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Peace Cognitive disabilities weren’t just a concept for President John F. Kennedy. His eldest sister, Rosemary, was mentally disabled, and she later underwent a prefrontal lobotomy. It was a time when mental health and developmental disabilities weren’t widely understood. Kennedy created a study panel that authored one of the most comprehensive, multifaceted, and well-researched reports in the disability field, according to the Association of University Centers on Disabilities. The report led to Kennedy’s decision to sign two public laws that restructured the mental health system to include community based care. The new laws led to substantial changes and reflected a growing shift in the way the public viewed the mentally ill. In 1890, for instance, the Southern Indiana Hospital for the Insane (now known as the Evansville State Hospital) was built on the corner of Lincoln and Vann avenues to care for the mentally ill in “a tranquil setting with activities to keep them busy and in an environment that was self-contained,” according to 82 July | August 2013 Evansville Living
Community-based and private practice mental health services expand level of patient care John K. Browning, the former president/CEO of Southwestern Healthcare Inc. The hospital was roughly five miles from Downtown Evansville, the heart of the city, and “it was the thinking of that era that individuals with a mental illness could better recover far away from society,” Browning adds. The two public laws signed by Kennedy changed that. “JFK recognized that services were extremely limited for all in the country via his own personal family experiences,” says Dennis Moran, the current president/CEO of Southwestern Behavioral Healthcare. “Most that was available was either too expensive or was available as inpatient care only (as in state hospitals). A significant number of state hospital patients should have been receiving community based services, and JFK opened the door for this to take place.” Fifty years later, those laws have led to the wide range of community-based
and private practice mental health resources available today in Evansville. Southwestern Behavioral Healthcare, which opened its headquarters in 1971, provides programs and services ranging from outpatient to consultation and education for youth to the elderly in 14 locations in Vanderburgh, Warrick, Gibson, and Posey counties in Indiana. Its services include acute psychiatric care for all age groups, 24-hour emergency services, and a full range of outpatient services and addiction treatments. It also provides care for older adults with serious and persistent mental illnesses. Statistically, one in four people will be diagnosed with a mental health disorder in their lifetime, according to Rick Paul, director of clinical practice at Southwestern Behavioral Healthcare. The following group of stories point to ways local readers can work to experience good mental health.