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My former employment brought me to many strange places, one of these was a mental hospital where hearings were being conducted by a judge, in a courtroom, to decide if patients should be released. I know this sounds strange, but the way it worked in this state was that a patient who was denied release could petition the court to be let out. A hearing would be held and the doctors would testify, usually the patient and any witnesses he or she might have. When the hearing was over the judge would decide whether or not to release the patient. As you can imagine, 99 out of 100 were not released, but there was always that one patient that made it.

Some of the cases were very sad. I remember one where the judge questioned a seemingly rational man for almost an hour. Every answer the patient gave was quite normal. The technique the court used was to let the patients talk for a long time, because the longer they talked, the more of a chance they would say something to indicate that they were mentally ill. But this gentlemen seemed quite sane. The judge stated that he thought that this man should be released but had just one more question to ask him. He leaned back in his chain and said, "my friend, what are you going to do if I let you out?". Without missing a beat or changing the smiling expression on his face the patient said, "kill my wife your honor." That ended that. After the patient left the room the judge muttered, "boy that was a close one."

It is strange indeed what can happen to a human mind. You can sit down with someone and try and rationalize things with them, but they just can't understand what you are trying to tell them if they are mentally ill. Oh they may smile and even shake their head in agreement but it doesn't change their beliefs, and it doesn't matter even if they have an IQ of 200. The next patient came out and he was really quite pleasant. Most of these patients are quite harmless but they are not really able to take care of themselves. This gentlemen firmly believed that he wasn't born but came out of a photograph. There was just no reasoning with him on this point. His was kept in.

The next patient that was brought in was very cordial. She was an artist but had been brought to the hospital since she was living at the airport in one of the large waiting rooms. When you spoke to her she seemed a little strange, but not mentally ill. The judge talked to her at length and she told him that she was from California and had lived in an art colony but ran out of money when she landed on the east coast and that is why she stayed at the airport. He could find nothing wrong with her and gave in to the pleading for release by her attorney. Her attorney was a lady that happened to be independently wealthy. She was a state attorney with a big heart. The attorney told the court that she would purchase a ticket back to California for the patient out of her own funds. The patient was put on a plane but that is not the end of this story. A week later she was picked up again on the east coast, living in the same airport and begging for money. She had somehow gotten the money for a return trip and come right back.

Mental illness can strike anyone. I never gave this much thought until I noticed that one of the patients that came in was a famous former state official. It was really sad to see him in such a situation. His type of illness wasn't one that anything could really be done about. Sometimes the cause of mental illness was drugs. One patient that came in to the court room was a big brute of a man. He looked like he could rip you apart with his bare hands, but he was as mild as one could be. The reason he was in the hospital was that he had ripped a concrete bench out of the ground and used it to completely wreck a car. I mean wreck. The car was totaled. I didn't think that this was possible using your hands. but it was. A woman from the area came in and testified that she hollered at him but he had told her that if she didn't mind her own business, he would eat her dog. It seems he was on drugs at the time, but when he wasn't, he was a complete gentlemen. He wasn't going anywhere. Unfortunately for him the neighborhood he decided to terrorize was full of very well connected people and they had managed to get the state attorney general to come to the court in person to plead their case for keeping this patient in the hospital.

We will call her Jane (of course this is not her real name). She was very attractive and had a great personality. What the heck is she doing here I wondered? I soon found out the sad truth. Jane would stand up and repeatedly pick up her skirt and laugh. This went on for the entire hearing. You may think this is funny, and some people did, but all I could think about was how this poor woman would be humiliated if she ever got cured and was told what he had done. She too was kept in for her own safety.

The next patient was a dentist. He had snapped one day while (uugh) he was drilling someone's teeth. For some reason he decided to drill through their cheek to let out the evil spirits. Wow, makes you wonder if you should check your dentist's eyes before he begins to drill doesn't it? This was an easy case for the judge since the dentist was still ranting and raving. He wasn't the only patient who could wreak havoc. The next patient was a pharmacist who became mentally ill. Can you imagine this? This was someone who filled your prescriptions. I wonder what some of her customers got in those prescription bottles. She was also in bad shape.

A strange situation had arisen in the patient's waiting room. It seemed there were two patients in there that both thought they were Jesus Christ and they were fighting it out. The guards were trying to tell them that Jesus was a man of piece but it didn't do any good. They never even made it into the courtroom. The rest of the day was filled by several pathetic patients. One was a former attorney who, it seemed, all the other attorneys knew. His problem was that he saw religious figures and was totally preoccupied with religion to the point that he didn't eat or bathe. I understand that eventually he was let out but committed suicide a week later by jumping off a high building.

The last patient was a female who had been in and out of the hospital for over 30 years. She knew everyone in the room by their first name. She was petitioning for release but she wasn't ready yet. She had been eating paper, any type of paper and was even smuggling it into her room and stuffing it into her clothes. She would get out eventually, as she always did, but she would return.

It was a sad day, but it did enlighten one on the process involved when a patient requests release from a mental institution and has to go to court because they are denied.