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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until August 09, 2026

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In Search of Asylum: A Road Trip through the History of American Mental Health Care

Polhamus, Andrew John
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1619792821179756

Abstract Details

2021, Master of Fine Arts, Ohio State University, English.
The Kirkbride plan for American mental hospitals first took hold in the late 1840s and remained the most popular floor plan for insane asylums for the next forty years. Kirkbride asylums were considered vital, scientifically advanced centers of mental health treatment throughout the nineteenth century, but quickly became outdated, overcrowded, understaffed, and dilapidated. Today only about one-third of the original Kirkbride buildings constructed from the 1840s to the 1890s remain standing, but their impact on the national imagination is both enormous and permanent. This thesis for the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University is a combination of memoir and literary journalism documenting the origins, lifespan, decline, and historic preservation of Kirkbride asylums around the continental United States, as well as the author’s own experiences with bipolar disorder and psychiatric care.
Lee Martin (Advisor)
Michelle Herman (Committee Member)
202 p.
American History; American Studies; Architecture; Fine Arts; History; Journalism; Landscape Architecture; Mental Health; Psychology; Public Health
mental health care; insane asylums; mental hospitals; psychiatric hospitals; Kirkbride buildings; Thomas Story Kirkbride; bipolar disorder; medical history; psychiatry; memoir; literary journalism; travel writing; mental illness; Victorian medicine

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Polhamus, A. J. (2021). In Search of Asylum: A Road Trip through the History of American Mental Health Care [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1619792821179756

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Polhamus, Andrew. In Search of Asylum: A Road Trip through the History of American Mental Health Care. 2021. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1619792821179756.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Polhamus, Andrew. "In Search of Asylum: A Road Trip through the History of American Mental Health Care." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2021. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1619792821179756

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1619792821179756
© 2021, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.
Release 3.2.12