Download The Orphan Zoo: The Rise and Fall of the Farm at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center AudioBook Free
Sabine Heinlein put in almost each year reporting at "The Farm", an application for mental patients at the notorious Creedmoor Psychiatric Centre in Queens. Formerly designed to teach its "members" self-confidence and skills by caring for animals and crops, the Farm experienced long become a dysfunctional hoarder's den. The patients sat idly on recliners in a grimy dayroom filled with the therapist's "collectibles" and garbage. The area was crawling with roaches, and a neglected bunny resided in its feces and urine under the couches. The farmland had been fallow for years, with dawn drug sellers gathered about the nearby picnic tables. Heinlein interviewed the participants of the Farm until the program finally collapsed in the summer of 2013. Augmented with sound snippets, photos, and historic newspaper articles, The Orphan Zoo chronicles the repercussions of deinstitutionalization, the administration's decades-long lack of constructive involvement and the tragic street to redemption of an once-promising program.
