Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape
Asylum on the Hill is the story of a great American experiment in psychiatry, a revolution in care for those with mental illness, as seen through the example of the Athens Lunatic Asylum. Built in southeast Ohio after the Civil War, the asylum embodied the nineteenth-century “gold standard” specifications of moral treatment. Stories of patients and their families, politicians, caregivers, and community illustrate how a village in the coalfields of the Hocking River valley responded to a national movement to provide compassionate care based on a curative landscape, exposure to the arts, outdoor exercise, useful occupation, and personal attention from a physician.

Katherine Ziff’s compelling presentation of America’s nineteenth-century asylum movement shows how the Athens Lunatic Asylum accommodated political, economic, community, family, and individual needs and left an architectural legacy that has been uniquely renovated and repurposed. Incorporating rare photos, letters, maps, and records, Asylum on the Hill is a fascinating glimpse into psychiatric history.

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Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape
Asylum on the Hill is the story of a great American experiment in psychiatry, a revolution in care for those with mental illness, as seen through the example of the Athens Lunatic Asylum. Built in southeast Ohio after the Civil War, the asylum embodied the nineteenth-century “gold standard” specifications of moral treatment. Stories of patients and their families, politicians, caregivers, and community illustrate how a village in the coalfields of the Hocking River valley responded to a national movement to provide compassionate care based on a curative landscape, exposure to the arts, outdoor exercise, useful occupation, and personal attention from a physician.

Katherine Ziff’s compelling presentation of America’s nineteenth-century asylum movement shows how the Athens Lunatic Asylum accommodated political, economic, community, family, and individual needs and left an architectural legacy that has been uniquely renovated and repurposed. Incorporating rare photos, letters, maps, and records, Asylum on the Hill is a fascinating glimpse into psychiatric history.

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Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape

Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape

by Katherine Ziff
Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape
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Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape

Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape

by Katherine Ziff

Overview

Asylum on the Hill is the story of a great American experiment in psychiatry, a revolution in care for those with mental illness, as seen through the example of the Athens Lunatic Asylum. Built in southeast Ohio after the Civil War, the asylum embodied the nineteenth-century “gold standard” specifications of moral treatment. Stories of patients and their families, politicians, caregivers, and community illustrate how a village in the coalfields of the Hocking River valley responded to a national movement to provide compassionate care based on a curative landscape, exposure to the arts, outdoor exercise, useful occupation, and personal attention from a physician.

Katherine Ziff’s compelling presentation of America’s nineteenth-century asylum movement shows how the Athens Lunatic Asylum accommodated political, economic, community, family, and individual needs and left an architectural legacy that has been uniquely renovated and repurposed. Incorporating rare photos, letters, maps, and records, Asylum on the Hill is a fascinating glimpse into psychiatric history.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780821423417
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Publication date: 07/31/2018
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 242
Product dimensions: 6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Katherine Ziff is a mental health clinician, an exhibiting artist, and an adjunct professor in the counseling program at Ohio University. She has published in places such as the Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, the Journal for Specialists in Group Work, and History of Psychiatry. Ziff conducts workshops for counselors and educators, teaching the methods from her second book, ArtBreak.

Table of Contents

Foreword Samuel T. Gladding vii

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

1 The Moral Treatment Experiment

"A Magnificent Site Overlooking the Hocking Valley" 1

2 Patients

"Each Admission Represented a Poor, Helpless, Hopeless Sufferer" 25

3 Architecture

"Space, Light and Air to Each Patient" 63

4 Politics

"Partisan Interests and Personal Place-Seeking" 105

5 Landscape

"Of Beautiful and Varied Scenery" 125

6 Caregivers

"To Take Proper Care of the Insane Requires Talents of a High Order" 144

Epilogue 165

Afterword to the 150th Anniversary Edition Shawn Bolin Joseph C. Shields 194

Notes 199

Bibliography 215

Index 221

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Art, Architecture & Photography
Architecture
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Art, Architecture & Photography
Architecture
General & Miscellaneous Architecture
Historic Preservation

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