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

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{{FAformat
|Title= Lennox Castle Hospital
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|Title= Mendota Mental Health Institute
|Image= lennox4.png
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|Image= Mendota03.jpg
 
|Width= 150px
 
|Width= 150px
|Body= Lennox Castle was built between 1837 and 1841, in the square style of a Norman castle for John Lennox Kincaid by architect David Hamilton (1768 - 1843). The large, three storey red sandstone mansion has battlemented corner towers, a five story tower, and a large entrance porch to the north. During World War I, the castle was requisitioned for use as a military 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.
  
In 1927, the castle was purchased by Glasgow Corporation for £25,000, together with 494 ha (1,222 acres) of the Lennox Kincaid estate, as part of its plans to create a hospital for the mentally-ill. Built to the designs of Wylie, Shanks and Wylie, the new institution provided twenty dormitory blocks, with sixty beds in each, accommodating a total of twelve hundred patients, six hundred males and six hundred females in separate sections. Each section also had its own dining hall, kitchen, and workshop. There was also a new central administration block, medical block, visitors' tea-room, assembly hall with cinema, and forty additional houses which served as married quarters for the staff. During the construction phase, the castle building was used to house the hospital's patients. When the works were completed, the castle then became the nurses home. In 1936, Lennox Castle Certified Institution for Mental Defectives officially opened. During World War II, the castle was again requisitioned for use as a hospital, with patients being transferred to huts erected in the grounds - a temporary arrangement that lasted for some forty years. In 1942, the hospital allocated beds to maternity patients, as part of another temporary arrangement, this one lasting until 1964.  [[Lennox Castle 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...