Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: It's 6:00 in time again for Brain Matters, the official radio show of the UA Counseling Center. We are broadcasting from the campus of the University of Alabama. Good evening. My name is Dr. BJ Gunther and I'm the host of the show along with my colleague and producer Katherine Howell who will join us hopefully in a few minutes. And in case you don't know, this show is about our physical and mental health issues that affects college students and in particular UA students. So you can listen to us each Tuesday night at 6pm on 90.7 FM or you can listen online at WVUAFM UA. Edu. You can also There are quite a few apps out there that you can listen to the show I like MyTuner radio app and again, just type in WVUAFM 90.7 to listen to the show.
We only have a few more shows for this semester before we start finals and take our Thanksgiving break too. So since we don't do shows in the summer, I always ask people to send me in ideas for the fall semester, but now for the spring semester. So if you're listening and you've got ideas for the show for our spring semester, email those to me@brain mattersradiovuafm ua edu and of course I'll consider using your show topic. I always say this no topic is really off hands or off limits because I feel like in the, I don't know, 11 years we've been doing this show, we have covered, it feels like every topic that could pertain to college students. But there's always a surprise out there of trends, you know, that are going on on college campuses. So if we haven't covered it, please email those to me. And sometimes we need to revisit some topics like depression, anxiety, test anxiety, whatever is pertinent for the semester, like what's going on, midterms, finals, roommate issues, you name it. And it's like I said, nothing's off limits. So email those ideas to me@brain mattersradiowvuafm ua.edu. and like I said, I'll consider using the topic for the spring because we need some help with some topics for spring. We do about 12 or 13 shows each semester, so that gives you a little bit of idea of how many topics we need every year. Tonight's topic is one that I cannot believe we have not touched on in the 11 years we've done the show because it's so important. It's so important to why I chose to do what I do. Kathleen Catherine's joined us now, and she's a social worker. While she's been interested in mental health, the topic tonight is the history of mental health in the state of Alabama. And if you've done any research on this, from taking a class in psychology or social work, you'll understand Alabama was really, maybe I'm speaking out of term, but I feel like on the forefront of mental health revisions, I guess, is the word. And our guest tonight is going to give a little more detail to that. Although Bryce Hospital, which we're familiar with here in Tuscaloosa, was not intentionally on the forefront of psychiatric care, its storied history reflects the change in attitude of psychiatric professionals and the public toward mental illness and mental health care. Bryce continues to be an important center for mental health treatment in Alabama. And the Alabama Department of Mental Health's historian coordinates the preservation efforts, which will focus on tourist tourism, excuse me, and research, but also collecting oral histories from people associated with Bryce. He's joining us tonight. That's our guest tonight, Steve Davis, who is the historian for the Alabama Department of Mental Health. Thanks for being on the show, Steve.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it.
[00:04:21] Speaker B: I just can't believe.
Well, I just can't believe we haven't really talked about this because like I said, with my field, it's such an important background to the professionals in this state. And I just, you know, I attend conferences. I'm about to attend the Alabama Counseling association conference in Montgomery next week. And Katherine attends every year, usually the social work conference here in the state. And, you know, I don't remember ever attending a session where we really just discussed the history of mental health. And from, you know, from the history.
[00:05:00] Speaker C: Forward, basically, as you know, in the field, often people that are in the past that have dealt with any kind of issue at all, mentally, it was just a marginalized society.
And we'll get into that, you know, in the 18th century interview. And so there's not a lot written to go back to. There's only one book that I'm aware of that even touches on the history of the Department of Mental Health. It was written in 1972. A professor from Montevallo, Catherine Vickery. And so it just stops in 1972. And so Wyatt, you know, it's not even known at that point. It's actually been filed, but there's really been no discovery or depositions or anything. And so that's where it stops. And everything else seems to be in house. The department wasn't created until, you know, the mid 20th century. So it's just was sort of an entity unto itself. Even the Patient newsletter, one of them was our town. And they were very proud of the fact that they were just their own little universe without any inside interference and. Or connection really.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Right, right. So nobody. So there still was that stigma out there and nobody really talked about it like you said. That's. I still kind of feel like that's it's gotten better, but I still feel like it's still there. Don't you, Catherine?
[00:06:22] Speaker C: Well, I really do. And I love this job. I never thought about getting it. It's something that I had done from the time I started to work at Bryce. And we'll maybe go into that in a little detail.
But I felt the number one, the number one asset of a historian was to fight stigma. And not a lot of people felt that way.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: But that, you know, there were. During the 2007 through 2014 type thing era, I probably spoke 50 times a year all across the state. So there are people at Rotary clubs and anthropology clubs and history clubs and ancestry.com type statewide events that have never heard any of this. And then they keep asking you to come back and so you get to do the whole story. I did a four hour lecture at Archives one time. That's been ten years ago.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Oh my gosh.
