From The Republican
By Katherine B. Wilson
March 17, 2013

John F. Kennedy’s Community Mental Health Act is worth remembering

JFK delivering New Frontier speech at DNC national convention 1960. Image care of JFK Presidential Library.

Fifty years ago this year in a speech to Congress, President John F. Kennedy proposed “a national mental health program to assist in the inauguration of a wholly new emphasis and approach to care for the mentally ill.” Central to a new mental health program is comprehensive community care.

Later that year in 1963, Congress passed the Community Mental Health Act to provide federal funding for community mental health centers and research facilities devoted to research in and treatment of mental retardation. It was the last legislation President Kennedy signed into law before his assassination.

In Western Massachusetts, the Mental Health Consortium, a partnership of several health and mental organizations, was the recipient of federal funding under this legislation. It arrived in the Valley at the same time that Massachusetts began the closing of Northampton State Hospital.

This NIMH funding, along with funding from the Massachusetts’ budget, developed the foundation for the community mental health system in Western Massachusetts. For people in Springfield with mental illness, JFK’s final legislation ended the nightmare of being “warehoused” in secluded hospitals and forgotten institutions.

The law opened the door to a new era of recovery and the hope of moving back into their communities. Since then organizations like Behavioral Health Network have been helping people recover from mental illness and live full lives.

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Further reading:

• Behavioral Health Network
• Wikipedia article on CMHA
• Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act
• JFK’s New Frontier Speech

From The Republican
By Fred Contrada
Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Shaw’s Motel, photo by Dale Ruff, The Republican

According to Sarah LaValley, the Planning Department liaison to the commission, the demolition delay ordinance protects buildings from demolition for up to one year. Established in 2005, the ordinance allows the Historical Commission to put a moratorium on demolishing buildings that are deemed to have historical significance.

Shaw’s was run for more than a half century by Josephine A. Shaw, who rented its rooms mostly to the poor and needy, some of them former Northampton State Hospital patients. She sold the 20-unit motel, along with houses at 7 and 9 Pomeroy Terrace, to her son, Donald Shaw in 2010. The properties were then put on the market for an asking price of $1.6 million.

North Attendant’s Building, Northampton State Hospital

By 1919 the North Attendant’s home was all complete. Also known as the North Home and the Nurses’ Home, it was built to house 63 nurses, replacing two smaller buildings behind Old Main from the 1890s. The State Hospital under Superintendent Dr. John A. Houston was crossing the threshold of 1000 inmates. Through the Annual Reports the Superintendent and Trustees decry the poor funding, staffing and conditions of their own facility, even though two new buildings, including the North Attendant’s home have just been paid for.

From the superintendent’s report it will be noted that our condition of overcrowding continues despite the many patients, 92 in number, transferred to institutions in the eastern part of the State. We still believe that our hospital should care for all the patients of the district served by it, and we refer to the recommendations repeatedly made in former reports for suitable provision within the district for all the mental cases of western Massachusetts. This matter is so important that we feel it our duty to again call attention to it. The present conditions are not just to the institution nor to the patients who are here and the patients who are to come to us.

Northampton State Hospital Annual Reports. (1919, November 30), pp.7.

In the 1920 Annual Report the Superintendent details major staffing shortfalls, reporting that the State Hospital has been operating with nearly 100 fewer staff than prescribed. Only two doctors served the entire population.

All the routine activities of the hospital were conducted as usual, but under great stress, due to an extreme shortage of help in all departments. With a quota of 223 employees allowed us the average number on our pay roll throughout the year was only 127, and at times there were less than 100. Every one did extra duty. On the wards and in some other departments patients were given keys and conducted themselves as well as the employees, so well, in fact, that eight patients were placed on the pay roll.

Northampton State Hospital Annual Reports. (1920, November 30), pp.11.

Houston details the overcrowded conditions of the State Hospital in the 1921 Annual Report in another attempt for adequate funding.

Serious overcrowding makes it difficult to give our patients the care we should like to give. Too many of them are obliged to share a room with others. This is disquieting to the relatives and does not contribute to the comfort of the patients themselves. We realize that every State hospital has the same problem to deal with, and we accept the situation with what grace we may, hoping that in time adequate provision will be made for the care of all the patients of our district somewhere in this district, and not so far from their homes as are the institutions to which so many have been transferred in recent years.

