The Devon County Mental Hospital/The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic

The Devon County Mental Hospital. Based on projects sponsored by the Wellcome Trust. http://dcmh.exeter.ac.uk/ and The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic. The Community Consortium, Inc. http://www.suitcaseexhibit.org/index.php?section=about&subsection=suitcases

These websites offer fascinating insights into two former state-run mental health institutions, one in the United Kingdom and one in the United States. The Devon County Mental Hospital: Social Attitudes and Mental Illness in Devon 1845-1986 aims to tell the history of the institution and track the changing attitude toward mental illness and treatment. The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases From a State Hospital Attic uses a material culture approach to tell the personal stories of patients institutionalized in the former Willard Psychiatric Center, in New York's Finger Lakes.

Devon County Mental Hospital was founded in 1845 as the Devon County Lunatic Asylum during a period of asylum building across England as a result of government legislation. It was a public asylum for, what were known as, the pauper lunatics of the area in South West England. Although it was founded in a spirit of therapeutic optimism, conditions soon deteriorated because of overcrowding and staff shortages, and these problems endured (in common with other similar institutions of this period). The final decades of the hospital were taken up with the government's deinstitutionalization, which led to its closure in 1986. The website tells the story of the institution using archival material such as patients' case notes and reports of medical superintendents and commissioners of lunacy, as well as interviews with former staff and correspondence from patients' relatives.

The Willard Asylum opened in 1869 and closed in 1995. The site is a thought-provoking and poignant insight into the lives of select patients in a large public mental health institution. It is a collaborative effort by photographers, historians, and archivists who worked together to document the lives...