LibGuides: State Institutions: State Hospitals

About State Hospitals

California
Oregon

California established the first hospital for the insane in Napa in 1872. As the population grew, several other hospitals were added, some focusing on particular types of illnesses, disabilities, or age groups. In 1985 several of the state hospitals became regional treatment centers, many offering outpatient services. Over time, several hospitals closed and the state developed a more community-based approach to the care and treatment of the patients formerly housed in these large facilities. Records for these facilities document their operations as well as some of the patients who resided there.

Current State Hospitals

The Department of State Hospitals (DSH) manages the California state hospital system, which provides mental health services to patients admitted into DSH facilities. The department strives to provide effective treatment in a safe environment and in a fiscally responsible manner.

DSH oversees five state hospitals – Atascadero, Coalinga, Metropolitan (in Los Angeles County), Napa and Patton.

DSH-Atascadero

The Department of State Hospitals-Atascadero is a secure forensic hospital located on the Central Coast of California, in San Luis Obispo County. It opened in 1954 and is a psychiatric hospital constructed within a secure perimeter. The majority of the all-male patient population is remanded for treatment by county superior courts or by the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). The hospital does not accept voluntary admissions.
DSH-Coalinga

DSH-Coalinga opened in 2005 and began treating forensically committed patients, mostly of which are sexually violent predators. It is a self-contained psychiatric hospital constructed with a security perimeter. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) provides perimeter security as well as transportation of patients to outside medical services and court proceedings. The hospital does not accept voluntary admissions.
DSH-Metropolitan

Opening in 1916, this state hospital was once a self-sufficient facility with its own farm, dairy and animals. Today, DSH-Metropolitan is located in Norwalk in Los Angeles County. The hospital has an open campus within a security perimeter. Due to community concerns, this facility does not accept patients with criminal history that includes murder, sex crimes, or escape. The hospital does not accept voluntary admissions.
DSH-Napa

In 1872, a site was selected and work began for the erection of the 500-bed, four- story, Gothic Hospital building. The Hospital originated in response to overcrowding at Stockton Asylum, the first State Hospital. Napa State Hospital opened on Monday November 15, 1875 and is the oldest State Hospital still in operation. The Hospital was once self-sufficient, with its own dairy and poultry ranches, vegetable gardens, orchards and other farming operations. Treatment programs for developmentally disabled residents were present from October 1968 to August 1987and from October 1995 to March 2001. The Hospital does not accept voluntary admissions.
DSH-Patton

The Department of State Hospitals-Patton is a forensic psychiatric hospital located in Patton, CA, in San Bernardino County. DSH-Patton was established in 1890 and opened in 1893. DSH-Patton provides treatment to forensically and civilly committed patients within a secure treatment area. The hospital does not accept voluntary admissions.
DSH-Sacramento

The Oregon State Hospital, called then, The Oregon State Insane Asylum established at Salem in 1883. As the population grew, several other hospitals were added, some focusing on particular types of illnesses, disabilities, or age groups. In 1985 several of the state hospitals became regional treatment centers, many offering outpatient services. Over time, several hospitals closed and the state developed a more community-based approach to the care and treatment of the patients formerly housed in these large facilities. Records for these facilities document their operations as well as some of the patients who resided there.

Eastern Oregon State Asylum: To reduce overcrowding at the Asylum opened in 1913.
Columbia Park Hospital: Located in the Dallas area operated 1959-1973
Dammasch State Hospital: Located in Wilsonville operated from 1961-1995
Holladay Park Medical Center Located in Portland, 1995 to present.
Oregon State Hospital (satellite Campus to OSH) Located in Junction City established 2014

Current State Hospitals

The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) manages the Oregon state hospital system, which provides mental health services to patients admitted into health facilities. The department strives to provide effective treatment in a safe environment and in a fiscally responsible manner. Hospital-level care includes: 24-hour, on-site nursing, psychiatric and other credentialed professional staff, treatment planning, pharmacy, laboratory, food and nutritional services, vocational and educational services. The hospital is accredited by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Organizations.

