What do the graves around Northern State hospital tell us about the Lost Patients who lived there?

“Lost Patients,” a new podcast from KUOW and The Seattle Times, sets out to explore why so many people with severe mental illness go untreated in Washington state.

In its third episode, the team looks at the legacy of Northern State Hospital.

Today, the mostly-abandoned buildings sit tucked in a lush valley in the town of Sedro-Woolley, surrounded by sweeping mountain vistas. Northern State was once a model for psychiatric care in the U.S., with ornate buildings and a working farm — grounds designed by the famed Olmstead family.

But it’s also where patients experienced treatment that we now consider to be inhumane.

“When you talk to people, today, about these old psychiatric hospitals, you get one of two responses," says Will James, host of Lost Patients. "One is that these were hellholes — patients were warehoused, neglected, forgotten, abused, experimented on, and we were right to shut them down. But these days, you also find people who are nostalgic for these asylums, because at least there was somewhere for the most seriously mentally ill people to go that was not the streets. At least the state took responsibility — real responsibility — for their care.”

In the third episode of Lost Patients, we hear a letter from a patient, Emmett, who was administered shock therapy without his consent.

“There were perhaps six of us who were scheduled for shock therapy that day," Emmett writes. "But it seemed to be the general feeling that those treatments were punishment. I felt as if we were convicts without the honor of trial by jury, waiting our turn in the electric chair.”

Electroconvulsive therapy is still in use today, but patients opt-in and are given anesthesia. Some other treatments that were administered at Northern State, including lobotomies and forced insulin comas, are absolutely not considered medically sound today.

A former nurse, Joanne, was present during some of these procedures.

“You hope that what you’re doing is correct and is helpful," Joanne said. "But you can have a lot of questions...you tried to have faith, you know.”

But according to some, Northern State’s legacy isn’t just about these dark chapters in medical history. It was also a place where patients found compassion.

Joanne says she saw care and tenderness during her time at Northern State hospital. This was a time when the state funded more beds for mental health treatment and people had somewhere to go, besides the street.

Soundside spoke with John Horne, a Northern State Hospital historian, for a deeper look at some of the institution's history.

You can listen to Soundside's entire conversation with John Horne by clicking the play button above.