Difference between revisions of "Portal:Featured Article Of The Week"

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{{FAformat
|Title= Pilgrim State Hospital
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|Title= Larned State Hospital
|Image= Pilgrimsh1.jpg
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|Image= Oldcampus.gif
 
|Width= 150px
 
|Width= 150px
|Body= At the time it was opened, it was the largest hospital of any type in the world, its size has never been exceeded by any other facility, although today Pilgrim is far smaller than it used to be.
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|Body= Larned State Hospital was first opened on April 17th, 1914. The hospital was opened to ease overcrowding in two other established state hospitals in Kansas which were located in the eastern part of the state, Osawatomie State Hospital and Topeka State Hospital. The new ‘insane asylum’ at Larned was a preferred location because of the plentiful water supply. ‘Useful employment’ (farming) was the method of treatment to be used at LSH. In fact, early criteria critical to the selection of the first patients to populate the new hospital were being male, possessing the ability to work on the farm and being diagnosed as never becoming well enough to be discharged. No female patients were admitted until 1916. In an effort to ease the overcrowding, an annex was opened at the Army Air Force base in Great Bend which housed approximately 300 patients in 1947. The unit was designed to exclusively deal with elderly and custodial patients.The farming operation continued until the 1950’s. Adolescents and children were not admitted until the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
  
By 1900, overcrowding in city asylums was becoming a major problem that many tried to resolve. One answer was to put the mentally ill to work farming in a relaxing setting on what was then rural Long Island. The new state hospitals were dubbed "Farm Colonies" because of their live-and-work treatment programs, agricultural focus and patient facilities. However, these farm colonies, the Kings Park State Hospital (later known as the Kings Park Psychiatric Center) and the Central Islip State Hospital (later known as the Central Islip Psychiatric Center), quickly became overcrowded, just like the earlier institutions they were supposed to replace.
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The Adult Treatment Center building opened in 1990 to house the general psychiatric population on what is now called the Psychiatric Services Program, serving individuals admitted from the LSH catchment area as a voluntary or civilly committed patients.  [[Larned State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
NY state responded by making plans for a third so-called farm colony, what was to become the Pilgrim State Hospital, named in honor of the former New York State Commissioner of Mental Health, Dr. Charles W. Pilgrim. The state bought up approx. 1,000 acres (4.0 km²) of land in Brentwood and began construction in 1930. The hospital opened on October 1, 1931 as a close knit community with its own police and fire department, courts, post office, a LIRR station, power plant, potter's field, swinery, cemetery, water tower and houses for doctors, psychiatrists, and asylum administrators. A series of underground tunnels were used for routing steam pipes and other vital utilities.
 
 
 
The hospital would continue to grow as the patient population increased. Eventually, the state of New York bought up more land to the southwest of the facility to construct Edgewood State Hospital, a short-lived stand-alone facility that operated under Pilgrim's umbrella. In fact, Pilgrim State was so large that it reached into four Suffolk townships- Huntington, Babylon, Smithtown and Islip- and had two major state roads passing through its bounds.  [[Pilgrim State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
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Revision as of 04:19, 12 May 2024

Featured Article Of The Week

Larned State Hospital


Oldcampus.gif

Larned State Hospital was first opened on April 17th, 1914. The hospital was opened to ease overcrowding in two other established state hospitals in Kansas which were located in the eastern part of the state, Osawatomie State Hospital and Topeka State Hospital. The new ‘insane asylum’ at Larned was a preferred location because of the plentiful water supply. ‘Useful employment’ (farming) was the method of treatment to be used at LSH. In fact, early criteria critical to the selection of the first patients to populate the new hospital were being male, possessing the ability to work on the farm and being diagnosed as never becoming well enough to be discharged. No female patients were admitted until 1916. In an effort to ease the overcrowding, an annex was opened at the Army Air Force base in Great Bend which housed approximately 300 patients in 1947. The unit was designed to exclusively deal with elderly and custodial patients.The farming operation continued until the 1950’s. Adolescents and children were not admitted until the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

The Adult Treatment Center building opened in 1990 to house the general psychiatric population on what is now called the Psychiatric Services Program, serving individuals admitted from the LSH catchment area as a voluntary or civilly committed patients. Click here for more...