psychiatric medicine; glowing, fading, then glowing ever brighter, until today its penetrating beam is just beginning to pierce the dark curtain of mental illness, and the even darker curtain of human prejudice.victory over the past, work for today, and hope for the future.
| Idaho's State Hospitals | |
|---|---|
| Produced by | KBOI, News Department |
Production companies | KBOI, News Department |
| Distributed by | KBOI, News Department |
Release date | 1960 |
| Language | English |
- Thumbnail
