单选题
Many mental institutions throughout the country have been turned into dumpping grounds for thousands of oldsters who have no place else to go. Most of them aren't really mentally ill. In the jargon of the hospital bureaucracy, they are classified as "inappropriate admissions. " But since society has nothing better to offer, they are left to rot without hope, help, or dignity. The usual exit is death.
Often through no fault of their own, understaffed and overcrowded mental hospitals handle their "geriatric cases" little better than cattle. There is a recurrent pattern of elderly patients locked into wards to prevent them from Wandering about, given steady doses of tranquilizers to keep them "manageable", left day and night without a trace of human warmth or companionship.
Some hospitals have wards full of elderly, tranquilized patients, bodies bloated from their inactive, meaningless existences, sitting listlessly on hard benches or sprawled asleep on the floor. There are women, silent as statues, occupying chairs and rockers in the corridors. While the weather may be beautiful outdoors, old men may indifferently shuffle about a geriatric "cottage" with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Yet many of the people could be restored to human dignity, not by complicated therapeutic procedures, but among other things, by providing good medical care and reaching out a hand of kindness towards them.
It is estimated that one half the old people in state mental hospitals today could leave if proper community resources, services and programs were available. But an indifferent society has not made them available.