[00:07:21] Speaker C: And you know, the people at the research room did. Had never heard of many of these things and they know more than anybody. I mean it's an amazing group of people in Archives.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:07:29] Speaker C: And at hool and you know, and so a lot of it is just that it wasn't out there. I mean you could go try to research things and you couldn't find it. You couldn't find anything. And it's still a scarcity. But that's one of my goals is try to get as much information out there so that researchers can do that.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah. How long have you. I should have asked you this from the get go, but tell the listeners about yourself, like your credentials, how long you've been with the department and why you got interested in this in the first place?
[00:07:59] Speaker C: Well, my credentials is I'm the oldest employee in mental health. I guess more than anything. I always start out almost everything when I'm in the community. I am not an attorney. I am not a clinician. Yes, I have supervised attorneys and yes, I have supervised clinicians. That just tells you the state of mental health in the 1970s and 80s. But I am neither one.
But I was graduating from the university with a degree in public relations and degrees in history and English literature. Not things that will get you a great job, but I had a job lined up. And it was one of those times when it was almost impossible to get a job in a local.
Well, it was Gulf States. I was going.
They had a big public relations department. I thought I had a job with them. And not. Not only did I need to get a job, but they laid out half the people in the public relations department two weeks before graduating.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Yep, yep.
[00:08:51] Speaker C: So I went to. I went to work for Bryce Hospital. Just by chance. I had been on the campus one time in my whole life. I had interviewed the hospital director at Bryce about accreditation for the Crimson White, you know, and article that several of us wrote, and that was it. And they said, well, would you come to work part time? We'll hire you as a laborer. That's the lowest paid position in the state of Alabama, but can you tie a tie? And they had me meeting the Human Rights Committee. I didn't know who that was.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: I didn't think.
[00:09:25] Speaker C: I just found these probate judges, and I came to the main building and worked two or three weeks. Long story short, I had to stay in Tuscaloosa for several reasons. And I took a job. I took a test to be a police officer for mental health because they had moved all the administrative offices under police. And that's what I did for like two years. It wasn't too hard to be number one in the state.
I had a degree from the university. It's like an 8th grade education minor, you know. Lois. No, that's not. He had to graduate from high school.
But I got that job. And on weekends, I was the head administration person there. And so people would come to visit Graves and they would ask the history of the department, and I would rumble through the dome. And we found all these history papers that were. At one time they were going to be thrown away. I always tell this story how I told the guy to get out of the truck and instead of taking it to the dump, I drove it around back and Hid it in food service. So we still have superintendent's records. Now they're at archives, thank goodness.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:10:24] Speaker C: But anyway, that's how I started out. And then I got a chance to go into public relations after I'd been a state investigator and didn't like all that law enforcement things. And I was director of public relations at Bryce for two years. And during that time, we had tours twice a day for three to four days a week. And one of the clinicians came and asked, can you keep those kids from running wild through our treatment teams? They're just disrupting everything. They're running up and down the hall. These are like middle school kids. These are not even high school.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh.
[00:10:56] Speaker C: Some are high school, but most are middle school. So I created a small museum and would talk to them there, and they were intrigued with shock treatment and all.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Everything.
[00:11:06] Speaker C: Yeah, and everything. And so three fourths of the tour would be me and taking them around the grounds and only one four. And that way we only disrupted one treatment plan one day a week, and it was controlled. Yeah, yeah. And that's how I got into the history of. And, of course, I was, you know, really interested in history.
And from that point on, anytime. If I remember taking Lucy Baxley through the wars because she was running for, I think, lieutenant governor, it may have been. It may have been before then, but she came three or four times. And when Bondell was vice president, he sent. We thought he was coming, but he sent this whole crew from Washington, D.C. to walk through Bryce Hospital. Even though I was an HR at that time, the hospital director would say, steve, you take these people and show them this, that, and the other. So always I did kind of VIP tours and things from that point on all the way through my employment.
And then he came to the point where the university was going to buy Bryce Campus.
And I don't know if it's politically rigged, but basically we got a call from the governor's office. This will happen. The interesting thing is that I had been involved in a similar thing in 1977, in 1969, university almost bought that. 1984, they were going to University was going to buy it and raise the whole campus. Just flatten everything. I was involved in that because I was administrator on call a lot at that point.
