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By the time it closed in 1995 after 126 years of operation, Willard Psychiatric Center, overlooking Seneca Lake in upstate New York, had been home to over 54,000 people. Some were released to their former communities after years of institutionalization, but many more died there. If not for the discovery of more than 400 suitcases filled with patients' belongings in the hospital attic (which led to a 2004 exhibit at the NewYork State Museum in Albany that attracted more than 300,000 visitors and now to this book), their lives would have been lost to history. In The Lives They Left Behind, the contents of 10 of these suitcases are skillfully examined and compared to the written record to create a moving - and devastating - group portrait of 20th century American psychiatric care. The stories of rich and complex lives not hinted at in the hospital records emerge from a wide array of personal effects - letters to loved ones, photographs of school days and foreign travels, knickknacks, religious tracts, a christening gown, professional photographic equipment, a delicate hand-painted bone china teacup and saucer. Here are the personal dramas of new immigrants and native-born Americans coping with a host of problems in times of war and economic hardship. They are men and women of different races and ethnicities, among them a young dispossessed German nun, a Scottish nurse and an African-American World War II veteran. The confusion following displacement; the rage or despair that resulted from illness, loss of loved ones or work; and the experience of hearing disembodied voices were only some of the misfortunes that put them on the path to institutionalization, from which most would never escape alive. As it restores the humanity of the individuals it so poignantly evokes, The Lives They Left Behind reveals the vast historical inadequacies of a psychiatric system that has yet to heal itself.