Women's hospital

The organization I am working with is called Cross-Cultural Solutions. CCS send volunteers to programs all over the world, each of which are partnered with local health, education, or social service institutions. Here in Yaroslavl, Russia, I'll have the opportunity to work with women with mental illnesses, the elderly, school-age children, and babies and infants. I think I'll blog about each of those facilities at some point this summer.
Twice now I've gone to the hospital for women with mental illness. Honestly, their situation is pretty crappy. The hospital used to be a prison, and it still has that prison-y sort of feel about it. The building smells like cigarettes and stale people stink. From the sounds of it, the women don't get much opportunity to get fresh air outside. When you walk into the building, you are reminded of everything that has ever been wrong with psychiatric care in the United States. The hospital is very One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
That being said, I should clarify that I am not condemning the hospital staff. It might be that the women don't get outside because the hospital is understaffed. That may also be the reason for the smell. Or, it may actually be a social resistance to helping people with mental illnesses. I really don't know enough about the situation to draw any firm conclusions about why the hospital is such an ugly place to live.
However, I think I can confidently make some statements about the women that live there. Contrary to what is easily imaginable when one thinks of mental illness, the women we work with don't seem to be unpredictable, violent nutcases who deserve a smelly imprisonment. When we go to the hospital, we just hang out. The 20 or so women work on craft projects, look at magazines, color or play games, listen to music, and sometimes dance. I've spent hours playing checkers with one of the women, and I've only won twice. (And I know one of those times she let me win.) In general, I can see that life probably sucks for a lot of the women in the hospital, and I'm glad I have the opportunity to hang out with them and just treat them like normal people.
Okay, so looking over this post I am realizing that there are a million and a half other things to say on this topic and it was kind of silly to try to write a short blog post on it. I'm tired of typing, so I'm going to just summarize the message I could spend pages writing on: People with mental illnesses shouldn't be defined by their problems. Sometimes they are treated very unfairly because of their (sometimes very minor) mental illness. It is good to treat them like normal people as much as possible, because--let's get real--they are people.
Bleh. I am frustrated by my internal conflict between wanting to say a lot and being too lazy to articulate it all. So frustrated that I can't think of a way to end this post. Er... Hm.