In a mental health hospital, doctors implanted a camera to record the pregnancy of each woman as it happened
It everything started at once. In a mental health center where patients are continuously monitored, the first pregnancy was unintentionally recorded. The medical staff considered it an uncommon occurrence, an abnormality, and possibly a medical error. But it soon became clear that this was only the beginning.
Pregnancy began to occur one after the other. The diagnoses of the first patient, the second, and the third were all incompatible with being a good mother. They were skeptical and reclusive and would not talk about how it happened. Meanwhile, surveillance cameras, visitor logs, and staff records found no violations.
With each new pregnancy came more gossip and disturbing worries. The staff members underwent interrogation, internal investigations, and psychological tests. One employee was even momentarily implicated but then exonerated because he was on leave throughout the relevant period and all of his activities were documented.
Meanwhile, further patients began to provide alarming hints. Conversations about “secret nighttime walks,” “a garden where no one watches,” and “meetings like before” became more common. At first, this was dismissed as the patients’ dreams, but when the same aspects kept happening, the doctors started to get suspicious.
The doctors then positioned a camera to better understand what was happening, and they were horrified by what they saw
The grounds of the clinic were examined, including areas that are rarely used. Then it was revealed: in a distant area of the garden, a metal hatch was found concealed beneath a layer of leaves.
The male ward is accessible by a sturdy, albeit compact, tunnel beneath it. The tunnel was old, probably pre-war, and had long been excluded from official plans.
After this discovery, a covert camera was installed, and the footage shocked everyone: patients from both wards had a secret meeting without the staff’s knowledge. without awareness of the consequences, without authorization, and without taking medical diagnoses into account.
For some, these were intimate and cozy times. Others were more traumatized and consequently fell pregnant.
Once this fact was known, the clinic changed its practices.
With the tunnel sealed, access to the garden restricted, and staff members required to accompany the doctor, rare, strictly controlled interactions between the male and female wards began.
Taking care of pregnant women was left to family members or social services. To ensure the other patients’ right to compassionate treatment in safe, regulated settings, additional regulations were created.
The story was widely covered by the media. Society split into two groups: some who blamed the clinic for negligence and those who blamed it for cruelty and an attempt to “sterilize” emotions.
However, the main takeaway from the story was that real, complex, living human life endures even in mental facilities.