And then we had a commissioner at that point in time who wouldn't let our attorney generals teach employment law. I had to teach employment law because while they knew law, they didn't know I did all of our employment counselings and EEOCs. And they didn't know the rules of our agreement with the union and with Alabama State Employees Association. Our supervisors needed to know that more than just simplistic laws like Civil Rights act of 1965. And so, so during that 1984, I was involved in all that. So commissioner of Mental Health at that point was John Houston, who had been an advocate at Bryce when I first started. And he was the guy that put the bug in my ear to keep these students from running rat shod through the. Through the wards.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Yeah, ye.
[00:13:22] Speaker C: And he created a Bryce Hospital Preservation Committee and later created a historian position. Told me, you're probably not going to get it, but, you know, I want you to apply. But I did because I knew where all the stuff was.
My favorite thing on tours was opening a closet where we had. Dr. Searcy was a physician and physicians had a skeleton in their office. We had Dr. Searcy's skeleton, not his personal skeleton, but the one that was in his office. And I'd say, every agency has a skeleton in their closet. And I'd open the door and there'd be the skeleton.
So he.
That led to the historian, that led to the museum. That's a long political. Probably. I don't want to get to all the.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: I have and I have. We're going to take our first break, Steve, But I have so many questions just based on what you just. I mean, I've always seen Bryce Hospital as a little city over there. It feels to me, you know, it's up until when the university bought it, it felt like it was its own entity, a little city. When we come back. Let's keep talking. I've got several questions that came up just by what you just said. And then we've got some email questions if you're willing to take those, too. I've got prepared questions which I feel like I hardly ever get to because we go off on a tangent. So if you'll stay with us, we'll be right back. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7, the capstone.
[00:14:49] Speaker A: WVUAFM Tuscaloosa. This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective counties crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation. Please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: Hey, you're back listening to brain matters on 90.7 the Capstone. I'm BJ Gunther. We're talking tonight about, I think it's fascinating, the fascinating history of mental health in the state of Alabama. And my guest is the Alabama Department of Mental Health's historian, Steve Davis. And Steve, and just a minute, let me give out an email. If you have ideas or any questions for us here on the show, email those to us at brain mattersradiovuafm.ua.edu.
steve, do you, do you how many institutions are there still in the state of Alabama that are working right now?
[00:16:07] Speaker C: There are three. They're all in Tuscaloosa. Matter of fact, not only are they all in Tuscaloosa, they are all on property owned by the University of Alabama and they're within two miles of each other and obviously of the University of Alabama campus.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: So are there Bryce name the three.
[00:16:26] Speaker C: Yeah. And of course you've got, you've got the old Bryce campus and the building's called the Bryce Main because that was the main building in Bryce. I do want to get to that story sometime during this interview tonight.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: Definitely.
[00:16:39] Speaker C: And then.
But that's owned by the university. But that's where the museum is and it's right on the second floor at the Randall welcome center, which is a great place to see. But that's another story. And then Rice Hospital did not close. It simply moved from that campus to the old Parlo campus, which is right by the bridge. It goes into Cottondale as you can.
[00:17:03] Speaker B: Across from Summer Snow. If you're listening and know right across.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: From Summer Snow, originally from Gordo, Alabama, the people that owned it, they've sold it with good group of people. Yep. We're right across from the snow cone factory there. And that what was the Partlow State school and hospital campus. So that confuses people. Parlo closed in 2011. We don't have an intellectual disability large hospital anywhere in the state of Alabama at this point in time. So Bryce Hospital is there. It's basically one building. The university of course, has human resources and a lot of other buildings there on this campus. So Bryce is a one building hospital in the corner there on Ruby Tyler Parkway. And we moved hebe the statue that was in front of the old hospital and replicas of the obelisk. And you can see those, the other two hospitals. One is still on the old campus. That is the Harper facility and Harper is a geriatric facility.
So Everybody there is 65 or older.
And so that campus is there. It's about 100 bed facility. We don't have any patients there right now. And the other facility is Taylor Harden secured medical facility, which is right there on Jack Warner Parkway. And we may still be the only state in the union that has a facility like that. But rather than being part of the prison system, it is where patients go to see if they're competent to stand trial. So most of the patients there come through the criminal court.
The patients at Bryce and Harper would come through the probate court where their records are much more private. Criminal court records are open to the public. You know, they committed some kind of crime, you know, and all that is within public record.
There's just been a large addition to Taylor Harden. We have a waiting list for people to get in there from the prisons and jails also. So those three campuses are right here by the University of Alabama. There are the three facilities from the.
Operated by the Department of Mental Health. All completely different and has different administrations and different clientele. So the people you hire, you know, you would hire geriatric nurse for Harper, but not necessarily Bryce or Taylor Harden.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: Is there a waiting list for Bryce Hospital?
