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

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|Title= Greystone Park State Hospital
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|Title= Trenton State Hospital
|Image= greystone main.JPG
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|Image= Trenton_State_Hospital_NH002.jpg
 
|Width= 150px
 
|Width= 150px
|Body= Originally opened on August 17, 1876, the hospital was known as the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum at Morristown. The asylum officially received the familiar Greystone Park name in 1924. The idea for such a facility was conceived in the early 1870s at the persistent lobbying of Dorothea Lynde Dix, a former school teacher who was an advocate for better health care for people with mental illnesses. Because of her efforts, the New Jersey Legislature appropriated $2.5 million dollars to obtain about 3.007 square kilometers (743 acres) of land for New Jersey’s second "lunatic asylum." Great care was taken to select a location central to the majority of New Jersey's population near Morristown, Parsippany, and Newark. The land Greystone was built on was purchased by the state in two installments between 1871 and 1872 for a total of $146,000.
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|Body= The following is from a 1916 treatise entitled The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada. The necessity of erecting an asylum for the care and treatment of the insane was advocated by Dr. Lyndon A. Smith, of Newark, in an address read before the Medical Society of New Jersey in 1837, on the occasion of his taking the chair as president of the society. This was the first appeal for the state to assume its duty to this class of unfortunates. The interest of the medical men being aroused by this address, they made their influence felt in the various communities, which resulted in an appeal being made to the Legislature in 1839. A joint resolution was accordingly passed by the Legislature authorizing the Governor to appoint commissioners to ascertain as accurately as practicable the number, age, sex and condition of lunatics in the state; and if, on such investigation being made, a lunatic asylum should be thought the best remedy for their relief, then to ascertain the necessary cost of the establishment of such an institution, the locality for the same, etc. An appropriation of $500 was made to defray the expenses of the investigation. Governor Pennington appointed as commissioners Doctors Lyndon A. Smith, of Newark; Lewis Condict, of Norristown; A. F. Taylor, of New Brunswick; C. G. McChesney, of Trenton, and L. Q. C. Elmer, Esq., of Cumberland County. The fact that four out of five of the commissioners were medical men, one of whom was Dr. Lyndon A. Smith, who first advocated this public measure when president of the State Medical Society, indicates clearly that the Governor was strongly impressed with the idea that the medical men were the most earnest advocates of the movement. [[Trenton State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
At this time in history, New Jersey's state-funded mental health facilities were exceedingly overcrowded and sub par compared to neighboring states that had more facilities and room to house patients. Greystone was built, all 62,589 m² (673,706 ft²) of it, in part to relieve the only — and severely overcrowded — "lunatic asylum" in the state, which was located in Trenton, New Jersey. In fact, Greystone's initial 292 patients were transferred from the Trenton facility to Greystone based on geographic distribution, setting precedent for Greystone to become the facility that would generally accept patients whose residences were in the northern part of the state. This proved to be the very reason why Greystone quickly became overcrowded in the heavily-populated North while the Trenton facility's number of patients remained relatively stable in the sparsely populated South. [[Greystone Park State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
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Revision as of 04:48, 1 July 2018

Featured Article Of The Week

Trenton State Hospital


Trenton State Hospital NH002.jpg

The following is from a 1916 treatise entitled The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada. The necessity of erecting an asylum for the care and treatment of the insane was advocated by Dr. Lyndon A. Smith, of Newark, in an address read before the Medical Society of New Jersey in 1837, on the occasion of his taking the chair as president of the society. This was the first appeal for the state to assume its duty to this class of unfortunates. The interest of the medical men being aroused by this address, they made their influence felt in the various communities, which resulted in an appeal being made to the Legislature in 1839. A joint resolution was accordingly passed by the Legislature authorizing the Governor to appoint commissioners to ascertain as accurately as practicable the number, age, sex and condition of lunatics in the state; and if, on such investigation being made, a lunatic asylum should be thought the best remedy for their relief, then to ascertain the necessary cost of the establishment of such an institution, the locality for the same, etc. An appropriation of $500 was made to defray the expenses of the investigation. Governor Pennington appointed as commissioners Doctors Lyndon A. Smith, of Newark; Lewis Condict, of Norristown; A. F. Taylor, of New Brunswick; C. G. McChesney, of Trenton, and L. Q. C. Elmer, Esq., of Cumberland County. The fact that four out of five of the commissioners were medical men, one of whom was Dr. Lyndon A. Smith, who first advocated this public measure when president of the State Medical Society, indicates clearly that the Governor was strongly impressed with the idea that the medical men were the most earnest advocates of the movement. Click here for more...