Hospitals--Mississippi. State Hospital

Founded in 1848, the Mississippi State Hospital was a state-funded institution in Jackson, Mississippi, for people suffering from psychological disorders. First proposed by Governor Albert Gallatin Brown in 1846, the initial facility was constructed on a five-acre lot with funds provided by the state legislature. Shortly afterwards, the hospital’s commissioners constructed a larger facility north of Jackson (currently the campus of the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson) with guidance and support from noted humanitarian Dorothea L. Dix, who personally appealed to Mississippi legislators for better mental health treatment. (Before the nineteenth century, people with psychiatric problems were often ignored, abandoned, or jailed as public nuisances.) Named the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum, the four-story hospital began taking patients in 1855. Originally intended for white patients, the hospital’s administrators and board of trustees began admitting a small number of African Americans—free and slave—for treatment in 1856.

The state hospital housed and treated thousands of mental health patients (often referred to as lunatics in the vernacular of the nineteenth century). The number of patients rose from 70 in 1855 to nearly 500 by 1890. Most people admitted for treatment in the 1850s were women in their 20’s and 30’s, sent by family members for causes listed as “unlucky in business,” “disappointed in love,” and “feeblemindedness.” Patients were also placed into the state hospital for behavior associated to menstruation, overactive sexual interests or activities, drug or alcohol use, and other behaviors deemed socially or religiously inappropriate. Not all patients were admitted at the behest of family members, as local citizens could file complaints against neighbors or other residents, prompting their local sheriff to detain the suspected “lunatic” and present them to a county probate court for a jury to decide if admission to the asylum was necessary.

The facility and its care for psychological disorders were considered advanced for the mid-nineteenth century and many patients were employed in jobs, such as carpentry, farming, manufacturing, and other laboring tasks on the hospital grounds. However, some treatments for psychological disorders in that era included mechanical restraints, physical punishment, and isolation. As many as 7,000 patients died at the state hospital site at Jackson between 1855 and its 1935, when the Mississippi government closed the state hospital at Jackson and opened a new facility at a different location. Some deaths were due to poorly understood sanitation or disease problems, such as tainted water supplies, as well as yellow fever and malaria epidemics, but many other deaths occurred due to the patients remaining at the facility until they died of natural causes. The hospital was seen as a permanent residence for those deemed “incurable.”

During the Civil War, Union soldiers temporarily occupied the state hospital when they captured Jackson. The troops confiscated property from the facility, including killing livestock held on the hospital grounds. However, the hospital remained active during the war, and was improved in 1870 with the appointment of Dr. William Compton as superintendent. He lobbied for better funds and treatment for patients, particularly for African Americans, although the facility was segregated by race and gender.

The state hospital continued to expand and treat a growing number of patients well into the twentieth century. By the mid-1920s it housed 2,000 patients. Due to its deteriorating conditions after decades of operation, the Mississippi legislature constructed a new facility in Rankin County, which opened in 1935. The Mississippi State Hospital at Jackson closed its doors that same year. (Lucius M. Lampton, “Whitfield (Mississippi State Hospital),” Mississippi Encyclopedia; Sudhakar Madakasira, “History of Mississippi Psychiatry: A Dark Past Unearthed on UMMC Grounds,” The Journal of the Mississippi Psychiatric Association)