[00:19:30] Speaker C: Probably, but I, you know, I don't think it's nearly as much as Taylor Harden, but I'm fairly sure there is.
[00:19:39] Speaker B: What were the other facilities in the state? I know Searcy was one. Right. And then what were one time?
[00:19:46] Speaker C: They were. At one time they were 14. Well, there have been 14.
[00:19:50] Speaker B: Oh, okay. So some. Too many to name the first hundred.
[00:19:53] Speaker C: Excuse me, Go ahead.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: Too many to name them, basically.
[00:19:55] Speaker C: And then most of them. But for the first 110 years or so, once Bryce, the first patient that came to Bryce, April 5, 1861. Confederate soldier whose diagnosis was mania A caused by political excitement. So if we had political excitement in the DSM 5 or whatever we've got today, we would be.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: Holy Moses. Yeah, literally.
[00:20:16] Speaker C: So that's one week before the Civil War, which is just by circumstance, I won't say, you know, the whole world changed with the Civil War, obviously, but there was no connection between that. It had been eight years since they started working on Bryce. Once the bill had been passed before the first patient got there, and then. And then the second facility was Searcy, which was. You mentioned, which was in Mount Vernon, which is only 40 miles from Old Bill. It was after the Constitution of 1901. So it was a hospital for African Americans only. Bryce had been integrated since the very first start, very first year of existence. Which was kind of amazing.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: And I will say, after the Civil War, there was a time when it looked like the hospital would be shut down. And two people who gave actually grants, they called them loans, were O. Howard, who wanted to hang everybody that was in the Confederate army, and Dorothea Dix, who we'll talk about a little bit, was a great, you know, abolitionist from the word go and the fact that Peter Rice was willing to treat anybody.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: You know, let's talk about these people for people who. There might be students listening that have no idea about Bryce Hospital. Who was. Who was Peter Bryce and why was he named after him?
[00:21:27] Speaker C: Peter Bryce was a young.
At that time, many people, they were called alienists. A forerunner of psychiatrist.
He had gone to the citadel and graduated fairly early in life, like 17 years old. Went to New York University and got his medical degree by 19.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:21:48] Speaker C: He was really interested. Interested in what became psychiatry. And so he worked as a ship surgeon and medical officer to pay for his passage to England. And he studied moral treatment in London and he went to Paris for two weeks. I don't know why everybody talks about him going to Paris, but he probably would get a pastry. But anyways, we don't there to study their moral treatment, which was where it started really was in France.
It was more of a modern way of treating people and you just, you know, with sympathy and treatment rather than just locking people up. Like you had compassion almost. Yeah, almost any. And that's it. With compassion. So almost any real treatment started in the 19th century. I mean, before that you had different things. I think as Russ was probably considered the first psychiatrist, but, you know, but you started actually having treatment. But Peter Bryce was fairly young when this happened, and he. When he came back from studying moral treatment in Europe, he went to work at New Jersey Hospital, New Jersey Asylum, State Hospital. And Alabama had started this. You know, Dorothea Dixon sent a letter to the legislature in 1947, and Henry Collier became governor. And he was from Tuscaloosa, but he was her chief advocate in the Alabama legislature. He was chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court before that. And, you know, you may not know all the background of fighting for the hospital to be at Tuscaloosa, but, I mean, it was a battle royal.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I did a little bit of research before the show, and we studied it when I was in school 100 years ago, but, you know, I.
[00:23:28] Speaker C: Mean, there's a lot there. But anyway, Dorothea Dix has enough power. When she recommended that Peter Brice be the superintendent of Alabama Insane Hospital, which was Their first name of the hospital, it was pretty much a done deal. But the other guy, the guy who really pushed it was Thomas Kirkbride. And Thomas Kirkbride was what we would call today a psychiatrist. And he was superintendent of Pennsylvania State Hospital.
And if you were a member of his group, which was the. What were they called? Association of Medical Superintendents of Alabama Institutions.
[00:24:02] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:24:02] Speaker C: That became the American Psychiatric Association. There you go. And I thought maybe they just morphed into it. But the date he started is the date the American Psychiatric association states is their start date, which was in August, October of 1844. So there was no such thing as a licensure. But if you wanted to be considered a professional psychiatrist, you had to deal that route.
[00:24:25] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:24:25] Speaker C: And that was the politics of the day. And he designed the hospital that Bryce, you know, the main campus there at Bryce, the Bryce Hospital is a Kurt Bright building, but it's the only one in the United States that's not a gothic type, which you know is this thing. Well, because the university had the dome that was burnt during the Civil War, the nickel's dome with the library, they use a Talianti design. So Bryce is the only one that has that. It's one reason we fought so hard to keep that building.
