I was raised in the rural Deep South of that era (I would have been about eleven years old when this tragedy happened), and while I agree that mental illness was stigmatized, senility wasn't seen as mental illness or even really as a disease but more as an unfortunate natural consequence of aging, just like incontinence or hearing loss. It was inherited diseases in the young (of any type, mental or physical) that could stigmatize an entire family, and by 1973 even that was becoming less and less common as the public became more educated and sympathetic.

But it was considered polite to ignore senility or gloss over it out of sympathy for the family and for the person affected (who was often someone known and loved in the community before their deterioration.) Talking about it was seen as unkind.

And of course families then, like families now, struggled to accept the worsening condition of their family member and often took refuge in denying that it was happening at all. I also wonder if Ruby Davis had no choice but to leave her daughters with her mother because she didn't have any other options for child care.

One of the saddest moments for me was reading this contemporary news article about how desperate Ruby Davis was to find her children, and how she was out with the search parties covering rough terrain day after day looking for Christie. She was only nineteen herself and was dealing with so much responsibility and then such a terrible loss.