Up until the 1970s, it wasn't unusual to know someone -- or know of someone -- who had been "committed" to a state mental hospital.

Mental hospitals, which had evolved from 19th-century "insane asylums," were remote and typically dreary institutions where patients were sent for psychiatric treatment. In tens of thousands of instances across the nation over more than a century, these hospitals became custodians of patients who lived out their lives there.

By the early 1970s, advocates for the rights of people with psychiatric disabilities were fighting for a end to "putting people away." They campaigned for changes in law and policy that would stop the warehousing of patients and ensure appropriate treatment and services within communities.

These advocates were successful. Paradigm, policy and practice changed. Large-scale institutions across the nation began to close.

In 1998, Darby Penney, an advocate for the rights of people with psychiatric disabilities, came face to face with this history.

Ms. Penney, who worked as director of recipient affairs for the New York State Office of Mental Health, was sitting in a routine work meeting when she heard about the discovery of 400 suitcases filled with the belongings of former patients at Willard Psychiatric Center, which had closed three years earlier. The institution, built in 1869 in Seneca County in the Finger Lakes region, had been one of the largest in the state. In its 126 years of operation, Willard had housed 120,000 patients.

Ms. Penney was fascinated by this "piece of hidden history." She went to the place where the suitcases were stored and started looking. "I was amazed at the depth and extent of what was there. Whole lives were in those suitcases."

Although not trained as an exhibit curator, Ms. Darby -- together with Peter Stastny, a psychiatrist and documentary filmmaker, and Lisa Rinzler, a photographer -- spent the next six years researching and documenting the people connected to the suitcases. They studied their personal belongings and conducted interviews with people who had known them, including former Willard employees.

The result was a museum exhibit, "The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic," which drew 600,000 visitors during its nine-month run at the New York State Museum in 2004. A book with the same title was published in 2008.

The traveling version of the exhibit will be shown tomorrow through Sept. 24 at the Frick Fine Arts Gallery on the University of Pittsburgh campus.

The exhibit, say its organizers, honors the memory of forgotten people who "disappeared for decades behind the institution's walls."

Many of the stories tell of people who led rather ordinary lives before their commitment -- they were educated, raised families, had skills and held jobs. In most cases, hardship, poverty, ill health, peculiar beliefs, or lack of family ties led to long-term institutionalization.

The suitcases revealed that some of the patients longed to leave the institution until the day they died. Others did not want to leave; the institution had become their home.

The owners of the suitcases had diagnoses such as schizophrenia, epilepsy and depression, yet records show that their care was more custodial than treatment-oriented. As Willard's population grew to an all-time high in 1950, the institution relied heavily on the labor of its patients to maintain its farm, buildings and grounds. One of the patients profiled in the exhibit was the hospital's main handyman.

Reaction to the inaugural exhibit was intense. "People were riveted," Ms. Penney said. "They expressed a lot of strong emotions. They would even start conversations with strangers standing beside them about what they were seeing."

"Of all the things I've done in my career, [this exhibit] has the most meaning for me," said Ms. Penney. "In a tangible way, it helped me focus on what is really important in the mental health field -- seeing mental health patients as people. Too often they are seen as just their label. It highlighted their humanity and how they are not that different from anyone else."

Bringing the exhibit to Pittsburgh was a unique collaboration between local mental health organizations and the art community, said Rachel Freund of Mental Health America/Allegheny County, the lead sponsor. Early in the process, Drew Armstrong and Kirk Savage, faculty members of Pitt's School of Art and Architecture, expressed interest in hosting the exhibit and added programs of special interest to their constituency.

Other collaborators are Staunton Farm Foundation, Community Care Behavioral Health, Community Human Services, The Peer Support and Advocacy Network, the Allegheny County Coalition for Recovery, the Allegheny County Office of Behavioral Health, the Duquesne University School of Nursing, and more than a dozen funders.

Complementing the suitcases exhibit is photography by Matthew Murray titled "Abandoned in America." A four-part lecture series will focus on mental health treatment and the structures where it has traditionally been provided. Two classic feature films about institutionalization -- "King of Hearts" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" -- will also be shown.

The Willard suitcases provide a rare glimpse into an unsettling piece of American social history and also raise difficult questions, say its organizers. What can we learn from this? Are circumstances any better now than they were then?

Pennsylvania, which reached a high of 41,000 patients in 20 facilities in 1955, is well along in implementing the goal of community-based living and treatment, says Ms. Freund. Twelve mental hospitals have closed since 1979, including Mayview State Hospital near Bridgeville in 2008. Allentown State Hospital will close by the end of this year. Seven hospitals remain open, including Torrance in Westmoreland County. Current population in these facilities is 1,960.

Institution closings have been done "in a responsible way," Ms. Freund said. The state transferred funds that were previously used to operate the facilities to community-based mental health services and "has made a concerted effort" to follow patients to ensure their health and safety. .

"They have been very planful," Ms. Freund said. "If people [from Mayview] were not ready [for community life], they were moved to Torrance."

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