St. Joseph State Hospital

St. Joseph State Hospital: 150 Years

 Inc., The St. Joseph Museum

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Independently published (April 22, 2024)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 225 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8883763303


St. Joseph State Hospital: 150 Years chronicles the states' second lunatic asylum. The asylum was introduced to provide care for its population whom had mental health issues of varying types. Opening in 1874 as the State Lunatic Asylum #2, the institution accepted its first twenty-five patients by transfer from the county poor farm, and from the Missouri Lunatic Asylum at Fulton. In 1903, the name changed to simply State Hospital No. 2. It remained so as the institution grew and expanded its services, offering its ever changing population the chance to live as fulfilling lives as possible. Occupational and recreational therapies were very popular in the early days of the hospital. Everyone had a job - from farming to maintenance to cooking and sewing. If the patient was simply too sick to perform any of these tasks, their job was to rock in a rocking chair.
From the beginning, mental illnesses at the asylum varied greatly from dementia, syphilis, and alcoholism to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. During the wars and after, the hospital saw an uptick in patients with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Medicines were designed and used to treat these patients. Prior to the invention of psychiatric medications, common therapies included hydrotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, and sometimes even lobotomies.
The name of the hospital changed twice more. In 1952 to the St. Joseph State Hospital. And then after much deinstitutionalization had been done, the hospital moved to the north side of Frederick Avenue and became the Northwest Missouri Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center as it still operates today.
What sets this institution apart from the other state facilities, is the completion and opening of the Glore Psychiatric Museum, which opened in 1968. George Glore was an occupational therapist at the hospital and with his patients, made replicas of the archaic instruments of the past. Many of these devices would be considered torturous by todays standards, but at the time it is all they had to work with. The museum moved under the umbrella of the St. Joseph Museum, Inc. in 2004. It still operates on the same property that the original asylum operated on. The Glore Psychiatric Museum is the largest of its kind in America.