The First Psychiatric Institute

In January 1899, C.R. Bardeen wrote in the "American Journal of Insanity": "The foundation of the pathological institute of the New York State Hospital" has marked "a new departure in this country". Although there were earlier programmes of research on mental illness and related disciplines at hospitals and colleges in this country, the New York State Hospital was the first established as a multidisciplinary institute with a primary mandate in research. This book is a comprehensive history of the first 75 years of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. It is a story of both politics and medicine, a story of the people who brought the Institute into being and struggled for its survival and growth while they worked to fathom the causes of psychiatric disorders.