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Featured Article Of The Week

Kalamazoo State Hospital


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The choice of Kalamazoo as the location for the Michigan Asylum at Kalamazoo was helped by the fact that the governor was Epaphroditus Ransom, who once resided in Kalamazoo. Although the asylum was originally planned for a site in what is now the Stuart neighborhood, it was decided that this location was too close to downtown. So planners instead chose to place the hospital far out in the country, where they would never be bothered by these people. That location was on what is now Oakland Drive, where the hospital is still located.

The asylum was on the cutting edge of many forms of treatment. Through its close proximity to a town, it was able to establish an innovative outpatient clinic in 1916 as well as a unique "family-care" program that placed patients in certified homes. The hospital also made use of colony farms, adjunct properties on which patients with milder illnesses — and those who today might be considered developmentally delayed — lived in familial farm settings. (One of these was near Kalamazoo's Asylum Lake.) They often raised livestock and produce for use at the hospital. The farms are examples of the limited treatment options for the mentally ill before the 1950s. He said that electroshock therapy, insulin-induced comas, and some barbiturate drugs resulted in little reversals in patients' thoughts and behavior.

Narcoleptic or anti-psychotic drugs, such as Thorazine, would revolutionize psychiatric treatment and the role of psychiatric hospitals in society. Patients who had been in the hospital for decades were suddenly responsive, able to care for themselves, and moving back to live with their families. By 1987, the number of patients had dropped to 550. By 1959 the State Hospital had a patient load of 3,500 and 900 staff that included doctors, nurses, attendants, and service personnel. It became almost a city in its own right with a power plant, water system, bakery, laundry, library, canteen, garage, cannery, general kitchen, and greenhouse. For many years the hospital was one of the largest employers in Kalamazoo. Click here for more...