Salem Campus - The Salem campus has the capacity to serve up to 554 people at a time.
Junction City Campus - The Junction Campus can serve up to 96.

Psychology

Key Dates in Psychology, 1846-2002
From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather guide
1846 E H Weber reports on his pioneering quantitative investigations of touch in On Touch and Common Sensibility...
Psychology Before Psychology
From Handy Answer: The Handy Psychology Answer Book
The study of mental processes as a science is relatively new because it is dependent on the scientific revolution. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) is credited with first establishing psychology as an independent science.
Bedlam
From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
Originally, a lunatic asylum or madhouse, and hence a place of hubbub and confusion. The priory of St Mary of Bethlehem outside Bishopsgate, London, was founded in 1247 and began to receive lunatics in 1377.

Hysteria: Topic
In psychology, a disorder commonly known today as conversion disorder, in which a psychological conflict is converted into a bodily disturbance.
Lunacy
From Chamber's Dictionary of the Unexplained
A form of insanity once thought to come with the changes in the moon.
Idiocy
From Encyclopedia of Special Education
Idiot is an archaic term used from the turn of the century through the 1950s to denote an individual with mental retardation whose measured IQ fell below 25 or 30. It (...) was used comparatively with lesser degrees of retardation (i.e., imbecile and moron).
Madness
From Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850
Madness was a highly topical subject in Britain during the earlier years of the Romantic era.
Melancholia
From The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis
In his very first works between 1895 and 1897, Freud understood melancholia as a form of depression of variable intensity, linked to a loss of mental energy – he mainly drew on the popular theory of neurasthenia.
Neurasthenia
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Condition characterized by general lassitude, irritability, lack of concentration, worry, and hypochondria. The term was introduced into psychiatry in 1869 by George M. Beard, an American neurologist; he believed it to be a neurosis with a fatigue component.

Acupuncture: Topic
A technique of traditional Chinese medicine, in which a number of very fine metal needles are inserted into the skin at specially designated points.
Bloodletting
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Also called bleeding, practice of drawing blood from the body in the treatment of disease. General bloodletting consists of the abstraction of blood by incision into an artery (arteriotomy) or vein (venesection, or phlebotomy).
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT): Topic
In psychiatry, treatment of mood disorders by means of electricity; the broader term "shock therapy" also includes the use of chemical agents.
Exorcism
From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
An exorcism is a ritual, formalized by the Catholic Church during the seventeenth century, performed on a person exhibiting signs of demonic possession. Possession is said to occur when the Devil enters and takes over the physical and mental faculties of the victim.
Hydrotherapy
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Use of water in the treatment of illness or injury. Although the medicinal and hygienic value of water was recognized by the early Greeks, hydrotherapy attained its widest use in the 18th and 19th cent. through the practice of the British physician Sir John Floyer and an Austrian peasant, Vincenz Priessnitz.
Insulin coma therapy
From Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Psychology
A now defunct form of physical treatment, at one time advocated for schizophrenia patients, in which patients were repeatedly administered insulin (see s. 2) in order to induce a comatose state.
Lobotomy
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Surgical procedure for cutting nerve pathways in the frontal lobes of the brain. The operation has been performed on mentally ill patients whose behavioral patterns were not improved by other forms of treatment.
Psychosurgery
From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Psychosurgery, by definition, implies the destruction of brain tissue for the relief of severe, persistent, and debilitating psychiatric symptomatology.
Trephination or Trepanation
Trephination involves the production of a defect in the skull vault to create communication between the cranial cavity and the environment, whose success depends upon avoidance of injury to the meninges, brain and blood vessels.

