Behind the Walls of the World’s Psychiatric Hospitals
Behind the Walls of the World’s Psychiatric Hospitals
Ep. 24: History of Willard State Hospital, Part 1 (1869-1904)
Episode 24 begins the history of Willard State Hospital, originally The Willard Asylum for the Chronically Insane. Learn about the treatment of the mentally ill in New York state prior to the opening of the asylum. We'll discuss the steep rise in the patient population just in the first 20 years that the asylum was open and the various types of treatments that were offered there. Since there is a lot of information to cover, this episode will only go over information from the 1800s until 1904.
For source information and links to my "Hot Topics" interviews, please check out the transcript.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to Behind the Walls of the World’s Psychiatric Hospitals! I’m your host, Dr. Sarah Gallup, and today we’re going to start a new series on a hospital in New York, near the Finger Lakes. I first learned about this hospital about two years ago when I read the book The Lives They Left Behindby Darby Penney and Peter Stastny, and I was immediately fascinated. As we saw with Oregon State Hospital and Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, this asylum was started with good intentions but it became the final resting place for almost half of the 54,000 patients who lived there over the course of 126 years. Today we’ll discuss what led to the development of the hospital and the quick rise of the patient population. I’ll warn you that we won’t make it through all the history in this episode. Instead, we’ll be covering the first 40 or so years.
So come on in and get comfortable as we go behind the walls of Willard State Hospital…
If you recall in our very first episode about Oregon State Hospital, we discussed the concept of “moral therapy.” This was a form of treatment developed by English Quakers around the turn of the 19th century that focused on treating patients with dignity and respect and offering them plenty of vocational and recreational activities as an integral part of their treatment. Psychotropic medications weren’t available back then, obviously, so directing their focus to projects was a helpful way of keeping people deemed mentally ill distracted and mostly free from symptoms. Moral therapy turned out to be quite effective. One of the requisites, though, was that hospital populations remained low so that patients could be given individual attention. As we now know, the booming rise of patients being sent to asylums did not allow for that to happen, and so moral therapy sorta faded into the woodwork.
You’ll recall from our series on Trenton Psychiatric Hospital that moral therapy wasn’t used in the jails and poorhouses that typically housed people deemed mentally ill. Dr. Helmbold, the man who peddled elixirs and escaped multiple times from asylums in the U.S. and France, said that these jails were the worst places he had ever seen. He described rotting floors and maybe some straw to sleep on. For anyone, let alone someone in psychiatric crisis, these are far from ideal conditions. They were overcrowded, poorly funded, under resourced, and, as Dr. Helmbold had implied, hygienically problematic.
All that context is what brings us to New York state in the mid-1800s. Politicians were growing aware of the deplorable conditions of the jails and almhouses where the state’s mentally ill currently resided. There were other asylums in New York at the time, namely the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum, which opened in 1821, and the State Lunatic Asylum in Utica, which opened in 1843. Bloomingdale was a part of the New York Hospital in New York City, but it wasn’t a state-run facility. The asylum in Utica was the first state-operated asylum (Gable 4).
As we’ve discussed and alluded to in previous episodes, anyone with a mental, physical, or developmental disability was considered a shame on their family. I hope there were exceptions to this – that there were more people who fell into that category who were loved and supported by their family members – but many were abandoned to asylums or to poorhouses. Some would be expected to work without pay if they were able; others were left alone, neglected, and starved (Gable 4).
Dorothea Dix was visiting and investigating asylums and poorhouses all over the East Coast starting in the 1840s. This kickstarted the conversation about the deplorable conditions of those facilities. By the 1850s, politicians were also investigating these places and coming to similar conclusions as Dix. The poorhouses were not sustainable places for insane folks to be held. The country was progressing, and they didn’t want to be housing people in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
By the 1860s, politicians were looking for a way to relieve the overcrowding in poorhouses and provide more humane treatment for people deemed insane. An investigation in 1864 determined that the current conditions of the jails and poorhouses were unfit for the insane (“New York State’s County Poor Houses”). But they didn’t want to spend a fortune on a new asylum, either. So they looked for a way to build a new facility as inexpensively as possible. It would be a bare-bones effort: they could provide just enough rations for patients to be healthy and taken care of, and they’d rely on patient labor to run most of the operations. It seemed like a win-win to them: patients would benefit from therapeutic labor, and the hospital would save money on costs and potentially profit from their work. Of course, in retrospect, we know that this was patient exploitation, but at the time it seemed like the best course of action.