[00:24:53] Speaker B: Oh yes. And it's beautiful if you haven't ever seen it. I went over to the museum actually about a month ago and it is so interesting. I mean, not only is it going to be our welcome center, you know, is our welcome center for the university. If you go upstairs to the museum, it is fascinating. I had no idea. And I'm so thankful that. I mean, it's big. It's way bigger than I thought and just so much. It's just so professionally done. It's just very. It's something to be very proud of, I think.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: I agree. And just. I don't want this show to get by without mentioning this. One thing that we wanted to do is this is a. You know, obviously there are a lot of students that come from high school that go through that.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:25:34] Speaker C: But also we have a lot of students. And I've seen one provost over there four times already. I'm only over there like an hour a day unless I have tours or so in my offices at this campus. But we've got barcodes. So if you're a student at the University of Alabama and you need help, the crisis center, Indian Rivers, it ties you right to that same thing that you're trying, you know, you're doing here. And so we've got resources. And of course, there's some, you know, capstone and a lot of places there at the university. But that was one of the things that from the very start, we were going to put in. It's actually at the exit of the first.
There's a hallway that separates the two halves of the museum. We were going to have it as you went out. We had more traffic going out the back door, the right hand entrance. So that's where it ended up being. And it's right at the end of the Wyatt display, which I think is pretty good.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: It is.
[00:26:27] Speaker C: We changed. Well, we didn't have to. We changed the design the last two or three months from where we are today to having more about the whole history of the building.
Well, I wanted to throw that in.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: One of the things that's interesting, too, is the cemeteries that are actually on the campus that a lot of people don't realize. I didn't even realize that I knew about the cemetery, the old Bross Cemetery, that's on Jack Warner Parkway. But is it true there are two other cemeteries on the property?
[00:27:02] Speaker C: I guess there's technically three. It just depends on, like, the Great Lakes, where you want to count one. Great Lake.
The original Bryce Hospital cemetery started right on the banks of the Warrior river and came back toward the hospital.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:27:15] Speaker C: So when Jack Warner is built, it went through that cemetery. And so they're like, at least I didn't know you could Tuscaloosa move the graves and build a funeral home. Build them for moving 1289 graves. So they're moved to the south side of Jack War. But there are also some original graves there.
So you've got all these graves they move. Nobody ever renamed that. So you've got the old cemetery, which was one, and then the new cemetery, which started 1922.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: I never knew that.
[00:27:50] Speaker C: And then there's one that started in 1954. It's three. So we just named the one right there by Harper, which is actually on the university campus, 1A. And it's got a historic marker there.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: Do you still have family members who reach out to you about their loved ones?
[00:28:07] Speaker C: Every day.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Really?
[00:28:08] Speaker C: Every day, yeah.
Some for records, some define their grave.
When those 1289 graves were moved, they were moved and the markers were moved, but nobody connected the markers to the graves. And so all those graves are unmarked.
Then we had a lot of theft. At one point, the university police brought a pickup truck. And I saw this that was, you know, three fourths of the way full that the university had confiscated from One fraternity at the university.
Well, we don't know where those grave markers came from. They're now located at Moundville Officer Research. And then we've had people just, you know, they've been on ebay in Atlanta, and we've had guys that were cutting grass that ran over them with bush hogs just so they wouldn't have to go around them anymore. And, you know, and so. So we've got more than, I think probably more than 4,000 unmarked graves, but we know of more than 3,000 unmarked graves. Two cemeteries now, from 1922 on, we did it by grave number, and we know pretty much where everybody is. Okay, well, that's been one of my passions. So, you know, if I can find a grave for family, we go the extra mile to do that.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: And who's gonna pick up, you know, when you retire, Steve, if you ever do. Who's gonna pick that up? You is a privilege to do what you do and respectful. Who's going to take over that?
