“Hurry Tomorrow” a Documentary Showing the Difficulties of ‘Mental Patients’ in So-Called Treatment

I found a You Tube playlist of scenes from a film called “Hurry Tomorrow” by Richard Cohen and Kevin Rafferty fom the 1970’s.

In the playlist there are four scenes filmed from inside a mental hospital. The scenes are fairly tragic, though from inside the patients perspective I’m certain its catastrophic. There is a 28 year veteran fire fighter who only a year earlier was forced to retire early because of a heart attack. Now since his wife committed him because he was a little burdensome after retiring he’s given injections of Prolixen which he complains make him like a “walking zombie”. During all this he’s fully aware and appears the same as anyone on the street in fact by today’s standards he’d be considered incredibly average and well behaved. There are numerous people in the film who appear this way yet they are all being forced to take, mostly through injection, potent mind altering drugs.

In another scene a patient melodically and soulfully sings an improvised song about the psychiatric unit which sounds as if it were radio quality. He starts of with “hurry tomorrow, tomorrow I need you now”. Some of the topics he sings of during his impromptu performance are being forcefully admitted, confinement, the side effects, being a victim of circumstance, the hot nurses, he says the food is bad and has medication in it, he sings of the various patients and workers, and also his assertion he will never return. The fact that this was most likely improvised, indicated by his forgetting a name and needing to be reminded, shows not only was this person healthy and had vigor, but also he had an incredible talent making him in my view more of a value to society than most. He mentions he’s been confined for 2 weeks for merely being on the street, and being a victim of circumstance.

In yet another scene called the over-drugging a young man is put in a stupor by the medication. When in a meeting about his discharge while in this stupor a worker says “your Dad wants to take you home” to which he says in his stupor “oh good”. As the young man begin s to thank them the worker says bluntly “I told him no” and the whole room of workers chuckles.

While later visiting with his father he falls in the hall and his father sits with him. The technician says, “he doesn’t need to act like that” and guides them as the patient stumbles in his stupor being partially carried by his father into the room where the patient sleeps. Then the technician immediately tells them if they want to continue the visit they’ll need to come back out which by the looks of it is not an easy task given the state of the patient. They do come out and are met later by the soulful singer from earlier who confirms with the father the harmful effects of the drug Thorazine, telling him it’s like “you done dropped 20 red devils” which I looked up and I found red devil is a slang term for a some type of street barbiturate.

These are just a few scenes however these are pretty horrible conditions and when looked at while considering that some who were committed for similar reasons at times were not released for months or years even, it’s pretty sickening. I’m not insisting anyone not seek treatment if they feel the need, they may find help, but hopefully if one does seek help from the newer forms of treatment from this field they are equipped to handle all the difficulties they may eventually face. I have to wish anyone needing treatment be well, and can only hope they experience a speedy recovery and somehow find the better types of treatments that may be available.