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

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|Title= Willard State Hospital
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|Title= Austin State Hospital
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|Image= Austin04382lg.jpg
 
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|Body= In 1853, the site was acquired for the state's first agricultural college. The college - on 440 acres of farmland in the town of Ovid, "the geographical centre and Eden of the Empire State" - opened in December 1860, but it didn't last long. Within months, its president and most of the teachers and students marched off to fight in the Civil War, and the college never reopened. It was superseded by the new state university, established in Ithaca on land donated by state Senator Ezra Cornell.
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|Body= Austin State Hospital was the first state facility of its kind built west of the Mississippi. In 1856, the governor of Texas signed a bill providing for the establishment of the Texas State Lunatic Asylum. Construction started in 1857, and the first patients were admitted in 1861. The facility was renamed the Austin State Hospital (ASH) in 1925.
  
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Soon afterward, the site was earmarked for the Willard Asylum for the Insane, which would represent a second and major step toward transferring responsibility for the care of the mentally ill to the state. From colonial times, the care of insane persons had been a local function. Each county operated a poorhouse, or almshouse, wherein was indiscriminately lodged a hodgepodge of dependant persons: the mad, the feebleminded, the aged and crippled, drunks, epileptics and beggars. The almshouses provided custody and shelter, but "treatment" was not in their vocabulary.
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Today, this original building serves as the administration building for a modern, innovative facility providing psychiatric care to a 38-county region in Central Texas. ASH admitted over 4400 patients in the fiscal year 2006, with about the same number of discharges, and has an average daily patient census of 292. The focus of treatment is stabilization of acute psychiatric illness and return to the community.
  
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The first step toward state assumption of responsibility was the opening of the Utica Lunatic Asylum in 1843. Utica was established as a treatment facility. It was reserved for new, acute eases and was required by law to return to county custody any patient who was not discharged as recovered within two years. Still condemned to the almshouse were the incurables, who, contrary to the unreal expectations of early asylum enthusiasts, were the norm among the pauper lunatic class. Dorothea Dix, among others including the underfunded county superintendents of the poor, drew the Legislature's attention to the unspeakable plight of the chronically ill.  [[Willard State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
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The old Texas State Lunatic Asylum, which now houses the administrative staff of the Austin State Hospital, is the third oldest standing public building our state. With its completion in 1861 in the lush countryside north of Austin, the hospital stood as a beacon of hope and tolerance for the treatment of the mentally ill.  [[Austin State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
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Revision as of 03:54, 22 March 2020

Featured Article Of The Week

Austin State Hospital


Austin04382lg.jpg

Austin State Hospital was the first state facility of its kind built west of the Mississippi. In 1856, the governor of Texas signed a bill providing for the establishment of the Texas State Lunatic Asylum. Construction started in 1857, and the first patients were admitted in 1861. The facility was renamed the Austin State Hospital (ASH) in 1925.

Today, this original building serves as the administration building for a modern, innovative facility providing psychiatric care to a 38-county region in Central Texas. ASH admitted over 4400 patients in the fiscal year 2006, with about the same number of discharges, and has an average daily patient census of 292. The focus of treatment is stabilization of acute psychiatric illness and return to the community.

The old Texas State Lunatic Asylum, which now houses the administrative staff of the Austin State Hospital, is the third oldest standing public building our state. With its completion in 1861 in the lush countryside north of Austin, the hospital stood as a beacon of hope and tolerance for the treatment of the mentally ill. Click here for more...

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