Recovery Origins Blog 2018

Pineland Center New Gloucester, Maine When was this "asylum" opened, and what did it look like? Did it follow Kirkbride's design?  The Pineland Center opened in 1908 under the name: “Maine School for the Feebleminded” and closed in 1996. It did have many features of Kirkbride’s design, particularly that it was established in a very rural part of the state where patients were very removed from the general population. The Pineland Center was designed to be self-sufficient in many ways. What was this institution's original intent?  The intent was to house and care for society’s disabled population, although this incorporated a wide variety of people with disabilities including intellectual disabilities and mental illness. The intent was to provide care to this group of people while providing purpose and education as everyone lived and worked there, including farming which was a big part of the Pineland Center.  This working farm was designed to be profitable w

I have so many intense feelings after listening to Howard Dully's account of what happened to him. At 12 years old, he received a transorbital lobotomy, because his step-mother convinced an eager doctor that the boy was unmanageable. Truth was, he had just lost his mom, and the adults had told him she had just "gone away." A loving Mom was replaced by this stepmother who was, at best, unkind to Howard.  Of course the cause of the problems was "Howard was a difficult child." That was the story the stepmother and Freeman told themselves.  It seems Howard's Dad was too disengaged to question his new wife's motives and/or judgment. The child, in this case, was labelled and treated yet was NOT the source of the problem, in my opinion. Grief. Loss. Emotional abuse. No one in his "corner." - these are the things that I believed were causing Howard's issues (if he even had any!). Do you think that this happens today? If so, give an example -- but

When was this Asylum opened and what did it look like? Butler Hospital was founded in 1844 as Rhode Island's first exclusively mental health hospital. Industrialist Cyrus Butler donated heavily to the hospital, and it was named in his honor. Hospital was constructed in 1870, and that November 118 mental patients were admitted - 65 charity cases from Butler Asylum, 25 from town poor houses and 28 from asylums in Vermont and Massachusetts where the state had sent them. Hospital was constructed in 1870, and that November 118 mental patients were admitted - 65 charity cases from Butler Asylum, 25 from town poor houses and 28 from asylums in Vermont and Massachusetts where the state had sent them.  In 1888, the General Assembly appropriated funds for a new almshouse to replace the frame building that had been originally built for the insane. Known now as the Center Building, the Almshouse was also designed by Stone, Carpenter and Wilson. Its name acknow