According to an article by Atlas Obscura, “New York’s Surgeon General Dr. Sylvester D. Willard proposed a state-run hospital for the insane. Abraham Lincoln himself signed off on the proposal a mere six days before his death” (“Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane”). When I first read that, I said, “Wow” out loud. What are the chances that Lincoln would approve this new facility only six days before he was killed? Not to split hairs too much, Atlas Obscura, but April 8th was actually six days before Lincoln was shot but seven days before he died. Ironically, Dr. Willard had also died just days before his proposal was signed into law, on April 2, 1865; he was only 39 years old.
This proposal came to be known as The Willard Act, as I mentioned, passed on April 8, 1865, six days after Willard’s death and a week before President Lincoln’s assassination. In the proposal, Dr. Willard had described his visits to various facilities and the conditions he found in them. He mentioned that the asylum in Utica appeared to be a grand and successful hospital, but it was maxed out and simply could not house the number of people who needed to be there. At the time, patients were allowed to stay at the Utica asylum for only a year before they were sent back to their county. Obviously, for chronic cases of mental illness, this wasn’t a very good option.
So Dr. Willard had sent a series of 68 questions to each county in New York about the current conditions of their facilities for the insane. Among the questions were:
· How many insane are there at present provided for?
· How many male are capable of labor? How many females are capable of labor?
· What amusement have those who are unable to work?
· How many are restrained by chains or hand-cuffs occasionally?
· How often are the insane required to bathe?
· How many [insane] sleep in one bed?
· [This one bothers me] Did you look for vermin on their persons? And did you observe any vermin?
· What number of insane is your county house designed to accommodate?
· How many escaped within a year who were not returned?
Dr. Willard had gotten responses from all but four counties, and the answers were dismal. It became clear that the counties could not afford to care for these folks or be able to treat them properly. So Dr. Willard, along with then Governor Fenton, came up with this proposal, which was passed: “Let an institution for incurables be established. Let the incurables be there colonized. Take the insane from the counties where they are ill provided for first, and change the law relative to the insane poor, so that counties shall not have the management of them, nor any authority over them. The statistics gathered show that out of 1,345 insane, 345 are capable of labor; properly managed, this number would be increased, and there would be gathered into such an institution scores of mild cases now at large, whose friends, unable to support them at the State Asylum, are unwilling to consign them to the miseries of the poorhouse. By such a regulation, the cost of supporting each insane person would be diminished, so that the expense to each county would not be greater, and probably much less than it now is, while the lunatics would enjoy the benefits and comforts of a well regulated institution. The early attention to their care would doubtless insure recovery to a much larger number than now become restored, and cases that progress to violence, filth, or dementia, might remain mild and passive” (“New York State’s County Poor Houses”).
And so Willard’s Law was signed into law, and the construction of the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane was approved. I couldn’t find how the location for the asylum was chosen, but it was built in the town of Ovid, New York, right along Seneca Lake in the Finger Lakes region. The land already had one building – the Agricultural College – but it was immediately clear that it would not be able to house all of the people who would come to reside at the new asylum (Gable 6). They would have to build a larger structure.
I should mention here that I’m getting a lot of my information about the construction and history of Willard Asylum from an online source compiled by Seneca County Historian Walter Gable in 2018. I’ll provide a link to the source in the transcript. If you’d like more information, I’d encourage you to check it out – it was incredibly helpful to me during my research.
Construction of the new facility began in July 1866. It was built in the typical Kirkbride style, with a mix of Victorian and Italianate-influenced buildings on the campus overlooking Seneca Lake. I find these types of buildings absolutely stunning. I’m not gonna lie: I wish we still had them around today! Anyway, three years later, construction had progressed so much by May 1869, although it wasn’t quite finished yet, that the Governor was able to establish a Board of Trustees and appoint Dr. John Chapin as Medical Superintendent. Although construction would be ongoing, the new asylum sent out notices to counties saying they could start sending patients as soon as October 12, 1869.
I want to offer a trigger warning for this next section as we discuss the conditions the first patients arrived in. They are pretty horrific and include evidence of abuse and medical neglect.
