Missouri’s First Mental Hospital & Remove Wrinkles with Coconut Oil
VIDEO: Helpful tutorial on How to Fight Wrinkles Using Coconut Oil.
Describing the process of electroshock in 1957, a patient wrote:
“Patients were generally on [electroshock] treatment twice a week–two days for the women (Mondays and Thursdays) and two days for the men (Tuesdays and Fridays). Promptly at 7:30 treatment patients were rounded up by the cry, ‘Treatment patients git to the door.’ Begging, pleading, crying, and resisting, they were herded into the gymnasium and seated around the edge of the room.
Between them and the shock treatment table was a long row of screens. The table on the other side of the screen held as much terror for most of these patients as the electric chair in the penitentiaries did for criminals… In order to save time, one or more patients were called behind the screen to sit down and take off their shoes while the patient who had just preceded them was still on the table going through the convulsions that shake the body after the electric shock has knocked them unconscious.
One attendant stands at the head of the table to put the rubber heel in their mouth so they won’t chew their tongue during the convulsive stage. On either side of the table stand three other attendants to hold them down…The only comforting thing from those times was the sight of some of the quieter and more controlled patients comforting the terror-stricken ones. I can remember many a friendly hand placed on mine–many a comforting shoulder I leaned against while I waited my turn… This has changed somehow now I am glad to say, and treatments are not quite so inhumanely administered–but I hope to see the day when they will be entirely replaced by the new drugs now coming into use as tranquilizers.”
Hydrotherapy
Exposing patients to baths or showers of warm water for an extended period of time often had a calming effect on them. For this reason, mental hospitals used hydrotherapy as a tool for treating mental illness.
1950 to the present: drug theraphy
“Before thorazine, all you could do was restrain violent patients. People would be in restraints for years. In violent episodes, patients and aides both got hurt.”
A State Hospital staff member
The introduction of thorazine, the first psychotropic drug, was a milestone in treatment therapy, making it possible to calm unruly behavior, anxiety, agitation, and confusion without using physical restraints. It offered peace for patients and safety for staff. Although this “chemical restraint” appeared more humane for patients, it was not without adverse side effects. One hospital aide accidentally experienced thorazine when he drank fruit punch mixed for the patients: “I was just getting all stiff… I [felt] so bad… ” However, each new generation of drugs and research holds promise that more and more of the mentally ill can be treated as outpatients.
1947: ccupational theraphy
After World War II, the emerging field of occupational therapy offered patients an opportunity to be useful in society. To take advantage of this new approach, the hospital constructed a separate “OT” building in 1948, with a library, carpentry shop, and studios for pottery, basketmaking, and weaving; it later incorporated leatherworking, ceramics, and other handicrafts. The hospital’s annual report to the legislature that year stated that these activities were “directed specifically at improving mental conditions by treating external interests and rebuilding self-confidence.” By the 1970s, additional activities offered to patients included music therapy, recreational therapy, and industrial therapy.
1930-1966 Surgical Treatment
In the 1930s, Portuguese neurologist Egas Monitz pioneered the lobotomy–a procedure in which the brain’s frontal lobe nerves are severed by inserting tools through the eye socket. Widely accepted as a treatment for mental illness through the 1950s, the process attempted to control various behaviors by altering the section of the brain affecting social conduct. At Fulton, the philosophy of treating mental illness aggressively sometimes meant lobotomy. An elaborate system of checks, including interviews with social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and the patient, ensured that the irreversible operation was absolutely essential. The hospital performed its last lobotomy in 1966; psychiatric drugs made the method obsolete.
1988: Social learning program
Until 1988, no systematic method governed assignment of patients to wards in the Biggs Center. The result was a mixture of patients with varying mental and personality disorders and treatment needs. Staff, frustrated by the inability to gain consistent routines and orderly patient interaction, organized a committee to assess the problem. This resulted in the Social Learning Program (SLP) – a treatment plan rewarding good behavior. Patient socialization progress is evaluated by trained staff, who record and analyze group and personal interactions. The successful adaptation of SLP to a forensic facility has drawn national attention to the Biggs unit.
Charts like these are used to track patient’s behavior and progress in the Social Learning Program. Patients collect tokens for good behavior.
1957: Youth programs:
Amidst reports of rising juvenile delinquency the Fulton State Hospital decided in 1956 to accept emotionally disturbed youth. The children’s ward opened the following year with a quota of twenty patients. By 1964, juvenile patients numbered over two hundred. In 1968, $3.8 million was appropriated for a six-building complex. Dedicated in 1971, the Hearnes Child & Youth Center provided the state’s first such youth facility. Equipped with residential schools, gymnasium, recreational center, outpatient clinic, and special amenities, such as a television studio, the center advocated individualized programs designed for specific emotional, social, physical, and special educational needs.
1980: Outpatient Treatment
Many with mental illness forget skills learned in a hospital setting after discharge. Outpatient care, though, could offset this dilemma by assisting released patients and reducing the need for readmission. Under new mental health laws in the 1950s, the Fulton hospital initiated a modified system of outpatient care. In the 1960s, the hospital established community clinics in Mexico, Hannibal, Rolla, Lebanon, and Eldon. By 1970, a typical treatment for mental illness included a brief stay at the hospital for stabilization. Upon release, the patient received in-home visits from trained staff who assisted with medication schedules.
The hopeful future
Nineteenth century caretakers dreamed of a time when all mental illness, developmental disabilities, and additions could be cured or prevented. As the Fulton State Hospital enters the 21st century, medications and treatments enable mentally ill people to live and be successfully treated in the local community, rather than being indefinitely institutionalized. The hospital’s teams of doctors, social workers, nurses, aides, and chaplains have drawn the world’s attention for their innovative patient programs. Additionally, increased legislative funding allows the hospital to address the alcohol, drug, and gambling addictions.
In 1974, the Department of Mental Health was organized with three ongoing missions. First, prevent mental disorders, developmental disabilities, and substance abuse; second, to treat, habilitate, and rehabilitate Missourians who suffer from those conditions; and third, to improve public understanding and attitudes about mental disorders, developmental disabilities, and substance abuse. These missions continue today.
1849: A commodious House
Lacking knowledge about asylum design, the legislators authorized Dr. William J. M’Elheney to travel to Ohio, Indiana, and Maryland to determine the type of building to be constructed. He recommended a linear model used in the Indianapolis, Indiana asylum, but warned the legislature that construction costs would exceed current appropriations by $20,000-$30,000. In April, Solomon Jenkins’ winning bid of $47,450 for the construction contract confirmed the need for greater financial support.
“. . .the people of the State are willing to be taxed to build a commodious house, comfortable in every respect, to take care of their fellow human beings who are suffering under one of the greatest scourges that can afflict the human race.”
1855- Early obstacles
Although new, three flaws in the Fulton asylum building quickly emerged. First, interior construction provided no means to segregate the “furiously insane” from calmer patients. Second, the building was too small to meet Missouri’s demand. Superintendent Smith turned away seventy admissions in 1854 because of overcrowding. Third, until 1859, the poorly designed and constantly malfunctioning boiler system forced patients and staff to congregate in “stove rooms” on cold days. In addition to physical obstacles to success, Smith lamented the absence of standard medical terminology for the diagnosis of insanity, thus one doctor’s notes often meant nothing to another. Finally, Smith warned that the likelihood of a cure fell dramatically when patients entered with an illness already of long duration.
“. . .in order to [insure] the proper classification of patients, and the preservation of good order quietness and peace in our household, two additional wings for the most excited are absolutely essential and indispensable.”
1865-1875 : A period of rebuilding
On September 7, 1863, the asylum reopened but, due to limited resources, admitted only one hundred patients. When legislative support increased after the war, the institution’s population soared to 369 by 1868. For the first time, in the fall of 1865, “colored” patients were among those admitted. However, by 1868 Superintendent Charles Hughes recommended that the “colored” patients be housed in a separate structure from the whites.
“So great has been the demand for admissions during the last two months, we have been compelled to discharge some of our most unimproving cases of long standing to make room.”
1880-1925: The Hospital Expands
Fulton architect M. F. Bell supervised a major renovation and expansion of the asylum in the late 1880s, permitting the institution to raise its capacity to 550 by decade’s end. In subsequent years, Bell continued to collaborate with superintendents to upgrade and expand the facility. Using part of a $125,000 federal payment reimbursing Missouri for damage done to the asylum by Union soldiers during the Civil War, he oversaw the addition of the Corinthian columns to the administration building in 1916.
1925-1940: Continued Growth
Through the issuance of $10,000,000 in state bonds and the support of Federal New Deal programs such as the Public Works Administration (PWA), Civil Works Administration (CWA), Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA), the facility underwent significant expansion in the late 1930s. Added were two new wings, a hospital, a psychiatric clinic / reception center, and a facility for the criminally insane.
1900: a self suffiencient community
As originally envisioned in 1845, several hundred acres of farmland owned by the asylum greatly diminished the cost of running the institution and significantly improved the mental and physical health of the patients. Remaining committed to that vision, by 1938, the asylum not only supplemented its fruit, grain, meat, and dairy needs but also, on average, produced 1,361 garments each month, including such items as rugs, gloves, bloomers, gowns, coats, window shades, dresses, towels, sheets and shirts.
1956: from the Ashes
On March 14, 1956, the hospital’s administration building burned in a spectacular fire witnessed by nearby residents. Efforts to remove patients from the blaze resulted in an enduring and humorous story. Exhausted staff accidentally locked two local women, who had been helping, in with hospital patients. When one tried to explain to those holding her that she was a newspaper reporter, the staff thought she was delusional, since that was an unusual job for a woman at the time. All ended well, though. The women were finally released, and a new administration building opened in 1958.
1937
A separate facility for the criminally insane came in 1937 when the Public Works Administration constructed the “Correctional Psychopathic Hospital”–renamed the Biggs Center, for a former superintendent. The facility’s nine wards housed nearly 300 patients and included a hydrotherapeutic unit and medical clinic. Initially, emphasis in the state’s only maximum security unit focused on security measures and custodial care. As court decisions determined that the criminally insane had the right to treatment, the 1960s saw a more progressive policy implemented at Biggs. This included occupational therapy, educational classes, and organized activities designed for resocialization of the patients into their community. Therapists, chaplains, and psychiatric social workers joined staff attendants in working with patients.
1984: End of the Farm
For over a century, the Fulton State Hospital’s farm provided food for its own patients, as well as those of other state institutions. The dairy herd of registered Holsteins included state fair winners, a source of pride for the hospital. Initially, hospital residents furnished the low-cost labor necessary to run the farm, but as de-institutionalization forced a decline in patients, the operation seemed superfluous. State audits questioned whether on-site food production was economical and the farm ceased operation–the last of the dairy herd was sold in 1984.