[00:29:38] Speaker C: I think somebody will do it. Engineering did that. Like I said, you know, you go all the way back to 1975. I did that on weekends. What I don't think is anybody's going to have 50 years of experience walking those hills and know exactly. Somebody came in one time and said the gate was unlocked and they came in. I said, well, we may be trespassing. And I said, no, we keep it locked for vandalism. It's fine. And so we're looking for growth grade 1231. I said, I think it's up there under that tree. If it's not, it's going to be at the end of the row right here in front of it up there. No way. It is right here. You know, you have to dig them out. There's a lot of things you have to do, but. But the paperwork, I think, will still be here and hopefully some archives.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Let's take our second break, and when we come back, I promise we're going to get to these email questions because they're good ones, and I don't think we've really touched on specifics, so we'll take another break. You're listening to brain matters on 90.7. The capstone.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: WVUAFM Tuscaloosa. This show is not a substitute for professional counseling, and no relationship is created between the show host, hosts or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 348386, 3. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: Hey, you're back listening to brain matters on 90.7 the Capstone. I'm BJ Guenther. We're talking tonight about the history of mental health in the state of Alabama. And my guest is Steve Davis. He's the historian for the Alabama Department of Mental Health. And it's just, I mean an hour long show is just not going to do it. Even when you go and speak to these, you know, places where you said you go and speak to these organizations, it's just so much and I bet so many people have so many questions. I mean I was required to, in my most psychology majors at some point are required to volunteer somewhere. I chose to volunteer at Bryce Hospital when other people were really choosing to volunteer at Indian Rivers Mental Health Center. But I will admit something. I worked in the patient education building next to the chapel which is now University hall. And it looks a lot different than it did.
[00:32:21] Speaker C: Yes, it does.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: But I remember Steve coming through those. You said obelisk, you know what I'm talking about. The entrance to Bryce. You've got Bryce Main right in front of you. If you're driving, I would take a right and just feeling anxious and scared really a little bit. Especially because I didn't have any experience. And then when I drove out of there after my shift, feeling a sense of freedom, just like, whew, I'm out of here, you know, it was just such a different feeling. I guess some of it was just inexperience, you know. But even to this day when I drive through there, it's still, it's still a little feeling of, I don't know, anxiety, I guess, just a little bit because I remember working there and how locked down it was, you know, I had, we. I didn't have a key to get in, I'd have to buzz to get in and that kind of thing because it still was very active at that time. That was back in the early late 80s, early 90s, you know, strange.
[00:33:22] Speaker C: I have the same. I actually worked at Taylor Harden when it first opened and hired the first group of people and got it going and then went back to Bryce. Well, now when I go over there, I don't have a key. I sometimes have nightmares about getting locked in at Taylor Harden. I'm surprised because I always, you know, and it May just be that you don't have access to, but, you know, you meet people that, you know have been there forever and, you know, and just.
We took one guy to the beach one time, and he was. He was just ecstatic that he got to leave the campus.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:57] Speaker C: So I think it's a little of both. Yeah, I think that people being locked up, you know, nobody likes losing their freedom. Even if you don't feel like going anywhere, you know. You know, you like to.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: You like to have a choice. That's right.
[00:34:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I like to have a choice.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Now, is doctor. Is it Dr. Bryce? Is he considered Dr. Bryce?
[00:34:14] Speaker C: Yeah, he was a doctor.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: Dr. Peter Bryce. He and his family are buried on the grounds, are they not?
[00:34:19] Speaker C: That's true.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Most people don't know that. I'm not even telling you that. And I'm embarrassed to say that, you.
[00:34:25] Speaker C: Know, at first, some of facilities didn't want me to tell that Peter Brice was buried out on the.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: I know.
[00:34:30] Speaker C: On the campus. And I said, well, then you surely don't want me to tell people that Dr. Lopez is buried under the steps leading in here. But I don't know.
He was on the Alabama Medical Association. Good help place, you know. Alabama Insane Hospital at Tuscaloosa, right by the university. Peter Bryce was only 25 years old. He, you know, he had studied moral treatment. He had got a regular medical degree.
He kind of made a difference between alienists being people who only looked at the brain medically and psychiatrists doing more of the Freud and young and things, even though they hadn't been around at that point in time like they were later, but more of a approach that way. He's in the Alabama Medical Physician hall of Fame.
Came here at 25. First patient, he was 26.
Dorothy Dix wrote him a letter. You're being recommended to be the superintendent of Alabama Medical Hospital Insane Hospital. But I want to tell you that you have to be married. He says, no problem. I've got a lady lined up and she has nice legs and her daddy's a doctor, and she's obviously wonderful cook and hostess, and that's not who he married three months later. So I always thought that was really weird.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:40] Speaker C: But ended up marrying Ellen Clarkson from Charleston, South Carolina. And it turned out her daddy's store and his daddy's store were side by side. And so he's probably known her whole life. 19. So she's no maids or mama's ready to get her married and all those good things. And I read that somewhere in one of her diaries. That's not. I didn't just throw that out.
But she had always kind of. And so I promise you, in today's world, she'd be a CEO of a big company. She was just as much a. Her best friends were Miguel Gorgas and Julia Tutwala. And that's another whole story that goes on forever. So I won't go into all that. But Peter Bryce was, like Birmingham Post Gazette said he was the alabamian of the 19th century. And, you know, and he died in 1890. So you had eight more years. You had all these Civil War generals and politicians and, you know, Alabama fever and all that time. And so he was. He was a man's man. He. He once got tied in a shooting contest at Utah, Alabama, and all the newspapers. It was. Peter Bryce did not win. It's not, you know, not. He didn't lose, but he was that good a shot, and. Which was a big deal back then.
