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

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|Title= Mt. Vernon Insane Hospital
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|Title= Utah State Hospital
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|Image= Provosh.jpg
 
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|Body= Constructed by the US Army in 1828 for making munitions originally. In the late 1880s the arsenal was used to confine captured Native Americans including Geronimo. The land was deeded to the state of Alabama in 1895 and the hospital was built in 1902 to relieve overcrowding at Bryce State Hospital.
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|Body= The Utah State Hospital began as the Territorial Insane Asylum in 1885 at Provo, Utah (which at the time was a days' travel from Salt Lake City). The particular site in Provo was some eight blocks from the nearest residence and was separated from the city by swampland and the city dump. The message this reveals about the prevailing attitudes regarding mental illness is unmistakable.
  
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Mount Vernon Hospital for the colored insane, now known as Searcy Hospital, was opened in May 1902. Prior to the opening of the Mount Vernon facility, African American patients were maintained in segregated quarters at Bryce State Hospital in Tuscaloosa, which opened in1860. The 1863 annual report reflects an all white patient population. However, by 1868 annual reports indicates a payment of $1900 by the Freedman’s Bureau to care for the twenty-six African American patients at the facility. By the end of 1902, four hundred African American patients were at the Mount Vernon facility.
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The intervening years, however, have brought many changes: the swamp has been drained, the dump converted into a municipal park, and the city has expanded to the point that there is no longer a stark demarcation of where the "Asylum" begins.
  
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It served African-Americans exclusively until 1969, when it was desegregated after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted. On May 26, 1988, the Mount Vernon Arsenal/Searcy Hospital Complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a Historic District. The current site is made up of 25 buildings over 360 acres. The modern-day Searcy Hospital currently has 408 extended-care beds and a 124-bed intermediate care unit for patients with severe mental illness. It also serves the female forensic in-patient psychiatric center for the southern 1/3 of Alabama.  [[Mt. Vernon Insane Hospital|Click here for more...]]
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From its origin the purpose of the Hospital was to treat the mentally ill and to return them to a normal level of functioning. In spite of their best efforts, however, in its early days the facility was little more than a human warehouse. In fact, by 1955 the population at the hospital was over 1,500 patients.  [[Utah State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
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Revision as of 11:03, 9 February 2025

Featured Article Of The Week

Utah State Hospital


Provosh.jpg

The Utah State Hospital began as the Territorial Insane Asylum in 1885 at Provo, Utah (which at the time was a days' travel from Salt Lake City). The particular site in Provo was some eight blocks from the nearest residence and was separated from the city by swampland and the city dump. The message this reveals about the prevailing attitudes regarding mental illness is unmistakable.

The intervening years, however, have brought many changes: the swamp has been drained, the dump converted into a municipal park, and the city has expanded to the point that there is no longer a stark demarcation of where the "Asylum" begins.

From its origin the purpose of the Hospital was to treat the mentally ill and to return them to a normal level of functioning. In spite of their best efforts, however, in its early days the facility was little more than a human warehouse. In fact, by 1955 the population at the hospital was over 1,500 patients. Click here for more...

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