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I taped an episode of Dateline 3 months ago and watched about 2 minutes of it. Nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to see and I was so disturbed by the images I had to shut it off. I saved the episode as I knew it was important for me to watch and was finally able to do so a few evenings ago.

Dateline gained access to mental institutions in Serbia that warehouse thousands of children and adults. Many are kept in cribs never to be let out. They often stop growing and their bodies become contorted and atrophied. Staffing is an issue at these places and many of the people are tied down to their beds for hours at a time. Doctors in Serbia encourage parents of mentally disabled children to send them to such places never to look back. The Kulina Institution holds close to 600 children and adults crammed into cribs. They have one part time physical therapist for all of these patients.

I was actually shocked by one gentleman on the program who cried repeatedly while telling his story. His son was born with Down syndrome and was sent away to live at an institution for the remainder of his life. The guy talked about wanting to see his son and how he thought about him every single day. Dateline found his child and I thought he would surely run out and save the boy after seeing the conditions he was living in. Not so......he said that he hoped one day to go and visit him. WHAT???? I was flabbergasted.....I still have no words.

I feel at a loss for what to do but something needs to be done and it needs to be done NOW!! I am in absolute disbelief that in 2008 developmentally delayed people are being treated this way. The institutions don't have enough staff and people are essentially caged until they die.

I want to hop on a plane right now and just hold them. Can you imagine a lifetime without human touch??? A haunting clip shows a young boy repeatedly punching his ears until they bleed. Many will self harm just to feel something rather than to feel nothing.

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Behind Closed Doors: An unprecedented look inside Serbia's mental institutions

I took the following few paragraphs from this website which I urge you to visit. It's an overview of the Dateline program I watched.

"As the geopolitical struggle over the independence of Kosovo from Serbia continues, with war never far from the minds of many, there is an unseen class of people in Serbia whose lives are at risk regardless of the outcome.
They are the estimated 17,000 mentally disabled children and adults who for decades have been systematically warehoused in remote, government-run mental institutions. They are facilities that are unknown to most Serbs, let alone the rest of the world — and perhaps for good reason.
In the course of a yearlong investigation, we gained unprecedented access to institutions across Serbia and found alarming, sometimes life-threatening, conditions. Adults and children — some with only mild symptoms of Down syndrome or cerebral palsy — were crammed into fetid rooms and metal cribs, their bodies often emaciated, atrophied or disfigured. Some had been confined to cribs for years, their bodies conforming to the small space inside the railings. "