And he hobnobbed with powerful people and. But he made Tuscaloosa his home. He rarely left the hospital. He lived inside the.
Was asked to be a witness at the Charlie Gitto trial when he killed John Garfield, president of the United States, and he chose not to go. He gave a reason that he didn't want to leave the hospital, but I think he didn't want to go because he actually thought this man was insane because he was the premier person on not guilty by reason of insanity in the United States.
And so everybody wanted his opinion.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: Was I correct in when I made. When I introduced the topic, in saying, you know, that Alabama was, like, on the forefront of mental health treatment? Was that like, is that true?
[00:37:36] Speaker C: That's true. Depending on your time frame. Okay, you start talking about the history of mental health in Alabama. You can. You can run the gamut. You can be the worst, you know, but you had a Australian psychiatrist, G. A. Tucker, that went all around the world. I don't know what his credentials are, but it was lunacy in many lands. And it was like the book that all clinicians read.
And he said that Alabama Insane Hospital was the fourth best hospital in the world. Not in the United States. In the world.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:38:10] Speaker C: G.A. tucker's his name. Lunacy in many lands and articles about that.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: Let me tell you, this kind of transitions into one of the email questions that I keep mentioning. How do current mental health services in Alabama compare to other states?
[00:38:26] Speaker C: Well, again, I'm not a clinician.
I throw that out there. I'm probably not even supposed to answer that question. I Would say, well, and the reason, what I do know, and I was involved in Wyatt. I mean, the very first Wyatt discovery, I was in charge of all the records at Bryce. Even though I didn't know squat, I was just wet behind my ears. At the time of Wyatt, Many, many, many, many states just said, we can't meet these standards, so we're not going to treat. And so they closed down their facilities. And as you know, there are no more major places that have 5,000 patients like Bryce did in the 1960s.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: And you're talking about the infamous case Wyatt versus Stickney.
[00:39:05] Speaker C: Right. And so a lot of places for years. I don't know if this is true now, but you see this quote, and I don't know, again, I don't have a primary source that the largest concentration of people with mental illness in the United States is the Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois did not know it. And I've said. And then the second one is supposedly Los Angeles and the third one is supposedly Miami.
And I'm not saying they're not people that have mental illness in every county jail in the prison system, but mental health never once just closed down all their hospitals. And a lot of states close down their hospitals. Now. I don't know how far along we are in community mental health centers versus other people, other states, but I am proud to say that we've got a crisis center that had an open house today in Butler county, and we've got five others across the state. And that has changed the landscape because when I was administrator on call, you would have people come in and have no commitment papers. And what do you do with this person? You tell them, or do you call them a sleeper? Or do you call. You know, and it was just a transition period that was unreal.
And now you can go to one of these emergency centers and you can like have a three day commitment. So you're not there for 30 days. And you know, and it helps with a lot with suicide and families. We've got to have some relief right now. They've got to have some treatment right now. This, you know, that's immediate, immediate right now. Because Bryce Hospital is not set up for acute treatment. I mean, we do. Our admission unit has acute treatment every day. I shouldn't say so. I would say fairly well. That is again, from a non clinician and I'm not the commissioner of mental health and not the spoken. So that's just my opinion.
[00:40:47] Speaker B: What about legislation? We mentioned Wyatt versus Stickney, but this person says, what legislation has helped Alabama Deliver better mental health care. Would it be Wyatt versus Stickney or way before that, wouldn't it?
[00:41:04] Speaker C: Well, you got two or three, two things before Wyatt Stickney. One is 1963 and that's when John Kennedy's for community mental health centers went through the United States Congress. And there wasn't a lot right quick right at that moment where you started having community mental health centers. But that was the backbone then. Lurleen Wallace is governor in 1967 and she not only like doubled the budget for Department of Mental Health.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:34] Speaker C: But she got the 310 board. And 310 is just the name of the law, as you know, but all the community mental health. Not all. Most of the community mental health centers came about because of the 310 law. We put them in. And so now those things. Because right now we've got three facilities at one time. We had 14 almost. You know, it's a very small part of the treatment in the state of Alabama that is in the three facilities. Now it's in the community mental health centers and you know, different schools, those, you know, private places.
That is where the treatment is really going on way much more than the three facilities. So those two then why Stickney calls a lot of other matter of fact, if you get Joint commission accredited now that's the white standards. That's what white did. So if you're, if you've got, if you're accredited Hospital 3 in Alabama All I'm not going to mention but we got surrounding states. Almost all the surrounding states are not accredited.
