Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The Menninger Clinic in Topeka

http://www.menningerclinic.com/

Individuals with severe mental illness from across the USA and abroad have turned to The Menninger Clinic since 1925.

Founded in Topeka, Kansas, by Drs. C.F., Karl and Will Menninger, The Menninger Clinic represented the first group psychiatry practice. "We had a vision," Dr. C.F. said, "of a better kind of medicine and a better kind of world."

The three founders created a national psychiatric hospital with staff dedicated to helping people who were struggling with difficulties and disorders that interfered with quality daily living. They believed that persons with mental illness could be treated and helped at a time when custodial care or lifetime exile were the only alternatives.

The Clinic stood as a symbol of hope. The nervous and mental symptoms, emotional conflicts, the frustrations, and unhappiness complained of by the patients were given consideration equal to that given infections, tumors, and other physical ailments. Others around the world adopted and practiced many of Menninger’s innovations and approaches to the care of the mentally ill and to psychiatry.

Since that time, standing still has never been a trait among Menninger clinicians, researchers and educators.


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Celebrities treated at the clinic...

Gene Teirney

Received extensive shock treatment in the 1950s while battling her mental instability.

Tierney was in the throes of suicidal depression and was admitted to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, on Christmas Day in 1957, after police talked her down from a building ledge. She was released from Menningers the following year.

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