Humor
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
According to ancient theory, any of four bodily fluids that determined human health and temperament. Hippocrates postulated that an imbalance among the humors (blood, phlegm.
Individuation
From The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis
As a scientific term, this was used by Jung to describe the core concept of his psychological theory.
Mesmerism
From Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850
The physician Franz Anton Mesmer developed his theory of animal magnetism to account for his therapeutic successes in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Vienna and the agitated culture of prerevolutionary Paris (1778-84).
Phrenology
From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Phrenology, now an outmoded theory of personality, originated with the speculations of the physician-anatomist Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828).

American Psychological Association
From Encyclopedia of Special Education
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the nation’s major psychology organization. The APA works to advance psychology as a science and a profession, and to promote human welfare.
Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital
From Encyclopedia of Special Education
The history of psychiatric care at Bellevue Hospital Center and the history of psychiatric care in the United States are closely interwoven.
Halfway Houses
From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
Halfway houses are locales where all activities and interactions may be viewed as having potentially healing, rehabilitative, and supportive properties and where all members may consciously or unconsciously contribute to therapy.
Harvard University: Topic
Mainly at Cambridge, Mass., including Harvard College, the oldest American college.
Hospital: Topic
An institution in which certain kinds of illness are investigated and treated.
Oxford University
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
At Oxford, England, one of the oldest English-language universities in the world.
University: Topic
Institution of higher learning for those who have completed primary and secondary education.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Topic
CBT is an extremely successful and popular method of psychotherapy, loosely based on cognitive principles.
Functionalism
From The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
The view that mental states are defined by their causes and effects. As a metaphysical thesis about the nature of mental states, functionalism holds that what makes an inner state mental is not an intrinsic property of the state, but rather its relations to sensory stimulation (input), to other inner states, and to behavior (output).
Gestalt: Topic
School of psychology that interprets phenomena as organized wholes rather than as aggregates of distinct parts, maintaining that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Moral Psychology
From The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
The subfield of psychology that traces the development over time of moral reasoning and opinions in the lives of individuals.
Organizational Psychology
From The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology
A branch of applied psychology covering organizational, military, economic and personnel psychology and including such areas as tests and measurements, the study of organizations and organizational behaviour, personnel practices, human engineering, human factors, the effects of work, fatigue, pay, consumer surveys and market research.
Positive Psychology: Topic
Positive psychology’s first focal area, positive subjective experience, is characterized by the study of such topics as well-being, personal happiness, life satisfaction, optimal human experience, exceptional performance, states of flow (total involvement), the importance of meaningful activity, and the good life. The second focus concerns the study of positive individual traits, and the field has already identified 24 “character strengths and virtues.”
Psychoanalysis: Topic
Name given by Sigmund Freud to a system of interpretation and therapeutic treatment of psychological disorders.
Structuralism
From The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science
As a school or system of psychology, structuralism had its antecedents in British philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

State Hospital Links

Historic Oregon Newspapers
On this site you can search and access complete content for historic Oregon newspapers that have been digitized as part of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program (ODNP). This full-text searchable database contains over 1,400,000 pages from Oregon newspapers dated 1846 - 2021, and we are continually adding new titles.
Oregon Historical Records Index
Type in only the last name for the broadest search of all records. Lookup birth, census, immigration, marriage, birth, death, estate, assessment, evidence, inmate, pension, etc.
California, U.S., State Hospital Records, 1856-1923 This collection contains case books and descriptions, commitment registers, and indexes for patients admitted to or discharged from mental hospitals in the state of California for the years 1856–1923. They are both personal and sometimes tragic records that can offer an intimate glimpse into the life of your ancestor. The forms in this collection vary widely. Some are indexes, while others will provide more extensive details, including: name age birth date birthplace record date race gender hospital location They may also provide information about the patient’s family, history, and illness.
Fore Free Access go to Public Library use AncestryPro Library Edition. Requires Library Card and a printing fee.
California Historical Society Online Catalog
CHS’s most comprehensive catalog, containing basic descriptive records for manuscript and photography collections; books and pamphlets; periodicals, posters, broadsides, maps, and newspapers; and other materials.