The nineteenth-century ""cult of curability"" engendered the
optimistic belief that mental illness could be cured under ideal
conditions-removal from the stresses of everyday life to asylum, a
pleasant, well-regulated environment where healthy meals, daily
exercise, and social contact were the norm. This utopian view led
to the reform and establishment of lunatic asylums throughout the
United States. The Texas State Lunatic Asylum (later called the
Austin State Hospital) followed national trends, and its history
documents national mental health practices in microcosm.Drawing on
diverse sources-patient records from the nineteenth century, papers
and reports of the institution's various superintendents,
transcripts of interviews of former employees, newspaper accounts,
personal memoirs, and interviews-Sarah C. Sitton has recreated what
life in ""our little town"" was like from the institution's opening
in 1861 to its de-institutionalization in the 1980s and 1990s.For
more than a century, the asylum community resembled a
self-sufficient village complete with its own blacksmith shop,
icehouse, movie theater, brass band, baseball team, and
undertakers. Beautifully landscaped grounds and gravel lanes
attracted locals for Sunday carriage drives. Patients tended
livestock, tilled gardens, helped prepare meals, and cleaned wards.
Their routines might include weekly dances and religious services,
as well as cold tubs, paraldehyde, and electroshock. Employees,
from the superintendent on down, lived on the grounds, and their
children grew up ""with inmates for playmates."" While the
superintendent exercised almost feudal power, deciding if staff
could date or marry, a multigenerational ""clan"" of several
interlinked families controlled its day-to-day operations for
decades.With the current emphasis on community-based care for the
mentally ill and the negative consequences of
de-institutionalization increasingly apparent, the debate on how
best to care for the state's-and the nation's-mentally ill
continues.This examination offers historical and practical insights
which will be of interest to practitioners and policy makers in the
field of mental health as well as to individuals interested in the
history of the state of Texas.
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