In Need of Psychiatric Care, and Resisting - The New Old Age Blog - NYTimes.com

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By Paula Span

The patient showed symptoms of severe depression. She hallucinated, seeing her dead father across her room. Her family was having trouble taking care of her.

Dr. Cornelia Cremens, the psychiatrist who saw the woman at Massachusetts General Hospital, suggested an evaluation at McLean Hospital — which as everyone in Boston (and anyone who read “Girl, Interrupted”) knows is a psychiatric facility.

“I could never go there,” the woman objected, appalled. “If anybody found out, I’d be stigmatized for the rest of my life.”

She was 98.
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