History of Central State
Opening in 1842 as Georgia’s first public psychiatric hospital, the Georgia Lunatic Asylum, now known as Central State Hospital, offered psychiatric diagnosis and treatment to thousands of southerners. The 200 building campus encompasses 1750 acres holding at its height 12,000 patients. Since the opening of the asylum over 30,000 patients have died and been buried there.
Former names include: Georgia State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum, The Georgia State Sanitarium, and Milledgeville State Hospital
Lobotomies, shock therapy, poor living conditions, fires, vermin, and screeching patients enticed fear among Georgia residents and citizens throughout the nation. "Drag you off to Milledgeville" became a warning to all that if you "acted up" or were seen as "crazy" then you would be subject to be shipped off to the largest, poorest, and one of the worst asylums in the world.
Former names include: Georgia State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum, The Georgia State Sanitarium, and Milledgeville State Hospital
Lobotomies, shock therapy, poor living conditions, fires, vermin, and screeching patients enticed fear among Georgia residents and citizens throughout the nation. "Drag you off to Milledgeville" became a warning to all that if you "acted up" or were seen as "crazy" then you would be subject to be shipped off to the largest, poorest, and one of the worst asylums in the world.
Moral Therapy
Moral therapy was first implemented by Dr. Philippe Pinel in 1795. As a Parisian psychiatrist, he was the founder of modern psychiatry and his revolutionary philosophy shaped how asylums around the world would serve and treat their patients. Moral therapy became the modern system and philosophy of caring for mentally ill patients. It was vested in the idea that the mentally ill could be reformed into an effective citizen, productive human, and a healed patient that functioned in a “normative” fashion. This new means of ethical and honorable treatment became the prevailing concept until the late 1930s. Pinel’s goal was to change the asylum from a prison setting into a healing place and view the patient as a human being suffering from an illness that is to be treated with both moral and physical treatment instead of by punitive and medical means. Former methods of bloodletting, forcible restraints, purging, and other severe regiments were removed from the list of treatments which reduced the role of nurses, doctors, and medicine in the asylum. These brutal and primitive treatments were replaced with non-medicinal means of using the holistic body and mind to treat lunacy through moral, religious, recreational, individualized care, and occupational therapy as these therapies became the revolutionary ideal treatments for the mentally ill. Pinel encouraged discipline, self-control, religion, having daily routines, self-mastery, focus, and an encouraging setting. Although these founding doctors and trustees intended to follow the ideals of moral therapy, the moral obligations of the doctors and nurses would seem void when considering black patients incorporation and treatment.
The Institution & Kirkbride Plan
Thomas S. Kirkbride was one of the “first” American psychiatrists to use moral therapy in asylum construction and administration. Kirkbride revolutionized the standards in which asylums should be constructed and administered.Dr. Kirkbride, a founding member of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (AMSAII) and Superintendent of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane at West Philadelphia used Pinel’s philosophy to promote a standardization of American asylum reformation; his new plan of asylum construction and administration became the prevailing, ideal model for American asylums.In order to carry out “compassionate, supportive treatment” Kirkbride set his guidelines in his book, On the Construction, Organization, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane with Some Remarks on Insanity and Its Treatment, 1854, which was accepted by the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane in 1851.These guidelines would be the operating guides for construction of mental hospitals throughout the United States. He suggested that “lunatic” asylums should be built in rural areas with plenty of open, “pleasant”, “fertile,” and visually attractive land; at least fifty acres specifically used for gardening and at least another fifty acres for farmland. Not only did Dr. Kirkbride give regulations for the grounds and building layouts, he also provided provisions for the indoor aesthetics, ceiling heights, and room dimensions. His work detailed nearly every aspect of the asylum’s floor plan, cleaning regiments, tasks for the patients to complete, patient care, and details for providing the most effective therapeutic atmosphere to ensure the full recovery of the ill.