Psychiatric facilities in Cincinnati.

Abstract

Preparatory to the meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Cincinnati in 1940, Dr. Emerson A. North wrote a comprehensive report on the psychiatric facilities in Cincinnati and Ohio. In this report,’ Dr. North discussed in detail the origin and development of the various hospitals, institutions, clinics and agencies, both public and private, concerned with the problems of mental health. In the decade that has elapsed since that report was written, there has been a tremendous upsurge of interest in psychiatry in all civilized countries. Cincinnati has not been laggard in this respect. It has not only expanded its teaching and treatment facilities but it has incorporated in its philosophy the newer concepts that have been introduced into psychiatric thought. This is nicely exemplified in the present setup of the department of Psychiatry of the Medical College of the University of Cincinnati, of which Dr. Maurice Levine has been the director since 1947. Over the years, the department has developed certain specific characteristics that are of general interest. One is that it embodies a workable integration of a number of participating institutions and groups. It is a division of the College of Medicine of the municipal University of Cincinnati; a large part of its outpatient work is organized as the Central Clinic of the Community Chest; its wards are a division of the municipal General Hospital, and the hospital houses the Central Clinic outpatient service. Most of the activities of the department can be visualized in terms of the integration of these 3 major responsible groups, the Medical School, the General Hospital, and the Community Chest. Further, one of its activities, the Child Guidance Home, is a joint project of the Medical School, the Community Chest, and the Jewish Hospital, and is housed in a homelike building on the grounds of the Jewish Hospital. Another of its subdivisions, industrial psychiatry, is