A tour of one of Indiana’s remaining Psychiatric Hospitals
But perhaps just as impressive in a different way were our greenhouses, as depicted in the image below…
Richmond was known in Indiana as the “City of Roses,” and the State Hospital was partially to blame for that reputation. Though the hospital still has greenhouse facilities to this day, our previously extensive greenhouse program allowed patients opportunities to cultivate roses, chrysanthemums, poinsettias, and other flowers, fruits, and vegetables for display and sale to the public. As you can see in the above photograph, our patients conducted business better than almost any nursery in existence in the city today. What a wonderful way for a patient to get sunshine, learn a skill, and create meaningful work.
So between the greenhouses and the farming colonies, patients had a plethora of opportunities to get outdoors, to develop social networks, to develop a work-ethic, and to be have a tangible work-product of which they could be proud. Even today, we still have patients in our system who demand to go back to “the farm,” and can’t understand why the farm is gone.
