Kings Park: Stories of an American Mental Institution offers an intimate look at public mental health care in America by focusing on the story of a single abandoned institution, Kings Park State Hospital, on Long Island, New York. The journey back begins with director Lucy Winer’s efforts to come to terms with her commitment to the state hospital as a teenager in the late 1960’s. Although Lucy’s goals are purely personal when the film begins, her desire to understand and resolve the issues of her past soon evolves into a driving need to learn about the institutional world that once held her captive. To this end Lucy seeks out other former patients, their families, and hospital staff, who share firsthand accounts of life at Kings Park from dramatically different perspectives.
The film ends with a vision of today. Accounts are shared of the well meant, but brutally executed “emptying out” of the hospital, followed by scenes that capture some of the successes of community mental health care as well as our growing reliance on the penal system since the hospital’s close. In this way, Kings Park brings to light our nation’s current crisis in mental health care and helps us to understand how we got here. A vivid picture of a hidden world, Kings Park bears witness to the many changes in treatment, policy and attitudes over the past century and reveals the painful legacy of these soon to be forgotten asylums. This is a must see for any mental health professional wanting to better understand the history of mental health treatment in this country, and the catastrophic unintended consequences of policy gone awry.