Northampton State Hospital Annual Reports. (1921, November 30), pp.7.

And again regarding staffing in 1922, two years after the completion of the North Attendant’s building.

Despite frequent advertising and repeated applications to the employment bureaus, we have been unable to fill our quota of nurses and attendants. The quota of women nurses allowed us last year was 58, but the average number on the pay roll during the year was only 31. We have been fortunate in having patients comfortable and quite trustworthy, to help in the care of the wards and of other patients. Nine of them are now acting very acceptably as nurses and to their own pleasure and benefit, and four have done so well that they have been put on our pay roll.

Northampton State Hospital Annual Reports. (1922, November 30), pp.10.

Houston continues in the ’22 report…

The Department of Mental Diseases estimates our capacity at about 820, which is considerably larger than our estimate. The numbers we have been requested to maintain during each of the past five years have been, consecutively, as follows: 980, 990, 1,000, 1,010, 1,025, and for the coming year we are asked to make estimates for the maintenance of 1,060 patients. As a result of this constantly increasing growth in numbers, we have been seriously handicapped in the care of our patients. We cannot transfer our most troublesome patients, consequently a larger proportion of those who remain are of the disturbed class. The wards where easily distracted patients are cared for should accommodate only a very limited number of patients, but now our wards are occupied by anywhere from 40 to 60 patients, and many of these are obliged to sleep in corridors and day spaces. Naturally and inevitably they have an un-favorable influence on each other.

Northampton State Hospital Annual Reports. (1922, November 30), pp.11.

Like any building on Hospital Hill, the North Attendant’s home was as insignificant as staffing, funding and treatment were to the State Hospital system. Though the 1000 inmate threshold far exceeded the State’s own maximum for the facility, which in turn exceeded the staff’s estimate, the population would only continue to grow over the next three decades to reach 2500.

From The Republican
By Fred Contrada
Thursday, November 8, 2012

The Community Preservation Committee voted Wednesday to recommend $412,400 in funding for six projects, including the Connecticut River Greenway, a baseball field and the restoration of an old fountain on Village Hill.

The committee oversees Community Preservation funds that the city has been collecting by way of a property tax surcharge since voters adopted the state Community Preservation Act in 2005. Money from the fund, by law, may be used only for projects related to conservation, housing, historical preservation and recreation. There is $980,000 available in Community Preservation funds for fiscal 2013, according to the city.

The committee, which received eight applications in the latest round, has opted to fund six projects. It allocated $75,000 to restore the Victorian-style, cast-iron fountain that once stood in front of the main building at Northampton State Hospital. Following the deinstitutionalization of mental hospitals in the 1990s, the buildings on the campus were demolished. A range of housing now stands at the site. The fountain will be reinstalled as a memorial to the patients and employees who lived and worked at the hospital.

From The Daily Hampshire Gazette
By Chad Cain
Monday, November 5, 2012

The property at one time was being actively listed on the Multiple Listing Service at $1.3 million, but is not currently mentioned on that site.

The landmark motel with a storied past was run for more than 60 years by Josephine A. Shaw, who rented units to those down on their luck or suffering from mental illness. Her good deeds were featured in a Los Angeles Times article in 1994.

Shaw transferred the properties to her son, Donald M. Shaw, in 2010, at which time they went on the market. The motel rented out a few of its rooms up to 2010, but is now vacant. The two-story motel is assessed at $460,100 and includes 20 rooms. The six-unit apartment complex and home on Pomeroy Terrace are assessed at a combined $446,300.

From The Daily Hampshire Gazette
By Phoebe Mitchell
Saturday, August 25, 2012

The fountain that once graced the grounds of the Northampton State Hospital may soon be resurrected close to where it once stood next to the hospital’s main building as part of an effort to memorialize the historic institution.

According to Chairman David Drake, the Northampton Historical Commission has already endorsed the project, which is being spearheaded by a group set up by the Citizen Advisory Committee. The CAC was created in 1986 to provide a forum for citizen input on the redevelopment of the Northampton State Hospital property off Route 66.