The first patient to arrive at Willard Asylum was a woman named Mary Rote, who arrived on October 13, 1869, via steamboat. As the boat pulled up to the dock at Ovid Landing, the staff noted that she was “a feeble, demented woman, brought in irons. She had been confined over ten years, and for most of the time had been in a nude state. She was found crouched in a corner of a cell, partially covered with blankets, but without any other clothing or even a bed” (qtd. in Gable 7). After she arrived at Willard, Mary was given a room with a bed, fresh clothing, and cleaned up. I can only imagine the dignity that was restored to her that day. I hope she felt so good. Mary would stay at Willard until her death from tuberculosis six years later.
Mary wasn’t the only patient admitted that first day. Walter Gable points out that “On the same day three men were brought in irons. One of these men had been occasionally industrious. All, when excitable, had been confined for long periods in rooms called cells. One man, immediately on his removal from the State Asylum to the county house, was placed in a cell with his hands and legs confined in irons and chains, receiving his food through a hole in the door. [Quick interruption just to say that this is still common practice in many U.S. prisons.] In this condition he passed three years. One patient was brought to the asylum who had been an inmate of the county house 22 years, spending the greater portion of the time in a room 5 x 6 feet in size, without a window. This person from long disuse and debility had quite lost the control of his limbs” (qtd in Gable 7). This is describing muscle atrophy, which is quite common for folks who are bed-ridden long term. Today we also recognize other potential dangers for people who are bed-ridden, such as sores that can become septic, and deep vein thrombosis (DVT), which can cause serious blood clots and pulmonary embolism. For patients today who are placed into five-point restraints, they are carefully monitored by nursing staff and offered a special compression device that helps prevent blood clots.
Gable also mentions that “The names of these insane persons were not stated in the previous reports that the Willard Asylum made to the State of New York. Their names, however, appear in the 1870 U.S. Census records. That’s how we know that the first female patient’s name was Mary Rote…The first three male patients were Alonzo Hopkins, Abram Lewis, and John S. Page” (7).
Other patients who were among the first admitted to Willard Asylum included a woman who was described as having “a procidentia of the uterus” when she was admitted. She was in a “state of maniacal excitement and filthy in her habits. She had been in a state of nudity, and had not received the attentions of a female attendant” (qtd. in Gable 7). I’m not a medical expert, so I had to look up “procidentia of the uterus.” I’m sure there are already medical folks listening who are well aware of this affliction. It sounds awful. If you’re squeamish with gross medical stuff, you might want to skip forward a bit. So I looked this up, and procidentia is essentially the most severe type of uterine prolapse, where the entire uterus is outside the vagina (“Prolapsed uterus”). This had to be uncomfortable for this woman, and the fact that she was going around nude and untreated must have left her vulnerable to all sorts of infections and God-knows-what else. I might get a little maniacal myself if I weren’t getting the treatment I needed for that.
Another patient, a man, was admitted to Willard after he had been “secured to a post with a chain in a house adjacent to the county [poor] house” (qtd. in Gable 7). Usually in these poorhouses, the most violent were placed in dungy basements, so I wonder what the rationale was to chain a man to a post next door. Again, I can only imagine the relief that man must have felt once his chains were removed and he was cared for like a human being.
Other patients were sent in similar conditions, some arrived without clothing, others “covered with vermin and dirt” (Gable 7).
Sixty-one of the first patients admitted to Willard had come from the asylum in Utica, either diagnosed as “incurable” or they had reached the end of their year-long commitment (Gable 7). Willard Asylum was essentially designed to be the “final destination,” if you will for the chronic and incurably insane.
Not just anyone could be sent to Willard. This wasn’t the type of place where a husband would drop off his wife if she weren’t doing the dishes to his liking. There was a process in place that’s strikingly similar to current practices in the U.S. First, the patient had to be referred for admission by the county’s Superintendent of the Poor. The patient then needed two certificates of insanity provided by who medical examiners. I was glad to see that the physicians had to have attended credible medical schools and their qualifications be certified by a judge. Remember that there were people like “Doctor” Helmbold who made an elixir and just called himself a doctor. The referral and the two certificates of insanity had to be reviewed and approved by a county judge, who would determine if the patient should be committed to Willard. So it was, and still remains, a process. And yet we still have people who believe they can drop off problematic family members at a state hospital and call it good. At least in California, there’s a very long waitlist for patients to be accepted into our state hospitals, and all of them go through the judicial system in one form or another.
