bad apples and institutionalisation

After listening to wednesday's lecture on the need to belong, I thought that I would add a couple of comments in relation to the point put forward that people have been institutionalised because they are considered "bad apples" (bad apple effect).

Firstly, having worked with clients who have been institutionalised for many years, I have observed that the concept of who should be institutionalised because they are "bad apples" has changed over the years. For example, many of the elderly people who resided in institutionalised settings in the past and now reside in residential settings were were placed in institutions because they were different or frail (including having hair lips, cleft pallets or hunch backs), or because they expressed antisocial behaviours that today would be corrected with parenting skills training or drugs such as Ritolin. These people, if born today, would receive medical or behavioural support while young, and be raised as normal children within the community.

Secondly, for those who were placed in institutions in the past, the flow-on effect has been life long, and consesquences of being judged different and in need of institutionalisation for many has been negative in some or many respects. For example, after years of exposure to institutional regimes, clients become dependent on others for support with all or many of their daily living needs including personal hygeine, banking, shopping, work, and attending social activities. Insitutional regimes result in clients becoming institutionalised in terms of daily routines so that they become anxious if routines are changed or if new people come into their environment and do not know the routines. Competitition in terms of survival of the fittest in institutions results in clients being constantly concerned about the safety of their own belongings and vigilent that their belongings are safely locked away where no-one else can get them. Competition for survival also results in clients hording or gorging their food so that no-one else can eat it. Also, people who have been institutionalised are exposed to public attitudes of prejudice based on the stereotype of insititutionalised people being violent, aggressive, and less than worthy of community membership.

A point that I would like to make is that people who have been classified in the past as "bad apples", and therefore placed in insitiutions have been exposed to a lifetime of treatment by institutions, fellow clients and society that they would not experience today because they would not be considered "bad apples", would hopefully receive the medical or behavioural support required to live as everyday citizens, and therefore would have the opportunity to grow from childhood into adulthood with independence and without experiencing the dependency, prejudice and isolation experienced in the past.