My sister said, You're making it hard for all us housewives in Nebraska.

You won't do any more housework? Then you go to the bin.

This is how psychiatry has functioned-as a kind of property arm of the government, who can put you away if your husband doesn't like you.

What is the natural reaction when told you have a hopeless mental illness? That diagnosis does you in; that, and the humiliation of being there. I mean, the indignity you're subjected to. My God.

It was horrifying. You wouldn't believe how people are treated there. You could see that these people had withdrawn so far that they just lived in their own minds. They did terrible things to themselves.

In those days, when you got boxed, that was it. A lot of old people were there because somebody wanted the farm. It was about property. People are treated like property.