As we mentioned with Mary Rote, most admissions arrived at Willard via steamboat. Their chains and irons were removed on the dock and, once admitted, they were bathed, examined, dressed, and fed (Gable 8). The tenants of moral therapy were implemented in the early days at Willard. They were treated with kindness and respect. If they were able, they were encouraged to work in the production shops or on the farm (Gable 8).
By 1870, Willard Asylum housed 125 men and 450 women patients. By 1872, construction of the Main Building was finally complete, six years after it started. According to Walter Gable, “The center building was 70 by 34 feet, three stories high on a basement just below ground level. The wings were the wards – South for women and North for men – and they were 171 feet long by 40 feet wide, with a hall 12 feet wide running down the center” (6). I’m thinking of the hospital where I work, and I would guess that our hallways are maybe six feet wide. Many patients like to pace up and down the halls, so it starts to feel cramped very quickly. Twelve foot wide halls sound like a luxury! “The rooms were 9 by 11 feet. The east wing from the center was 311 feet long and contained the kitchen, boilers, laundry, and bakery, with the chapel above the kitchen. Limestone quarried on the Asylum grounds was used for the foundation. The walls of the building were of brick that was made locally” (Gable 6).
The asylum was originally designed to accommodate 500 patients, which was a problem because, as I mentioned earlier, Willard already had 575 patients two years before construction was completed. Whoops. So already, the asylum has outgrown its needs. And counties around New York still had hundreds of chronically mentally ill folks housed in poorhouses. Remember that the intent of the 1865 Willard Law was to move all of these people to the Willard Asylum, but there was clearly a long way left to go (Gable 10).
The patient population at Willard Asylum had soared to 1,550 patients by 1877, and Willard was the largest asylum in the U.S. (Gable 10). There were plans already in place to expand the hospital, but administrators already knew it would not be enough. The state needed another facility. So plans were made to construct a similar hospital and Binghamton State Asylum opened in October 1881 in southern New York.
To help alleviate the overcrowding at Willard Asylum, Superintendent Chapin was able to get funding to add three new wards to the South Wing of the Main Building, to construct five new buildings, and make some infrastructure changes. The Agricultural College, which was the original building on the site, was renovated to accommodate 200 women of the “quiet type” (Gable 9). The upper floors were deemed a fire hazard, so the building was reconstructed. They actually removed the top two floors of the south part of the building and built an addition to the north side (Gable 9). The Agricultural College was initially renamed The Branch. They were very clever with their names. The main building was called the Main Building and this secondary location ¾ of a mile away was called The Branch. Very straightforward and utilitarian.
Again, super creative in their naming, the five new buildings were known as Detached Buildings or DBs. The first detached building was known cleverly as DB-1, and it opened in 1872; it was later renamed The Maples (Gable 10). I’d like to think that someone said, “DB-1 is not a name for a building.” They probably looked around the property at the trees, pointed to one, and said, “I don’t know – call it…the Maples or something.”
DB-2 opened in 1876. It was renamed years later – and again, I imagine someone looking outside, pointing at a tree, and saying, “I don’t know, maybe Pine this time?” And so it was renamed The Pines.
By 1878, the remaining three detached buildings were completed. DB-3 was renamed – surprisingly not after trees this time. They must have had someone else name this building. It became Sunnycroft for some inexplicable reason. Perhaps it was named after a staff member? There’s no way to know.
DB-4 was renamed Edgemere in 1904. The Steward’s House was renamed Bleak House, which is arguably a worse name than before.
In 1884, the men’s infirmary opened and later renamed Hermitage; and in 1887, The Branch opened as the Women’s Infirmary. Later, once they became a little more creative with building names, the women’s infirmary was known as Grandview, referring to the grand view it had of Seneca Lake (Gable 9).
By September 1885, the Willard Asylum was practically a city on its own. It sat on 929 acres of land. There was the main building, with wings on either side to accommodate 600 patients each, the five detached buildings, multiple farm and utility buildings, a 30 acre cemetery, and even a hotel at the lake dock (Gable 11).
