If you have ever been curious to what it is like to really be mentally ill and be in the nuthouse this short pamphlet will get you as close as it is safe to go.
Doctors, sociologists, anthropologists, as well as the general public are invited. I think you will have a good time. The portraits are especially vivid and they are the last half of the book. The poems if not excellent in quality nevertheless express the experience of a patient and his thinking. The poems are in the first half of the book. They include various drawings.
Poems and portraits of mental patients in this 55 page pamphlet recreate for the viewer what it is like to be in a mental ward in 1980. It focuses in the poems on the author's experience and in the portraits the experience of the other patients.
These are all works of art that I saved from my time in various hospitalizations between 1978 and 1982.
NAVIGATION:On a practical note, it is better to download for viewing than to use online viewing. The pages are different sizes and you can correct that better in Adobe Reader.
For online viewing, which is fine, it is recommended the you select the single page icon and not the two page spread icon. Also 12.5% is a good magnification. You will know what I mean if you study the interface before beginning or during playing around during the initial pages. If you choose the two page spread the pages start to turn when you zoom in to read the poems. The online viewing is fine and you will adapt to using it.