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

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|Title= Grafeneck
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|Title= Mendota Mental Health Institute
|Image= Grafenec.jpg
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|Image= Mendota03.jpg
 
|Width= 150px
 
|Width= 150px
|Body= On the site of a former medieval castle, between 1556 and 1560 Grafeneck Castle was built on a hill near Marbach. During 1762 and 1772, Duke Karl Eugen converted the castle to a contemporary style. In 1929 a Samaritan (Samariterstiftung) foundation took over the building in order to install a home for physically and mentally handicapped persons.
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|Body= Mendota opened on July 14, 1860 when it admitted a patient who had been brought all the way from Oconto County...a long trip by horse and wagon. Even though the hospital was not yet ready to open, that Saturday it was decided that, because of the distance the patient had been brought, he should be received. Thus began Mendota's ready response to the needs of patients and communities, which has been its tradition.
  
On 24 May 1939, a first visitation by members of Aktion T4 took place in order to find out if the building could be used for their program, and on 14 October Grafeneck Castle was duly confiscated. Between 10 and 15 manual laborers from nearby villages started to convert the castle into a killing center.
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Mendota has gone through many changes since then, some of them dramatized in the changes in its name. It opened as an "Asylum", appropriate in an era when little could be done for the mentally ill except to house and care for them...i.e. to give them asylum...when their families and communities could no longer cope with their needs.
  
300 m away from the castle several barracks were built, fenced in with a hoarding up to 4 m high. On the first floor of the castle the following facilities were installed: accommodations and offices for the doctors, a registry office, a police office, the office for the comfort letters and others. On the second floor, small living- and sleeping rooms for the personnel were installed. The main building of the killing facility was a barrack (68 m long and 7 m wide), which included several rooms. In one of them 100 beds were placed, covered with straw-bags. Three big buses for transportation of the victims and an ambulance car stood in a wooden garage. Two mobile cremation ovens were located in another wooden barrack. Because of the immense heat, generated by the round-the-clock cremation, the roof of the barrack was removed and after a short time the surrounding trees even blackened. The gas chamber, resembling a shower bath, could hold 75 persons. A former horse stable (round and 15 m in diameter) probably served as storage room for the corpses. At the bottom of the hill, at the access road, a high hoarding and a guardhouse were built. Fences with barbed wire surrounded the whole castle whilst armed guards with dogs patrolled these perimeters.  [[Grafeneck|Click here for more...]]
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In a later era, when patients were recognized as having an illness...mental illness...the name was changed to Mendota State Hospital, reflecting its responsibility for providing treatment.
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In more recent times, with the discovery of psychiatric medications and with new approaches (some of which resulted from research at Mendota itself) it became possible for the mentally ill to be treated in community hospitals and clinics. But there remained a need for a place for those who required more specialized treatment than most community hospitals and clinics could provide, and where the tradition of research, education, and consultation that Mendota had already established could continue. Mendota was then changed to its present name of Mendota Mental Health Institute.  [[Mendota Mental Health Institute|Click here for more...]]
 
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Revision as of 04:45, 2 August 2020

Featured Article Of The Week

Mendota Mental Health Institute


Mendota03.jpg

Mendota opened on July 14, 1860 when it admitted a patient who had been brought all the way from Oconto County...a long trip by horse and wagon. Even though the hospital was not yet ready to open, that Saturday it was decided that, because of the distance the patient had been brought, he should be received. Thus began Mendota's ready response to the needs of patients and communities, which has been its tradition.

Mendota has gone through many changes since then, some of them dramatized in the changes in its name. It opened as an "Asylum", appropriate in an era when little could be done for the mentally ill except to house and care for them...i.e. to give them asylum...when their families and communities could no longer cope with their needs.

In a later era, when patients were recognized as having an illness...mental illness...the name was changed to Mendota State Hospital, reflecting its responsibility for providing treatment.

In more recent times, with the discovery of psychiatric medications and with new approaches (some of which resulted from research at Mendota itself) it became possible for the mentally ill to be treated in community hospitals and clinics. But there remained a need for a place for those who required more specialized treatment than most community hospitals and clinics could provide, and where the tradition of research, education, and consultation that Mendota had already established could continue. Mendota was then changed to its present name of Mendota Mental Health Institute. Click here for more...