Advocates push mental institutions for release of names

In a grove of evergreens on the edge an old insane asylum's grounds lie the bodies of 1,000 people who were once called inmates. They died at the Hastings Regional Center from 1888 to 1959, and a small gray stone marks each grave. There are no names, birth dates or death dates. Just patient numbers.

Now, mental-health advocates, historians and others are trying to get U.S. states to make the names public.

On Monday, advocates for the release were handed a blow when they learned that the state attorney general backed a policy by the state Health and Human Services not to divulge the identities, citing statutes protecting patient privacy.

Renschler's attorney, Thomas Burke, said he would continue to fight. "If I don't win in court, I'll get it going in the legislature. I'm not exactly someone who goes away," he said.

The number of patients buried at mental institutions across the nation runs into the hundreds of thousands, said clinical psychologist Pat Deegan of Byfield, Massachusetts, who advocates getting states to release the names.

No comprehensive list of states that have made the names public is available, but Texas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Washington, South Carolina, Maine and Wisconsin have done so.

Next month, a coalition of mental health advocacy groups will complete plans for a memorial garden at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., that will honor the nation's anonymous dead.