Project 1 The Ridges

Child Psychology

By Callie Reynolds

After spending a weekend back in Columbus with my family, I am always pretty excited to return to Ohio University on Sunday nights. Each time I make the trip, I am reminded of how lucky I am to be alive in modern times as opposed to the early 1900’s. For if I were to be making my trip to Athens at that time, I may not have been headed to Ohio University, but rather to the Athens Asylum for the Insane, also known as the Ridges. It is quite possible that I could have been admitted to the asylum because I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Having OCD nowadays usually means seeing a therapist on occasion and taking a prescription medication, but in the early 1900’s, this disorder would have landed me in the insane asylum. Many of the patients at The Ridges were never really insane. They often had minor problems or lacked any problem whatsoever. These problems were “cured” by horrible means. For my research project, I have chosen to address the mistreatment of the patients who were admitted to The Ridges. I am going to discuss my promotional piece, its purpose, my target audience, genre, and the ways in which I tried to appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos.
The promotional piece I created was a journal. This journal was to seem as though it was written by one of the patients who was admitted to The Ridges. In the journal, the patient talks about life at the Ridges and the mistreatment of the patients around her. I titled my promotional piece and essay “Child Psychology”. I believe it to be a fitting title because the patients at this mental hospital were often treated as children, or even animals. This name is based off of a song by the band Black Box Recorder. The song is about a girl who is talking to her psychologist about the problems she is going through with her family. It features eerie lyrics such as, “Life is unfair, kill yourself or get over it.” These lyrics describe the same callousness as was rampantly used at the Athens Asylum for the Insane. This song is also significant to my promotional piece because I had been listening to it one of the very first times I had ever gone to the Ridges. I remember this night quite vividly. I was staying with my sister, who was a freshman at Ohio University for siblings weekend. We had heard many of the tales about the happenings that go on at The Ridges and had wanted to investigate things further for ourselves. At the time I was only thirteen, and I remember being pretty scared as we pulled our car up and parked outside of Lin Hall. It was about ten o’clock on a freezing February night, so we did not stay very long. As we walked around the buildings I felt a sense of sadness, especially after seeing many of the unmarked tombstones in the cemetery at The Ridges. Ever since that trip to The Ridges, I have had an immense fascination with the asylums history.
My target audience for this piece is Ohio University students. I chose them as my audience because I believe that everyone knows the ghost stories about OU, but few seem to know why or how these stories came about. Many of the eerie tales come from happenings at the Ridges. These patients were so brutally abused and mistreated that they are said to haunt the cemeteries of the Ridges and the asylum itself. I do not find these ghost stories to be as scary as I do sad, and I believe that it is important for students to understand the history of the insane asylum.
Since the purpose of my promotional piece was to inform students of the mistreatment of the patients, I wanted to tell the true story of what happened at the asylum. I wrote about the different therapies used at the hospital. I think I also fulfill my purpose because people often think that the patients admitted to mental institutions were legitimately crazy, and that was not always the case. My promotional piece mentions that the main cause people were admitted to The Ridges was because of masturbation. I do believe my piece lacks some detail in the “treatments” of the patients, such as what went on with the lobotomies and shock treatments. However, this was somewhat intentional. I believed that if the journal were to be written from a patient’s perspective, they would know very little about what happened to the other patients during their treatments. I also intentionally left out the reason the woman writing the journal was admitted to the hospital because I wanted the reader to be curious as to if she was actually crazy or if she was sane.
The genre I had chosen for my piece was historical fiction. I wrote it in a plain looking journal to try to make it look older, as if it had come out of that time period. I also wanted my the journal entries to have a more formal tone. However, this is not the exact language or tone of people during that time period. I made sure that the journal did not include any slang terms or words that we presently use, but that were not used in the past. The patient also refers to her place of residence as the Athens Asylum for the Insane. That made the piece seem more historical because that was the name of the mental hospital during the 1920’s.
I believe I appeal to ethos in several ways. I have had a profound interest in insane asylums from a very young age, so I have done quite a bit of research on them. For example, the journal mentions that a patient had left a message on the windowsill saying, “I was never crazy.” I had first discovered this piece of information a few years ago and decided to include it in my piece because it was so poignant and moving that it stuck with me all these years. I have also visited The Ridges several times. One of the sources I used to created this piece was the book Weird Ohio written by James A. Willis. He features a section on The Ridges in his book. Willis is a friend of my father, so I have had the chance to discuss The Ridges with him on several occasions.
My appeal to pathos can be seen in a variety of ways. The promotional piece discusses the horrible ways in which the patients are treated at the mental institution. It is obvious that the patient writing the journal has a feeling of hopelessness during her stay in The Ridges. Not only does she feel bad for herself, but she feels sorry for all of her fellow patients who must be put through these excruciating circumstances. She ends the journal hoping for death because she believes it to be a better alternative to having to spend another day at the asylum.
My piece appeals to logos because it is very factual. I wanted my audience to have a better understanding of what really went on at the asylum as opposed to what one would expect to happen in a hospital. I used chronological order in the journal to make it easy for the reader to comprehend. I also paid close attention to when the journal needed to the time period. Overcrowding became a problem in the 1920’s, which is why I chose the journal to be written during 1923. I also chose May and June to be the months of focus because I wanted the patient to be able to talk about spending time outdoors because the beautiful landscaping of the asylum was thought to make the patients feel happier. It was my goal to make it clear to my audience that many of the patients were not legitimately crazy.
I have discussed my promotional piece, its purpose, my target audience, genre, and appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos. I believe that my journal provides shocking and factual evidence of patient life and mistreatment at The Ridges. By completing this research project, I feel that I have a much greater appreciation of modern mental health treatments and it is my hope that my audience will too.