Our Proud Tradition

Psychiatry in Worcester has a long history, and the UMass Department of Psychiatry is proud to be on the forefront of cutting-edge mental health care in Massachusetts.

The following information is provided by the UMass Chan Office of Medical History and Archives.  This and additional information can be found at the UMass Chan Lamar Soutter Library.

UMass Chan Office of Medical History and Archives Special Exhibit on Worcester State Hospital:

Worcester State Hospital's first superintendent, Dr. Samuel B. Woodward, was a leader in the burgeoning practice of American psychiatry, and one of the founders and first president of the organization that is today the American Psychiatric Association.

A poster from 2005 by Len Levin, Lisa Palmer, and Janet Dadoly, "Dr. Samuel B. Woodward: A Nineteenth-Century Pioneer in American Psychiatric Care," has appeared at the annual meetings of the Medical Library Association and the North Atlantic Health Science Libraries, Inc.

Worcester State Hospital – Before and After the Fire of 1991 - (PowerPoint slideshow)  This slide show was designed by Kim Smith of the Department of Psychiatry’s Center for Mental Health Services Research, and adapted for the Office of Medical History and Archives web site by Dr. Ellen More of the UMass Chan Office of Medical History and Archives. Photographs #1, 3, 4, and 6 are taken from old postcards. The rest were photographed by Paul Mange Johansen in 1991 and are used by permission. ©www.IguanaPhoto.com.

For additional information on the history of psychiatry in Worcester and the Worcester State Hospital, consult these resources, all available in the Lamar Soutter Library:

Enoch Callaway. Asylum: a Mid-Century Madhouse and Its Lessons About Our Mentally Ill Today (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007.

Jeffrey L. Geller and Maxine Harris, Women of the Asylum (New York: Anchor Books, 1994).

Gerald N. Grob, The State and the Mentally Ill: A History of Worcester State Hospital (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1966).

Gerald N. Grob, The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America’s Mentally Ill (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994).

Joseph P. Morrissey, Howard H. Goldman, Lorraine V. Klerman, ed., The Enduring Asylum: Cycles of Institutional Reform at Worcester State Hospital (New York: Grune and Stratton, 1980.)

Christopher Payne and Oliver W. Sacks. Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009).

Check out Worcester Psychiatry/Worcester Firsts for some fun facts.