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Welcome to Asylum Projects, A historic asylum wiki anyone can edit. 2,367 articles and counting

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Mission Statement

The Mission

The mission of this site is to archive both historical and current information on asylums across the United States and around the world.

The Statement

This site is dedicated to the history of asylums in all forms. The term of asylum is applied to not only what is commonly thought of: mental hospitals, but can also be applied to sanatoriums, state training schools, reform schools, almshouses, and orphanages. These institutions have and continue to play a major part in today's society.

Everyone throughout the United States and in many other countries has in one way or another felt the touch of these institutions. These places have both directly and indirectly affected people and their families. They have shaped lives and created many popular myths about them.

With all that in mind, this site was created to help in the historical research of any institutions that can be classified as an asylum. It was created for both serious researchers, those who are doing genealogical research, and people with an interest in asylums.

Featured Article Of The Week

Larned State Hospital

Larned State Hospital was first opened on April 17th, 1914. The hospital was opened to ease overcrowding in two other established state hospitals in Kansas which were located in the eastern part of the state, Osawatomie State Hospital and Topeka State Hospital. The new ‘insane asylum’ at Larned was a preferred location because of the plentiful water supply. ‘Useful employment’ (farming) was the method of treatment to be used at LSH. In fact, early criteria critical to the selection of the first patients to populate the new hospital were being male, possessing the ability to work on the farm and being diagnosed as never becoming well enough to be discharged. No female patients were admitted until 1916. In an effort to ease the overcrowding, an annex was opened at the Army Air Force base in Great Bend which housed approximately 300 patients in 1947. The unit was designed to exclusively deal with elderly and custodial patients.The farming operation continued until the 1950’s. Adolescents and children were not admitted until the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

The Adult Treatment Center building opened in 1990 to house the general psychiatric population on what is now called the Psychiatric Services Program, serving individuals admitted from the LSH catchment area as a voluntary or civilly committed patients. Click here for more...

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Featured Image Of The Week

The Menninger Foundation of Topeka, Kansas, began as an outpatient clinic in the 1920s serving the local Shawnee County populace for a variety of ills. Karl Menninger began persuading his father Charles Frederick, or C.F., to focus the clinic's area of expertise on psychiatric and mental health cases. The Menningers opened the first clinic in 1919. In 1925 they purchased a farmhouse on the outskirts of town to for a sanitarium to provide long-term in-patient care. William Claire Menninger, Karl's youngest brother, joined Karl and their father in this practice that same year, fulfilling C.F.’s dream of a group practice with his sons.

Archive, Future Featured Images.

Featured Video

The following seventeen minute video is a well researched history tour of the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum by ShhSydney Urbex Adventures.

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Recent Message Board Posts

For everyone asking genealogical questions, please read this message from the administrators.

Hello,

In this space you normally would see our forum. This had been a hold over from earlier days before we had a Facebook page. Just prior to our server issues regular users had been barely using the forum with the majority of new posts from anonymous users asking genealogy questions or spammers. The old forum software does not work with our new version while the new forum software does not carry over old comments to the new forum. As a result, the forum will be discontinued in favor of our Facebook page. If you have questions or comments you can ask them there.

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