Horror In A Mental Hospital - The Górna Grupa Incident

An overcrowded, understaffed hospital in an old building that completely ignored safety regulations. What could possibly go wrong?

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Music and Sound Credits:

Spc X2x (Unseen Presence) by Kevin MacLeod

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

[lynnhathaway]

The minute he mentioned bars on windows, sealed exits, and straw and pine needles as insulation, we all knew where this was headed.

[mantisr]

Imagin being a firefighter going to a mental hospital and finding walls that aren't supposed to exist

[purplehaze]

"Metal bars were installed on the windows, and several emergency exits were sealed off. As a result of these modifications, each floor only had a single stairwell that served as its exit."
There is not a single direction this can go which doesn't lead to absolute hell, is there?

[FilthyLogic]

As disturbing as that story was, I'm most perplexed by the mystery cleptomaniac sauntering around a massive mental hospital highjacking light switches off the walls.

[lindalily]

I cannot imagine looking after 300 mentally ill people with only 3 other nurses. I had to look after 10 dementia patients or 36 low-care elders in a nursing home by myself and on top of that I had to change bins and the cup of water in every room and check blood pressure and blood sugar levels. If I had to shower someone, change them into their pyjamas or change their diaper then the others had no supervision. We only had 1 nurse and 1 other personal care assistant and if someone had a fall then 2 people were needed to operate the machine. Some patients were dangerous and others were depressed or making a mess. It was hell and I went home crying after almost every shift. I will never work in a nursing home ever again. I really feel for those nurses and patients

[amodernalchemist]

_Pine needles_ for insulation!? Dried pine needles are extremely combustible!! They are used to help fires grow larger, for camp fires, here in Canada.

[deviousredneck]

Imagine the conditions of the other hospitals if this was a great environment..

[MrsDetroit]

319 patients and 4 nurses???? So that is a ratio of about 80:1. What a nightmare! It seems like that's where healthcare is going right now bit by bit.

[KaguyaHimex]

My god, the fact this happened close enough after WWII that some of the patients, firefighters, and military probably had personal experience with the war and concentration camps makes the whole thing so much worse. Like imagine going through that and then THIS

[Neverborn_]

Hi, SH! This reminded me of a case from my country, Brazil 🇧🇷 It’s known as the “brazilian holocaust”. It was supposed to be a “mental hospital”, but truly it was an unbelievably overcrowded facility that housed anyone deemed as “troubled” and “useless, people who were shunned by society. These vulnerable people suffered through every type of institutional abuse and neglect imaginable, causing the death of about 60 THOUSAND people. It was the “Hospital Colônia” in Barbacena - Minas Gerais. If you perhaps want to make a video about it I can translate the material to you from portuguese to english, there is a famous book here in brazil that recounts these events and multiple documentaries. I deeply admire your content and research efforts :)

[bastiaan]

4 nurses for 319 patients. FOUR!

This is just unimaginable to me. Omg..

[FallenAngel]

Getting rid of emergency exits was absolutely ridiculous.

[mholic]

I'm Polish in late 30s and I've never heard that story. Thank you for bringing this to nowadays peoples attention, you've done great service to honor memory of people who tragically perished.

[lestupidunicorn]

as someone born and raised in the former eastern block, the "conspiracy theory" about political prisoners being held there is 100% not a conspiracy theory

[Libbathegreat]

I'd never heard this incredibly sad and infuriating story before. It's not that surprising that the patients didn't want to leave and longed to return even after the fire. When most of the US asylums were shut down and the patients were turned out, many of the patients returned to the abandoned and empty hospitals and squatted or camped in the grounds of their former "homes". That's even true in cases where conditions weren't much better than Gorna Grupa.

[SurnaturalM]

It's always the same story of a fire, a direction who decide to block the exits for some reasons, and it ends up with a huge tragic event that could have been prevented. This was even worse because they were dealing with mental patients who were probably afraid and didn't understand what was happening. It must have been hell to be there.

[faeriesorceress]

I like the understanding with which you approach the subject of Poland during the PRL era. Poles really had nothing to work with when it came to medical or mental healthcare. No funds, terrible working conditions. Complete government corruption. They meant well, they wanted to help the mentally ill, but they simply couldn't due to the harsh realities of a country trapped behind the iron curtain.

[MrSomebodyStrange]

Just a theory from a guy from an ex-Communist Block country, but the classified patients could've been relatives of the party members who didn't want to be associatied with mental patients because of the stigma that could've ruined their carreers. Considering that this shithole was considered a "good" hospital, it is a posibility. Also, I, myself, spent a couple of weeks in a funny farm, and "untrained, overworked and underpaid" is still a thing. I've spoken with the nurses who were willing to talk to me because I wasn't involuntarily commited and the whole ordeal was mostly paperwork-based, but their decision to work there was only driven by the fact that there aren't any other jobs in the vicinity, even though the pay is laughably low even by the countryside's standards.

[catladyjai]

How do nurses with a patient ratio of roughly 1:80 get charged with neglect? Thats a set up. So glad they were protected under the amnesty law

[SpellboundWolf]

Nobody ever wants to think about consequences. They only care about the now. That's how this shit happens again & again!