Milledgeville, Georgia

The end of July brought me and a couple of my co-workers to Central State Hospital (CSH) in Milledgeville, Georgia. It's located about 30 minutes northeast of Macon. The 3-1/2 hour drive was beautiful. We spent 4 days in Safety-Care training, a behavioral training that teaches how to handle combative or assaultive patients in a humane way where physical contact is minimized. We all became trainers of this training.

One afternoon when we finished our training for the day, we were given a tour of the hospital and grounds. It is soooo beautiful there! CSH was once "the world's largest insane asylum" and held around 13,000 patients at one point. Currently only 600 patients consider CSH home. The hospital grounds are on several thousand acres and actually has its own zip code and police department. They used to raise their own livestock and grow their own food. It was completely self-contained.

Our first stop was to the oldest building on campus built in the 1860s. On this building is a cornerstone that identified it as the "Georgia Lunatic Asylum". It served persons who were considered "idiots, lunatics, insane, and epileptics".

The cornerstone

The oldest existing building. The cornerstone is located behind the plant on the left
Another view of the oldest building. Due to deterioration, the building is among many others that are boarded up and no longer used. These buildings are unbelievably beautiful, but the state has determined that their renovation would be too costly. So, here they sit, a history of a bleak past.

The building above is the building to the right. The cornerstone is the gray behind the plant to the far right, bottom.

This bronze angel stands in one of the six cemeteries used in the past. Over 30,000 patients are buried on the grounds of CSH making it one of the largest graveyards for people with mental disability in the world. The patients are only identified by numbered markers. The hospital is currently trying to locate the brass markers that have been lost, erroded or covered in the overgrowth due to the lack of care of the site. It's very sad. In the book, "But for the Grace of God", the author (a former physician during the 1940s & 1950s), Dr. Peter G. Cranford outlined the history of the hospital that opened with 35 patients in 1842. In the book he quotes: "These were the unwanted of society, the throwaways. Nobody cared if they had markers."
How sad. It was humbling to stand among the markers.

"Rows upon rows of numbered, small, rusted markers as far as you can see. No names just numbers. It must be the most gruesome sight in Georgia. Unknown humans, shunned when living, deprived of their very names in death--and literally known only to God". (quote by Joe Ingram, an employee of CSH for 50 years)

This is one marker that I unearthed while there. It was sad to think that the person buried with this marker has been lost for who knows how long.

This building is gloriously beautiful, but it is also deteriorating and so has been boarded-up and closed. According to our guide (an employee of the hospital for the past 27 years) this building has been identified as "the most haunted place in Georgia". It housed many patients and was the site of all kinds of therapy including shock therapy and lobotomy. There was a lot of suffering here. I'd love to spend a night in this building.

Another view

And, here are some pictures of our class. Unfortunately, I didn't even think about my camera until the last day when we were repeating all the moves we had learned.

Another...the gentleman on the left is our instructor. We all had the priviledge of being "taken down"

Our class. After 4 days of learning "interventions" to keep staff and patients safe in our respective state hospitals, we all became friends.

It was a great week. We thoroughly enjoyed learning --both the training that we were there for and the history of the hospital.