Psychiatric Jim Crow: Desegregation at the Crownsville State Hospital, 1948–1970

Dismantling the Safety-Net Hospital: The Construction of “Underutilization” and Scarce Public Hospital Care

“…Integration produced equal access to public accommodations on legal grounds, but it also legitimated the closure of public mental health hospitals under deinstitutionalization's banner. 52 The same logic focused on a language of "bed capacity" instead of "patient capacity" emphasized the lateral movement of bodies between institutions rather than people living within a social ecology. 53 When, for example, HHC's management cut inpatient bed capacity, Lindsay insisted city health clinics deliver more outpatient care.…”

José Luis Montoya Rico y las primeras reformas de la asistencia psiquiátrica de beneficencia

“…El Crownsville Hospital Center era uno de los 302 hospitales de dependencia estatal que se beneficiaban del proceso de desinstitucionalización y mejoras promovidos por los Mental Health Programs of the Forty-Eight States (18). Fundado en 1910 en Annapolis, en la periferia de la capital del Estado, el Crownsville segregaba y atendía a la población afroamericana de Maryland, unos 1800 pacientes (19).…”

Who Will Be the History Writers of the COVID-19 Pandemic?

“…History reveals that White middle- and upper-class stories are the privileged norm, while stories from people of color or low socioeconomic groups are distorted or silenced 1 . Medical institutions have a long history of afflicting abuse, providing inadequate healthcare, or patronizing marginalized populations, including people experiencing homelessness, people with substance use disorders 6 , people who are incarcerated, and communities of color 4 , 5 , 7 . The status quo of structural racism and classicism upheld within society is also ingrained within our healthcare system and academic medical centers 4 , 5 .…”

“…Secondly, we must recognize that there are limitations to what physicians can contribute to the conversation of storytelling inclusivity. Social scientists and historians of race and medicine have long grappled with these issues 7 , providing decades of research and analysis of counter-stories as a way to shift the needle towards equity. Academic medicine should turn to these experts to generate new methods to “give voice and turn the margins into places of transformative resistance 1 .”…”