It’s no surprise, then, that visitors came to Willard to form their own opinions of the new facility, and the responses were largely positive. A reporter from New York World praised the facility for removing patients from their previous horrible living conditions and commended the patients for their fieldwork and embroidery (Gable 11). A report of a visit from 100 medical and lay personnel noted the bucolic environment surrounding the asylum and the kindness of staff. And “a November 1886 visit by Cayuga County Supervisors learned that since 1869 there had been 3,738 admissions of whom 133 had been discharged as ‘recovered’ and 332 as ‘improved’” (Gable 12). I don’t think there were over 3,000 patients remaining at Willard in 1886, so I’m not sure what happened to the others not accounted for here.
As I mentioned near the start of this episode, part of what kept costs down at Willard was using patient labor to maintain the facility. While working does have therapeutic benefits for patients, it was the unpaid labor and exploitation of their services that bothers me. Patients were encouraged to work but not forced. Gable says that “In 1883, there were 801 patients willing and able to work. There were 261 who were able but wouldn’t work in some cases because of delusions but usually because of laziness or stubbornness” (14). I don’t like the use of the terms “lazy” and “stubborn” here because there may be valid reasons for someone not wanting to work. Many mental illnesses can be both emotionally and physically exhausting. If someone has negative symptoms of schizophrenia (like flat affect, avolition, anhedonia, etc.), they may not care to get up and do anything. It’s not a lack of willpower; it’s a symptom of their illness. Sure, there were probably some who just didn’t want to work, but they weren’t getting paid to work, so what’s the incentive?
Patients could work various jobs around the asylum property: maintaining the grounds; working in the laundry, kitchen, or bakery; working in the carpentry shops, paint shops, shoe shops, butcher shops, tailor shops; working in the sewing room; or ward work. Almost half of all patients who came to Willard engaged in some form of working (Gable 14).
These early work-driven, therapeutic approaches appeared to be helpful in lowering violence rates, too. Gable points out that in 1874, 5% of patients were restrained mechanically. By 1881, only 0.5% were restrained (14). What fascinates me about this is that this is before the advent of psychotropic medications, this is a large hospital of at least 1500 patients, and these are the most chronically mentally ill folks in the state. And the restraint rates were very low. Something was clearly working and working well.
Patients had a number of recreational activities they could enjoy. Since the asylum was in a rather isolated location, they didn’t have the opportunity for outings like patients at other facilities may have had. Gable says, “The hospital’s treatment plan included the belief that diversions, amusement, entertainment, and instruction was very important” (18). I tend to agree with this. These parts of treatment are often patients’ favorite aspects because they inject color into an otherwise bland day.
In 1883, the asylum added an amusement building that housed an auditorium on the first floor and rooms for male employees upstairs. The building was called the Lodge. Later it served as the teaching space for the Nurses Training School and, even later, the Elizabeth Cady Stanton Children’s Center (Gable 18).
The asylum had put on concerts, theatrical productions, lectures, readings, and so on. Patient art was framed and hung on the walls. In 1885, there were three performances of a play called “Down by the Sea”; the cast consisted of 4 patients and 5 officers (Gable 18). There were weekly dances or baseball games, picnics, outdoor band concerts – anything that would lift the spirits of the patients who resided there.
In 1898, the asylum held Willard’s Field Day, which was open to the public. 1400 patients and 1600 members of the public attended. There was a parade, led by the Willard band and fire department, floats representing various hospital industries (with workers engaged in their trades: shoemakers, carpenters, mechanics, and kitchen workers who tossed cakes and cookies to the crowd), and a male quartet (Gable 19).
By 1915, the annual Field Day was an event. That year, 5000 people attended. There were 18 sports events, more decorated booths and patient-made art and crafts. The event seemed to be an opportunity for the public to interact with patients (and for patients to interact with the public) and reduce the stigma of mental illness.
Again, I return to the thought of how this must have felt for the patients who arrived there after having lived in the squalor of jails and poorhouses. After they’d been starved or beaten or in chains. It must have felt like a whole new life.
In 1890, the State Care Act was passed. To this point, Willard had taken only chronic cases of mental illness from all over New York. The State Care Act made two major changes: first, it changed the name of Willard Asylum for the Chronically Ill to Willard State Hospital. Second, it established hospital districts, so that asylums could only accept patients from approved counties. This actually makes sense. Since there were now several asylums around New York who could care for the chronically ill, it makes sense that they would accept patients who were closest to them in geographic proximity. That way, it wasn’t just Willard Asylum that was bearing the brunt of admissions from poorhouses around the state. The benefit to this was that, by 1894, all of the people deemed chronically ill in poorhouses had been transferred to one of the state hospitals (“New York State Care System for the Insane Completed: 1896”).