Once located outside the building known as Old Main, the fountain is now in pieces and stored at the Department of Public Works, said Drake.

Joe Blumenthal, owner of Downtown Sounds on Pleasant Street, who heads the fountain project group, said Thursday members are putting together an application that will seek funds from the Community Preservation Committee to restore the fountain. He said the idea for the fountain project came from a group of people who had worked at the former state hospital.

On the eve of World War I, Zurich and Vienna are the setting for a dark tale of sexual and intellectual discovery. Drawn from true-life events, A DANGEROUS METHOD explores the turbulent relationships between fledgling psychiatrist Carl Jung, his mentor Sigmund Freud and Sabina Spielrein, the beautiful but disturbed young woman who comes between them.

Sensuality, ambition and deceit set the scene for the pivotal moment when Jung, Freud and Sabina come together and split apart, forever changing the face of modern thought. With Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and Vincent Cassel

Check out Amherst Cinema for details and show times.

A few years ago I heard about an abandoned school near Amherst. It was a massive campus that once served intellectually handicapped children in the town of Belchertown. The girl I was dating at the time told me about it. She had a dial she had taken from one of the buildings on the bookshelf in her bedroom; an old piece of machinery that seemed like it would fit in perfectly in the underwater metropolis Rapture. I was excited about the idea of exploring the decaying and abandoned buildings.

I have since learned that this place was the Belchertown State School, which lies only a few miles from Amherst center. This massive institution once covered almost 900 acres and housed about 1,100 residents. The grounds included a farm, a power plant and, at one point in time, a large carousel.

Not far to the west of Amherst stood the Northampton State Hospital, a facility for the mentally ill and another institution run by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. I never knew much about these places until last year, which is amazing to me, given their size and proximity to Amherst. As I found out more about them, I became fascinated with the history of these institutions and how we, as a society, have chosen to respond to those experiencing mental illness or intellectual handicaps.

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Why King Street languishes, why the Fire Station is where it is, why Roy Martin got almost 30% of the popular vote for mayor, and other minor mysteries cleared up.

Image via Kirby on the Loose

At a forum before last month’s election, a woman asked the candidates for councilor at large, “Why all the empty lots on King Street?”

None of the candidates seemed to have a take on what was wrong. Just some of the usual bromides. It’s clear, however, that the people that are building and expanding businesses are locating elsewhere. Look to our north, where new businesses are springing up all along along Routes 5 and 10 in Hatfield, just north of the town line. Look at where the Valley Medical program money is going: Easthampton and Greenfield. Look at all the earth-moving equipment working in Easthampton. Easthampton Savings Bank is building a three-story building barely 100 yards from our town line. Look at all the construction along Rte. 9 in Hadley. Modern office space, modern industrial buildings. There are no new commercial or industrial buildings going up on Hospital Hill. Why?

And then look at King Street, bracketed on the south by that huge empty parking lot that once held Lia Honda, and then the empty Kollmorgen buildings that Pat Goggins called “useless” this year. And behind the railroad, you will find increasing numbers of vacancies at the Industrial Park. It had zero vacancies in 1999, now there are four or five buildings vacant. The other day I saw signs outside Tiger Press telling us they are moving to East Longmeadow. They are an expanding successful business, and were able to find a big 100,000 square foot building in East Longmeadow. Their 65 employees are going with them. Their offices were emptying out and the packing boxes were everywhere. I was told by one of my reliable sources that their cost per square foot was cheaper down south than here. I called Northampton’s economic development coordinator, Teri Anderson, and she confessed that she had not known they were shopping around last year when they were making up their minds where to go. Clare Higgins hired an old friend to head up economic development, and didn’t go outside to get a really qualified person. The two women go back to the eighties, when they both worked at Hampshire Community Action Commission (HCAC). Teri was in charge of HCAC’s fuel assistance program, and was good at it. But it was a one- woman program, her credentials in economic development are slender, she always has been more at home behind a desk, and she will never be a dynamic “out on the streets” kind of person the job needs.

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