Sitton, Sarah

Sarah Sitton is an Austin, Texas, based author and professor of psychology at St. Edwards University. Sitton first became interested in the history of the Austin State Hospital (formally known as the State Lunatic Asylum) while conducting research for her book Austin's Hyde Park: The First Fifty Years, 1891-1941 . The Hyde Park neighborhood is adjacent to the hospital and several people who had grown up in the neighborhood described playing on the grounds of the hospital in the early 1900s. There are also reports of people using the beautifully landscaped grounds for picnics and other outings. As she states in her book, Life at the Texas State Lunatic Asylum, 1857-1997, "the early permeability of the boundaries between hospital and neighborhood...intrigued me."

An offer from the Austin State Hospital's Community Relation department that included access to the hospital's archival materials and a list of potential interviewees motivated Sitton to write about the history of the institution. Sitton uses these archives as well as the memories of staff members, patients and other community members to chronicle 140 years of history at the Austin State Hospital with a focus on the daily life of the patients and the staff. The Austin State Hospital was established as the State Lunatic Asylum by act of the Sixth Legislature in 1856 and began operation in May 1861 with twelve patients. It is the oldest hospital in Texas for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. Sitton states that for more than a century the hospital resembled a self-sufficient village and for much of that time, until deinstitutionalization, the self-contained world of the asylum was largely unchanged.

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