For more than three decades, he has lived here at Central State Hospital, known in its darkest days as the home of the psychotic, the manic and the hopeless. For generations, invalids here have sipped life through feeding tubes, grown men with the minds of children have hummed tuneless melodies and patients tormented by delusions have banged their bodies against the walls with wordless screams.

No one dreamed that Mr. Burns would ever leave. He is severely mentally retarded and his doctors and parents assumed he would spend his final years here. Instead, Mr. Burns, who is 51, was preparing for something utterly unexpected: a life beyond the hospital walls.

For more on this story, visit: Ending Segregation of the Mentally Disabled – NYTimes.com.