Kentucky's First Asylum: A Saga of the People and Practices

Asylums were first established to care for the unfortunates of society. It was only later they acquired a negative image. In Kentucky's First Asylum, author Alma Wynelle Deese explores this issue by dissecting the inner workings of the Eastern Kentucky Asylum, Kentucky's First Asylum and the second state-supported asylum to be established in the United States. She describes the people who were involved in the creation and maintenance of a medical school, law department, and lunatic asylum in Lexington, Kentucky. Using historical data, Deese presents a fictionalized narrative to explore this institution's history from 1817 to the 1990s-including a chapter dedicated to 1906, a pivotal year for Eastern Kentucky Asylum. That year, four employees were charged in the murder of a patient, and this incident set the stage for the past and present history of this facility. Kentucky's First Asylum provides a historical understanding of one early asylum that became a state hospital and serves to give broader context for the understanding of the current mental health system. It provides a platform to better comprehend the problems and processes of American psychiatric care.

• | Author: Alma Wynelle Deese
• | Publisher: Stratton Press
• | Publication Date: Dec 19, 2017
• | Number of Pages: 430 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 194735535X
• | ISBN-13: 9781947355354