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

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|Title= Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital
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|Title= Mendota Mental Health Institute
|Image= royalpark1.png
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|Image= Mendota03.jpg
 
|Width= 150px
 
|Width= 150px
|Body= The Former Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital (Hospital for the Insane) was constructed initially between 1906 and 1913 in the pavilion form of hospital design. The architect SE Bindley of the Victorian Public Works Department used the Federation Domestic Queen Anne style. The surviving buildings include the Male and Female Acute Wards (1907-09), Male and Female Convalescent Wards (1907-09), Dining Room/Recreation Hall and Kitchen (1907-09), Female Attendants Block (1907-09), Female Workers Block (1907-09), Male Attendants' Block (1907-09), Male Workers Block (1913), Pathology/Mortuary Block (1909), the Workshop (1909-10), the Paint Store/Morgue (c.1920) and the remaining connecting walkways. The parkland setting of the hospital, the remains of the former airing courts, the rear roadway and significant trees and plantings are important as part of the site's history. The hospital is the earliest example, though significantly altered, of a hospital for the insane as distinct from a lunatic asylum, in Victoria. The alteration of the Lunacy Act in 1911 made possible a further change from Hospital for the Insane to Mental Diseases Hospital, allowing for the housing of (chronic) working patients apart from the acute cases. Working patients worked unpaid on the farm and in the laundry, as well as doing other necessary tasks around the hospital.
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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.
  
The Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital was part of an integrated system of psychiatric treatment introduced under the first Inspector General of the Insane in Victoria, Dr Ernest Jones in the early years of the twentieth century. It was the first psychiatric hospital to be established following the introduction of the Lunacy Act of 1903 and was intended for the treatment of patients with transient and recoverable disorders. The Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital site does not now include the Receiving House building (1905-06) which is located further to the east within Royal Park. The Hospital consisting of Receiving House and Acute Wards was part of a wave of reform which emphasized early diagnosis and swift hospital treatment for mentally ill patients.  [[Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital|Click here for more...]]
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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.
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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...