Chapter: 1

This chapter looks at Morningside Hospital, a private hospital in Portland, Oregon, that reached its pinnacle in the first half of the 20th century, as a case study in the history of American Psychiatry. In particular, we examine the controversial history of Morningside Hospital in the 1950s and 1960s. Morningside received funding from the Department of the Interior to treat patients from across the West but particularly to transport and treat patients from the Alaska Territory. We analyze the complex role of the national government in the intertwined histories of Alaska Statehood and public mental health care in 20th-century America. In order to explain the complex meanings of this understudied history, we conduct interviews and examine archival materials written from a range of perspectives: psychiatrists in Oregon and elsewhere; senators and representatives from Oregon and Alaska; bureaucrats in the U.S. Department of the Interior; journalists covering the controversy; patient families and communities; and members of civic organizations in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York who became interested in the Morningside-Alaska connection. Each of these perspectives shows a different understanding of mental illness and health and the role of psychiatry and the state in their treatment. Morningside is particularly interesting not only because of its connection to Alaska, but because it represents in the 1950s and 1960s the apex of institutionalization in the U.S. Its history runs from idealistic center of “moral therapy” to  questionable exploiter of patient-workers through “occupational therapy” and finally to controversial participant in American colonial expansion (through acquisition and use of land in Alaska Territory and subsequent push for statehood). This history reflects the growing suspicion cast on psychiatric institutions, regardless of the various motives of individual practitioners, the connections of that suspicion to Cold War politics, and the eventual move to deinstitutionalization. Like many mental hospitals, Morningside closed in 1968 under a cloud of controversy.