Taunton State Hospital (Mass.)

Under the direction of the Dept. of Mental Health, Taunton State Hospital is responsible for providing residential care and treatment for mentally ill persons in Massachusetts, as one of two state hospitals serving the departmental Region VII, comprising southeastern Massachusetts.

The hospital was built to alleviate overcrowded conditions at the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. With authorization by St 1851, c 251, the facility opened as the State Lunatic Hospital at Taunton in the spring of 1854 with a five-member board of trustees appointed by the governor pursuant to St 1853, c 318. From 1863 the board was under the general oversight of the Board of State Charities and succeeding state mental health agencies.

The institution was successively renamed Taunton Lunatic Hospital (St 1862, c 223, s 1), Taunton Insane Hospital (St 1898, c 433, s 23), and Taunton State Hospital (St 1909, c 504, s 14)

The hospital originally received as its patients persons from all over the Commonwealth committed by courts, justices, local overseers of the poor, the governor, alien commissioners, or friends, to treat a variety of chronic and acute cases of epilepsy, alcoholism, senility, mental deficiency, depression, psychoneuroses, and other mental disorders. St 1887, c 346 specified that the institution serve the counties of Barnstable, Bristol, Dukes, Nantucket, Plymouth, and part of Norfolk; and patients from the Boston metropolitan area as needed.

While the hospital was originally established to provide residential care and treatment, its function expanded to include a training school for nurses in 1894 (see annual report for 1911) and a pathological laboratory in 1896. Medical interns were reported as studying with the pathologist and physicians as early as 1902. By 1908 there were monthly outpatient clinics for patients released to the care of family or friends; in 1914 clinic branches were opened in Fall River and New Bedford for anyone in the commuunity. Clinics for children (later called school clinics) that travelled to schools in the hospital's service district operated with the assistance of personnel from the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded (later the Walter E. Fernald State School) to diagnose behavioral and developmental problems.

During the 1960s, as a result of increased emphasis on alternative methods of treatment and the trend towards deinstiutionalization and community based mental health care, the inpatient population decreased significantly.

NAME AUTHORITY NOTE. Series relating to the agencies described above can be found by searching the following access points for the time period stated: 1854-1862--Massachusetts. State Lunatic Hospital (Taunton, Mass.); 1862-1898--Taunton Lunatic Hospital (Mass.); 1898-1909--Taunton Insane Hospital (Mass.); 1909-present--Taunton State Hospital (Mass.)

From the description of Agency history record. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 84587189