Publications
The Lives They Left Behind by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny
Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
Willard State Psychiatric Hospital, overlooking Seneca Lake in rural upstate New York, housed more than 54,000 people during its 126 years of operation. Some were released to their communities after decades of institutionalization, but many more died there. If not for the discovery of 400 suitcases filled with patients’ belongings in the hospital attic when the facility closed in 1995, their lives would have been lost to history. This discovery led the authors—a psychiatrist and an ex-patient advocate—to conduct a detailed study of the lives of the suitcase owners, to curate an exhibit at the New York State Museum in Albany that attracted more than 300,000 visitors, to speak to audiences across the country about the lives of the suitcase owners, and to write this book. In The Lives They Left Behind, the contents of ten of these suitcases are skillfully examined and compared to the written record to create a moving and devastating group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care. As it restores the humanity of the individuals it so poignantly evokes, The Lives They Left Behind reveals the vast historical inadequacies of a psychiatric system that has yet to heal itself.
“A deeply moving testament to the human side of mental illness.” —Oliver Sacks
Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry
Peter Stastny and Peter Lehmann (eds.) Preface by Robert Whitaker
The great book of alternatives to psychiatry around the world. The book highlights alternatives beyond psychiatry, current possibilities for self-help for individuals experiencing madness or depression, and strategies toward implementing humane treatment.
Sixty-one authors – (ex-) users and survivors of psychiatry, therapists, psychiatrists, lawyers, social scientists and relatives from all five continents – report about their alternative work, their objectives and successes, and their individual and collective experiences.
Peter Stastny 