Dear Readers,
It’s me again, Kristina, here to tell you more about my experience with archival research at the California State Archives. In this blog post, I’m going to discuss more about my project and some of the records that I found. But first, I wanted to mention that even though the room was fairly empty during this week, I sat at the same desk every day, like at school- funny how that happens! It is a beautiful room in my opinion, and not a bad place to spend a week researching.
At the archives, I started my research by looking at the “big picture.” To me, this meant viewing state hospital records from five out of the 13 hospitals that were under the authority of the Dept. of Mental Hygiene. The Dept. of Mental Hygiene was established in 1945 and lasted into the late 20th century. It was a result of the reorganization of other departments, so the hospital records include information from the late 19th century to the late 20th. Overall, the goals of the department were to provide the mentally ill with treatment and rehabilitation and to educate communities about “mental hygiene.”
To reiterate, I am interested in the institutionalization and sterilization of the mentally ill during the 20th century, and what happened to them after the state “treated” them. In order to better understand this topic, I looked at the records of the most prominent hospitals under the Dept. of Mental Hygiene, which included DeWitt, Mendocino, Modesto, Sonoma, and Stockton State Hospitals. Although these hospitals had varied histories, patient demographics, and day to day operations, they shared similar missions: to care for and treat the “feeble-minded” and “insane.”
Another mission of these institutions, which I have learned from past research, was to separate the “feeble-minded” from the rest of society. In line with the eugenics ideology, many officials believed that it was for the benefit of the to prevent these individuals from marrying and reproducing. This was an effort to eliminate “unfit” genes altogether. However, who was classified as “feeble-minded” was extremely biased, namely, this system targeted non-wealthy, non-white people.
I did not find this agenda overtly outlined in the records, however. What I did uncover were instances of separation of male and female patients. For example, I found several postcards that depicted what Stockton State Hospital looked like in the early 20th century. Specifically, one postcard showed the male department and the other showed the female department. In addition, many of the director and superintendents’ budget and annual reports detailed the different needs of the two departments. Records like these show that separation of male and female patients was common and perhaps was a means of preventing relationships and procreation between these “unfit” individuals.
Something else that struck me about these postcards was how beautiful the buildings were, or at least how beautiful they appeared on the postcards. This brought to mind an eerie sense that they were advertised as palaces or fancy hotels, almost as if to lure in patients to a caring, therapeutic environment. In direct contrast to these beautiful cards, however, the next folder that I opened painted a less pleasant picture. In a monthly report, the director of the Department of Mental Hygiene detailed the chaotic and overcrowded nature of these hospitals. “Due to the danger of fire hazards the acceptance of new patients on one of our cottages, which was being too overcrowded, has been stopped.” Or another that stated, “the overcrowding in the Institution has become so acute that it is adversely affecting our ability to give adequate care to our patients.” Clearly, these institutions were not as beautiful as the postcards suggested.
One proposed solution for this overcrowding was rehabilitation. The concept of rehabilitation of “feeble-minded” individuals in the 20th century was something that I was not familiar with before my trip to the archives. I thought that these individuals remained as patients for their entire lives, no matter the severity of their mental illness. However, hospital records showed me that there was actually “a concerted effort… by our psychiatrist and our Social Service Department to place as many of these people back into the community as is possible.” I began to think that answers about what happened to institutionalized individuals after they underwent “treatment” in hospitals might lie in the history of rehabilitation.
I was surprised to learn that there was even a department under the Dept. of Mental Hygiene called the Department of Rehabilitation. In the administrative files of this department, I found many “Rehabilitation Bulletins,” which displayed the department’s ideas, research, policies, and current events. Therapies to rehabilitate individuals included group therapy, picnic therapy, music therapy, singing, and cooking, among others. Overall, records like these bulletins showed the efforts to place individuals back into their communities.
Other records showed a different method of rehabilitation and a desire to expand mental hygiene services beyond state hospitals. For example, a 1953 report on the “Community Services Plan for Outpatient Clinics” detailed plans to open mental hygiene clinics around the state. These clinics would provide low-risk patients, who would otherwise go to a hospital, with short-term treatment. They would also provide educational services to educate communities on mental illness prevention and care. Moreover, these clinics would help to track patients who were discharged from state hospitals. One estimate was that this plan would reduce the number of patients at full-time state hospitals by 25%.
These records provided me with a more nuanced picture of what mental hygiene institutions looked like during the 20th century. Although I had originally thought that these institutions aimed to remove “feeble-minded” individuals from society for their entire lives, the records demonstrated that this was not entirely the case. Instead, there was actually a large emphasis placed on rehabilitation and short-term community-based mental health services. Yet, questions remained in my mind. Were these initiatives only due to the fact that hospitals were overcrowded? What determined when these people were “placed back into the community?” And did rehabilitation only occur when individuals were past their reproductive age? This last question enticed me the most, and I began to think more about the role of forced sterilization in the mental hygiene system.
Tune in next time to hear more about what I discovered next!
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