McLean Hospital is a
psychiatric hospitalA psychiatric hospital, sometimes known as an asylum, is a hospital specializing in the treatment of serious mental illness, usually for relatively long-term inpatients....
in
BelmontBelmont is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. The population was 24,194 at the 2000 census.- History :Belmont was founded on March 18, 1859 by former citizens of, and land from the bordering towns of Watertown, to the south; Waltham, to the west; and Arlington, then...
,
MassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its population of...
.
It is noted for its clinical staff expertise and ground-breaking neuroscience research. It is also known for the large number of famous people who have been treated there, including mathematician
John NashJohn Forbes Nash Jr., Ph.D. is an American mathematician whose works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations have provided insight into the forces that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life...
,
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
s
Robert LowellRobert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement...
and
Sylvia PlathSylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, children's author, and short story author.Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas...
, singer-songwriters
James TaylorJames Vernon Taylor is an American singer–songwriter and guitarist born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Carrboro, North Carolina...
and
Ray CharlesRay Charles Robinson , known by his stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He brought a soulful sound to country music and pop standards through his Modern Sounds recordings, as well as a rendition of "America the Beautiful" that Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes called the "definitive version of...
, and authors
Susanna Kaysen-Life:Kaysen was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of economist Carl Kaysen, a professor at MIT, and former advisor to President John F. Kennedy. Her mother was sister of architect Richard Neutra. Kaysen has one sister and is divorced...
and
David Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays and short-stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
.
McLean maintains the world's largest
neuroscientificNeuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Such studies span the structure, function, evolutionary history, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, informatics, computational neuroscience and pathology of the nervous system.The International Brain Research...
and psychiatric research program in a private hospital.
McLean Hospital is a
psychiatric hospitalA psychiatric hospital, sometimes known as an asylum, is a hospital specializing in the treatment of serious mental illness, usually for relatively long-term inpatients....
in
BelmontBelmont is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. The population was 24,194 at the 2000 census.- History :Belmont was founded on March 18, 1859 by former citizens of, and land from the bordering towns of Watertown, to the south; Waltham, to the west; and Arlington, then...
,
MassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its population of...
.
It is noted for its clinical staff expertise and ground-breaking neuroscience research. It is also known for the large number of famous people who have been treated there, including mathematician
John NashJohn Forbes Nash Jr., Ph.D. is an American mathematician whose works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations have provided insight into the forces that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life...
,
poetA poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
s
Robert LowellRobert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement...
and
Sylvia PlathSylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, children's author, and short story author.Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas...
, singer-songwriters
James TaylorJames Vernon Taylor is an American singer–songwriter and guitarist born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Carrboro, North Carolina...
and
Ray CharlesRay Charles Robinson , known by his stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He brought a soulful sound to country music and pop standards through his Modern Sounds recordings, as well as a rendition of "America the Beautiful" that Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes called the "definitive version of...
, and authors
Susanna Kaysen-Life:Kaysen was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of economist Carl Kaysen, a professor at MIT, and former advisor to President John F. Kennedy. Her mother was sister of architect Richard Neutra. Kaysen has one sister and is divorced...
and
David Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays and short-stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
.
McLean maintains the world's largest
neuroscientificNeuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Such studies span the structure, function, evolutionary history, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, informatics, computational neuroscience and pathology of the nervous system.The International Brain Research...
and psychiatric research program in a private hospital. It is the largest psychiatric facility of
Harvard Medical SchoolHarvard Medical School is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University. It is currently ranked first among American research medical schools by U.S. News and World Report....
, an affiliate of
Massachusetts General HospitalMassachusetts General Hospital is a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School and a biomedical research facility in Boston, Massachusetts....
and a member of
Partners HealthCarePartners HealthCare is a non-profit organization that owns several hospitals in Massachusetts, primarily in the Boston area. Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital founded the organization in 1993...
, which also owns
Brigham and Women's HospitalBrigham and Women's Hospital is the largest hospital of Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Boston, Massachusetts and is directly adjacent to Harvard Medical School of which it is the second largest teaching affiliate...
.
History
right
McLean was founded in 1811 in a section of
Charlestown, MassachusettsCharlestown is a part of the city of Boston, Massachusetts located on a peninsula north of Boston proper. Charlestown was originally a separate town and the first capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; it became a city in 1847 and was annexed by Boston on January 5, 1874...
, that is now a part of neighboring
Somerville, MassachusettsSomerville is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, located just north of Boston. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 77,478 and was the most densely populated municipality in New England. It is also the 17th most densely populated incorporated place in...
. Originally named Asylum for the Insane, it was the first institution organized by a cooperation of prominent Bostonians who were concerned about homeless mentally ill persons "abounding on the streets and by-ways in and about Boston." It was built around a
Charles BulfinchCharles Bulfinch was an early American architect, and has been regarded by many as the first native-born American to practice architecture as a profession....
mansion, which became the hospital's administrative building; most of the other hospital buildings were completed by 1818. The institution was later given the name The McLean Asylum for the Insane in honor of one of its earliest benefactors, John McLean, who granted it enough money to build several such hospitals at the 1818 cost. A portrait of McLean now hangs in the present Administration Building, along with other paintings that were once displayed in the original hospital. In 1892, the facility was renamed McLean Hospital in recognition of broader views on the treatment of mental illness.
In 1895 the campus moved to Waverley Oaks Hill in
Belmont, MassachusettsBelmont is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. The population was 24,194 at the 2000 census.- History :Belmont was founded on March 18, 1859 by former citizens of, and land from the bordering towns of Watertown, to the south; Waltham, to the west; and Arlington, then...
. This was upon the advice of
Frederick Law OlmstedFrederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, landscape designer and father of American landscape architecture, famous for designing many well-known urban parks, including Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City...
, the renowned consulting
landscape architectA landscape architect is a person involved in the planning, design and sometimes oversight of an exterior landscape or space. Their professional practice is known as landscape architecture....
who also conceptualized the
Emerald NecklaceThe Emerald Necklace consists of an chain of parks linked by parkways and waterways in Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts. The Emerald Necklace includes:* Boston Common* Boston Public Garden* Commonwealth Avenue Mall* Back Bay Fens* The Riverway...
public spaces of Boston, New York's
Central ParkCentral Park is a large public, urban park that occupies over a square mile in the heart of Manhattan in New York City. It is host to approximately twenty-five million visitors each year...
, and Hartford's Institute of Living. The move was necessitated by changes in Charlestown, including new rail lines and other distracting development. Olmsted, who was eventually treated at McLean, created a therapeutic park landscape around the hospital buildings, which have been on this site ever since.
In the 1990s, facing falling revenue in a changing health care industry, the hospital drafted a plan to sell a percentage of its grounds for development by the Town of Belmont. The sale of the land became the root of a divisive and somewhat baroque political debate in the town during the late 1990s. Ultimately a plan to preserve some of Olmsted's original open space and to allow the town to develop mixed residential and commercial real estate prevailed over a plan to create only high-end residential development. The deal was finalized in 2005 and land development was well underway at the end of the year.
McLean is presently led by Scott L. Rauch, President and Psychiatrist in Chief, who is known for his innovative work using brain imaging methods to study psychiatric dysfunction.
McLean is differentiated from its New England peers (such as the The Institute of Living and the
Brattleboro RetreatThe Brattleboro Retreat is a private, non-profit psychiatric hospital that pioneered mental health care in the United States. It is located on over of land between the Connecticut River and downtown Brattleboro, Vermont. It treats all psychiatric issues through every modern modality, from...
) by its combination of teaching, treatment, and research. Most other facilities focus on one of these priorities.
Artistic works inspired by McLean
One popular and anecdotal history of McLean is
Alex BeamAlex Beam is an American writer and journalist, currently a columnist for The Boston Globe.Beam grew up in Washington, D.C., as his father Jacob D. Beam was a diplomat. Beam attended Phillips Exeter Academy, where he was Foreign Correspondent for the twice-weekly school newspaper, The Exonian, and...
's
Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital (ISBN 1-891620-75-4). Memoirs of time spent within McLean's walls include
Sylvia PlathSylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, children's author, and short story author.Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas...
's novel
The Bell JarThe Bell Jar is American writer and poet Sylvia Plath's only novel, which was originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963. The novel is semi-autobiographical with the names of places and people changed...
and
Susanna Kaysen-Life:Kaysen was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of economist Carl Kaysen, a professor at MIT, and former advisor to President John F. Kennedy. Her mother was sister of architect Richard Neutra. Kaysen has one sister and is divorced...
's
Girl, InterruptedGirl, Interrupted is a best-selling 1993 memoir by American author Susanna Kaysen. In the book, Kaysen relates her experiences as a patient in a psychiatric hospital in the 1960s after being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder...
(ISBN 0-679-74604-8), which was made into a
movieGirl, Interrupted is a 1999 drama film about a teen's 18-month stay at a mental institution, and it stars Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. It was adapted from the original memoir of the same name, written by Susanna Kaysen. The film was directed by James Mangold, from a screenplay written by...
starring
Winona RyderWinona Laura Horowitz , better known under her professional name Winona Ryder, is an American actress who has appeared in film genres ranging from drama and comedy to science fiction. Her first significant role was as a goth teen in the 1988 Tim Burton film Beetlejuice, which won her critical and...
and
Angelina JolieAngelina Jolie is an American actress and Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency. She has received three Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and an Academy Award. Jolie has promoted humanitarian causes throughout the world, and is noted for her work with refugees through...
. Samuel Shem's
roman à clefA roman à clef or roman à clé is a novel describing real life, behind a façade of fiction...
Mount Misery tells a story inspired at least in part by the author's experiences at McLean. The 1994
Under Observation: Life Inside A Mental Hospital (ISBN 0-14-025147-2, ISBN 0-395-63413-X) by Lisa Berger and Alexander Vuckovic uses some fictional techniques (
composite characterA composite character is a character in a fictional work or non-fictional work that is composed of two or more individuals.In fictional works the composite character may be real historical or biographical figures used as models for an original piece of fiction, or they may be fictional themselves...
s, etc.) to describe some of the typical events at Mclean.
James TaylorJames Vernon Taylor is an American singer–songwriter and guitarist born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Carrboro, North Carolina...
's "Knockin' 'Round the Zoo" recalls his stay at McLean as a teenager. Douglas S. Holder, who ran poetry groups in inpatient wards for over a decade, published
Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From the The Back Bay to the Back Ward.
Facts about the hospital
- McLean Hospital is currently ranked 4th among all psychiatric hospitals in the country according to U.S. News and World Report.http://www.usnews.com/usnews/health/best-hospitals/rankings/specreppsyc.htm
- McLean ranks among the top 15 hospitals worldwide receiving National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. It consists of 27 separate institutes and centers which includes the Office...
grant support.
- It is home to the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, the largest "brain bank" in the world.
- The hospital developed and implemented national health screenings for alcohol, depression and memory disorders.
- McLean Hospital is a teaching hospital for Harvard University Residents and the continued development of Harvard faculty.
Famous patients
- Actor, singer, dancer David Janett
- Musician James Taylor
James Vernon Taylor is an American singer–songwriter and guitarist born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Carrboro, North Carolina...
- Musician Livingston Taylor
Livingston Taylor is an American singer-songwriter, originally from Boston, Massachusetts. He grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where his father was a medical professor at the University of North Carolina. He briefly attended the Westtown School in Pennsylvania...
- Musician Kate Taylor
Kate Taylor is an American folk singer and singer-songwriter, originally from Boston, Massachusetts. She grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where her father was Dean of the medical school at the University of North Carolina...
- Musician Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson , known by his stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He brought a soulful sound to country music and pop standards through his Modern Sounds recordings, as well as a rendition of "America the Beautiful" that Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes called the "definitive version of...
- Musician Steven Tyler
Steven Victor Tallarico , better known as Steven Tyler, is an American musician and songwriter. He is best known for his work as the lead singer and primary songwriter of Boston-based rock band Aerosmith....
- Musician Rick James
Rick James was an American musician. James was a popular R&B and funk singer in the late 1970s and 1980s, scoring four #1 hits on the U.S. R&B charts. Among his best-known songs are "Superfreak" and "You and I"...
- Musician Marianne Faithfull
Marianne Evelyn Faithfull, Baroness Sacher-Masoch is an award-winning English singer, songwriter and actress whose career spans over four decades. Her early work in pop and rock music in the 1960s was overshadowed by her struggle with drug abuse in the 1970s...
- Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, landscape designer and father of American landscape architecture, famous for designing many well-known urban parks, including Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City...
- Poet Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton was an influential American poet and writer known for her highly personal, confessional poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967. Themes of her poetry include her long battle with depression...
- Poet Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement...
- Poet Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, children's author, and short story author.Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas...
- Mathematician John Nash
John Forbes Nash Jr., Ph.D. is an American mathematician whose works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations have provided insight into the forces that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life...
- Writer Susanna Kaysen
-Life:Kaysen was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the daughter of economist Carl Kaysen, a professor at MIT, and former advisor to President John F. Kennedy. Her mother was sister of architect Richard Neutra. Kaysen has one sister and is divorced...
- Scholar John Strugnell
John Strugnell, was born in Barnet, North London, England. At 23 he was the youngest member of the team of scholars led by Roland de Vaux, formed in 1954 to edit the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem...
- Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald , born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama, was a novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper". After the success of his first novel This Side of Paradise , the Fitzgeralds became celebrities...
, wife of writer F. Scott FitzgeraldFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are evocative of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the Twenties...
- Transcendentalist
Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19th century...
Jones VeryJones Very was an American essayist, poet, clergymen, and mystic associated with the American Transcendentalism movement. He was known as a scholar of William Shakespeare and many of his poems were Shakespearean sonnets...
- Scientist Charles Thomas Jackson
Charles Thomas Jackson was an American physician and scientist who was active in medicine, chemistry, mineralogy, and geology.- Life and work :...
- Athenia
The S.S. Athenia was the first British ship to be sunk by Nazi Germany in World War II.-Description:Athenia was built by the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Ltd., and was launched at Govan, Scotland in 1923. She was built for Anchor-Donaldson Ltd.'s route between Britain and Canada...
survivor Berthe Louise Quirin Buchanan
Resources
Further reading
- Beam, Alex
Alex Beam is an American writer and journalist, currently a columnist for The Boston Globe.Beam grew up in Washington, D.C., as his father Jacob D. Beam was a diplomat. Beam attended Phillips Exeter Academy, where he was Foreign Correspondent for the twice-weekly school newspaper, The Exonian, and...
, Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Mental Hospital, Public Affairs, 2003. ISBN 1586481614
- Charles, Ray; Ritz, David, Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story, Da Capo Press, 2003. ISBN 0306813351. Cf. pp.263-265 on his his time spent at McLean Hospital.
- Little, Nina Fletcher. Early years of the McLean Hospital. Boston, MA: Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, 1972.
- Sutton, Silvia Barry, Crossroads in Psychiatry: A History of the McLean Hospital. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, Inc., 1986. ISBN 0880482532