Commentary on “Seven Institutionalized Children and Their Adaptation in Late Adulthood: The Children of Duplessis.

Abstract

It is likely that many “civilized” nations have hidden somewhere in their social and institutional histories horrendous scandals similar to the French Canadian “Children of Named after the arch–conservative Premier of Quebec, Maurice Duplessis, who ruled with an iron fist during the late 1940s and into the 1950s, thousands of children were housed in institutions run by the Catholic Church. Labeled as “orphans,” many were, in fact, born out of wedlock at a time and into a society that sought to keep such transgressions secret. As a result of activism by a few who have gone public with their personal stories, there are growing demands for recognition and compensation from a society that ignored, exploited, or stigmatized them for most of their lives. Investigative news reports further allege that hundreds to thousands were subjected to lobotomies, mind-controlling drugs, and other psychiatric experimentation by the CIA, that they routinely suffered harsh discipline and cruel punishments, and were victims of unchecked physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by their religious caretakers. Accounts of a mass grave of Duplessis children, locally known as the “pigsty,” near Montreal and other horrors continue to surface in the Canadian press, although the truth of these claims has yet to be officially established. Against this background of hidden history and sensational media reports, Perry and colleagues systematically investigated the lives and late adulthood outcomes of the children of Duplessis. This descriptive account of 7 individuals is drawn from a larger statistical study of 81 Duplessis children now in late adulthood. Not surprisingly, that study found considerable negative consequences attributable to their institutionalized childhoods. Their purpose is to briefly tell representative life stories framed by empirical indices of trauma, childhood attachments, childhood strengths and protective factors, social supports, personality defenses, and psychiatric symptoms. It is noteworthy that they state that their attempts at constructing a random sample “was blocked by the respective religious, social and government agencies, on advice of their counsels, necessitating the use of a self–help organization for case finding.” Official interference is also commonly reported in investigative media accounts and lends credence to allegations of a conspiracy by the Quebec government and Catholic Church to hide their past involvement and potential culpability for this tragic chapter. Although accounts of the effects of chronic institutionalization on children can be traced to post–World War II reports of “hospitalism” by Spitz, “affect deprivation” by Lowrey, and “environmental retardation” by Gesell and Amatruda, few have addressed the long–term consequences in adulthood. Psychiatry 69(4) Winter 2006 333