Because the Act had limited the location of where patients could be accepted, they started not only accepting chronic cases of mental illness but acute cases, as well. This was a first for them. In 1890, new superintendent Dr. Peter M. Wise established at Willard the first infirmary for invalid patients in any mental institution in the U.S. (Gable 22).
Changes were definitely coming to Willard. “Without the funding to build a new Admission and Hospital building for the acute cases, changes were made to the main building [which was renamed Chapin House in 1904 after the first superintendent]. Where there had been a separate dining room in each ward of that building, one central dining room was built to serve all three wards. Women were put in charge of the dining rooms, even on the men’s wing. New flooring and steel ceilings were added, as were some new furniture. Wards #7 on both the North and South Wings were made into sick wards. There was an operating room at the end of each of these wards. Wards #4 on both wings became admission wards. Wards #8 and 9 were for the most disturbed cases, with Wards #5 and 6 for the less disturbed. The most hopeful cases were in Wards #2 and 3, with Wards #1 having the ‘mildest patients’” (Gable 22).
In 1904, they must have hired that person I joked about earlier who I think helped change the names of the buildings. Almost everything was renamed by this time. Some of these I’ve already mentioned but some are new. Gable says, “The Branch building was renamed Grandview, Meddick House became Hillside, the Infirmary was renamed the Hermitage, DB-1 became The Maples, DB-2 was renamed The Pines, DB-3 became Sunnycroft, DB-4 became Edgemere. The North Cottage was renamed Lake Farms. The South Cottage became Vinelands. The Main Building was renamed Chapin House. The Superintendent’s House became Brookside. The Farm House was renamed The Grange. The Steward’s House became Bleak House. The Isolation Hospital was renamed The Rookery” (22).
The turn of the 20th century would usher in even more changes for Willard State Hospital. But I’m going to save that for next time. And I apologize for this in advance, but I’m taking next week off to spend time with friends and family, so I will have the next part of the history of Willard State Hospital for you in two weeks. You will definitely want to come back to hear more. We’ll talk about how Willard went from a place of healing to a less-than-therapeutic environment, shall we say? And you’re gonna want to know what they found after the hospital finally closed. So stay tuned for that!
If you want more content while I’m away, I encourage you to check out the podcast Hot Topics with Gabrielle Crichlow. I have four interviews on that show with her, where I talk about schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and what it’s like to work with people diagnosed with severe and persistent mental illness. Unrelated, I also have an episode on her show where I talk about the two years I spent in France as a study abroad student and Fulbright recipient. So feel free to check out Hot Topics while I’m out.
As always, thank you so much for listening! If you haven’t done so already, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening. That would really, really help me out. Feel free to share the show with someone you think might enjoy it.
Come back for more stories about Willard State Hospital. There’s so much left to cover!
And remember: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Until next time…
Gable, Walter. “The Willard Asylum for the Insane.” Seneca County. https://www.co.seneca.ny.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/4-13-18-Willard-Asylum-full-history-ADA.pdf
“New York State Care System for the Insane Completed: 1896.” Social Welfare History Project. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/issues/new-york-state-care/
“New York State’s County Poor Houses (1864).” Social Welfare History Project. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/issues/new-york-states-county-poor-houses-1864/#:~:text=Willard's%20Report%20was%20the%20instrument,the%20Insane.”%20When%20the%20county
Penney, Darby, and Peter Stastny. The Lives They Left Behind. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2008.
“Prolapsed Uterus.” WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/women/guide/prolapsed-uterus
“Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane.” Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/willard-asylum-for-the-chronic-insane#:~:text=Willard%20Asylum%20discharged%20its%20final,that%20they%20are%20totally%20unusable
Links to my Hot Topic interviews with Gabrielle Crichlow:
Sarah talks about studying abroad in France: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faW3Hrx40OE
Sarah talks about schizophrenia, part 1:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyD6vELYlWQ
Sarah talks about schizophrenia, part 2:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y95Pqq8lya4
Sarah talks about bipolar disorder:
