Description
Drawing on diverse sourcespatient records from the nineteenth century, papers and reports of the institution’s more than a few superintendents, transcripts of interviews of former employees, newspaper accounts, personal memoirs, and interviewsSarah C. Sitton has recreated what life in “our little town” was like from the institution’s opening in 1861 to its de-institutionalization in the 1980s and 1990s.
For more than a century, the asylum community resembled a self-sufficient village complete with its own blacksmith shop, icehouse, movie theater, brass band, baseball team, and undertakers. Beautifully landscaped grounds and gravel lanes attracted locals for Sunday carriage drives. Patients tended livestock, tilled gardens, helped prepare meals, and cleaned wards. Their routines might include weekly dances and religious services and products, in addition to cold tubs, paraldehyde, and electroshock. Employees, from the superintendent on down, lived on the grounds, and their children grew up “with inmates for playmates.” Even as the superintendent exercised almost feudal power, deciding if staff could date or marry, a multigenerational “clan” of several interlinked families controlled its day-to-day operations for decades.
With the current emphasis on community-based deal with the mentally ill and the negative consequences of de-institutionalization an increasing number of apparent, the debate on how best to deal with the state’sand the nation’smentally ill continues.
This examination offers historical and practical insights for you to be of interest to practitioners and policy makers in the field of mental health in addition to to individuals interested in the history of the state of Texas.