My patient was a young teen autistic boy and he improved during the half year that we worked with him. There were 3 of us who regularly visited him and I was kinda flattered that mine was the one name he remembered. And he actually spoke to me once about the abuse he'd received at home - just a sentence - and I reported it. Other than that, he wasn't all that communicative. Apparently, other students had worked with him before and he'd improve for awhile. 
It was kinda creepy since the ward we visited was in lockdown, so we'd have to ring to be let in and we'd hear a chorus of voices saying "come in!" There was one time when Michael (his name) got really upset and they took him away in a straitjacket. There was a blood drive at the college that day and they initially wouldn't take me because my pulse was too rapid, took me awhile to figure out why.
We visited the general population, but there was one guy in my class who visited the ward where the criminally insane were incarcerated. He told me about it once and I recognized many of the names from the news. I realize that things changed after my time there when Reagan "emptied the institutions." But I did get the impression that those who worked in the ward that we visited did care about the patients. A male nurse who worked on our ward was personal friends with my other "patient" - an agoraphobic woman who we visited in her home and who did extremely well - and he was the one who said he'd make a point into looking into Michael's case based on what he'd told me. *sigh* 
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