Crownsville Hospital Center facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Crownsville Hospital Center |
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| Maryland Department of Mental Health and Hygiene | |
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| Geography | |
| Location | Crownsville, Maryland, United States |
| Coordinates | 39°1′26″N 76°36′2″W / 39.02389°N 76.60056°W |
| Organization | |
| Care system | State-run institution |
| Services | |
| Emergency department | No |
| Beds | 264 |
| History | |
| Founded | 1911 |
| Closed | 2004 |
The Crownsville Hospital Center was a psychiatric hospital located in Crownsville, Maryland. It was in operation from 1911 until 2004.
The facility was enabled by an act of the Maryland General Assembly on April 11, 1910 as the Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland. This act also explicitly specified that the facility should not be located in Baltimore. On December 13, 1910, the Board of Managers purchased land which had formerly been farmed for willow and tobacco, located at Crownsville, Maryland, for the sum of $19,000. On May 23, 1910, Dr. Dan Hempeck was designated the first Superintendent.
In 1929 there were 55 discharges from Crownsville but 92 deaths. The census began to rise dramatically, until it peaked in 1955 at 2,719 patients. The staff of Crownsville Hospital had been all white until 1948.
Through the 1940s, the NAACP had advocated hiring African-American staff but encountered resistance from the Commissioner of Mental Hygiene. Finally, in 1948, the new superintendent of Crownsville hired the first African-American staff member Vernon Sparks, in the Psychology Department. Gwendolyn Lee was hired later in the Social Work Department. The Crownsville Superintendent still was not permitted to hire African-American staff in direct-care positions. This did not happen until 1952. By 1959, 45-percent of Crownsville's staff was African-American, in contrast to 6- to 8-percent in the other large state mental hospitals.
In 1964, the first African-American superintendent, Dr. George McKenzie Phillips, was appointed. Dr. Phillips established a day treatment program and a school mental health outreach program, in addition to supporting the mental health clinics in Baltimore and the Southern Maryland Counties. Patients in Crownsville clinics were given free medication. Training programs were established in psychiatry, psychology, social work, dance therapy, and pastoral counseling. Crownsville had an active foreign students' program for those in medicine, social work, and psychology. In the ten years prior to its closing, it hosted students from Israel, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Turkey, and Chile. The Hospital also trained Spanish speaking therapists when that need was identified.
The hospital staff was well known for its outspoken resistance to the pressures to place patients in public shelters, with the resulting "dumping" of patients onto the streets and into the jails. Improvements in psychiatric treatment, rigid admission policies, and better funding of outpatient treatment and residential services resulted in the hospital's census declining from 2,719 in 1955 to 200 patients by the year 2000 and zero soon after.
The hospital grounds became the central county site for many social, school, and health programs, and the hospital finally closed in July 2004. Those patients in need of further psychiatric hospitalization were transferred to two of Maryland's remaining hospitals. Its original buildings are still standing and today portions of the campus are occupied by various tenants.
The site is also the location of Crownsville Hospital's patient cemetery. This historic site was rededicated in 2004. Approximately 1,600 patients are buried in graves marked by numbers only, with the more recent having patient names.