[00:42:36] Speaker B: Don't meet that Alabama.
[00:42:38] Speaker C: I'm not downgrading anybody. I'm just saying Alabama's facilities are accredited by joint commission, all three of them and they meet title 19. And you know, so because of that I feel pretty firm saying that we can compete with other states.
But why it caused all those things? And you know, Judge Thompson, I think it was Brazil, but I'm not sure. We presented together at a conference not to get. He presented that I presented, but we had a donut together. And he said he got off this plane and he's, you know, he's famous for all these civil rights suits. And he said some guys in Spanish hollered Wyatt, Wyatt. You're the Wyatt.
So he says that's what he'll be known for.
Ran for 33 years.
I did a class on it at Ollie, which is advanced learning. And basically my premise was somewhat comfortable that it shouldn't have lasted for 33 years. But it's a good thing that it started.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:43:37] Speaker C: And so at that time, Alabama finally got out from another while. He said, you know, we're not meeting these standards or we did not. We were not meeting these standards when it started and we agreed that they have to be met. And.
But a lot of that was personality between Judge Frank Johnson and Jordan Wallace. I mean a lot of that's all it is. Sometimes history comes down.
[00:43:57] Speaker B: So it's true. It's true. And somebody. That's one of the things somebody asked in another email question. What obstacles have been the greatest for Alabama to overcome to deliver better mental health services? I think that's one of them.
[00:44:11] Speaker C: Yeah, you're always, you always have budget problems. If you go back to. And I don't remember the exact year. So. But 2011, 2012, 2013, there's a 18 month period during that three year period where mental health laid off more than 40% of its workforce.
[00:44:31] Speaker B: Why?
[00:44:31] Speaker C: It started because Bryce Hospital laid off all the professional workforce except one psychiatrist, five RNs and one PhD psychologist. You had 5,000 patients.
[00:44:42] Speaker B: Oh my.
[00:44:43] Speaker C: In essence have no treatment. You're just, you know, daily.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: You're just housed.
[00:44:47] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that throughout the history has been in bad times.
And I used to use this quote all the time.
Our alumni don't vote. Which is not true anymore. But at that time was true. But I found that Dr. Parlo said that in 1943 our alumni don't vote. And he was best friends with George Jenny and his alumni do vote. So you better believe where the funding is going to be when it comes down to. To the, to the nitty gritty. But that's one of the things you've got stigma. It's nothing like it used to be you. We had patients that would come to Bryce and live their whole life there. That never happens anymore. And when I say their whole life, patients that came in at 12 or 20. A lot of schizophrenic, you know, is late teens as you know. And so you people that come in at late teens and one guy told me they told my family to they should stop visiting me because I'll probably never go home. And he's had a job for 50 years.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: Oh my gosh.
[00:45:47] Speaker C: That's two of my committees that we do for history and stuff.
[00:45:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:45:51] Speaker C: Peer support space.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: Hey, we're gonna take our last. Sorry to interrupt you. We're gonna take our last break, Steve, and when we come back, hopefully we'll hit a few more questions and you might have some resources or some things you want to say to the listeners, to encourage them to. I think everybody really should go to the visitor center and enjoy the museum that's upstairs because I just think it's so educational. I mean, I learned things I didn't even know, you know, that I had studied. It's embarrassing to say, but it's the truth. So we'll take our last break and then when we come back, we'll wrap it up for tonight. But you're listening to brain matters on 90.7 the capstone.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: WVUAFM Tuscaloosa. This show is not a substitute for professional counseling and no relationship is created between the show host or guests and any listener. If you feel you are in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, we encourage you to contact the UA Counseling center at 3 4, 8.
If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: Hey, you're back listening. Listening to brain matters on 90.7 the Capstone. I'm Dr. BJ Gunther and we're talking tonight about the history of mental health in the state of Alabama. And my guest is historian for the Alabama Department of Mental Health, Steve Davis. And this has been fascinating, Steve. I mean it's just hard to know what to ask because I have so many questions and then I've got some email questions that are things that I haven't even thought to ask. Like for instance, what's been the greatest? Has there been a time where there's been great demand for mental health services in Alabama? And if so, when?
[00:48:01] Speaker C: Well, as always, you know, yeah, I feel like regional hospital was built for the house 250 patients. So by 1872 they had surpassed that. So at some point there's 5299 patients on the campus, not even on the campus, 52 buildings in the building was the third largest in the world according to Ripley's Believe it or not, if you want to use that.
But still that is there.
So it's always been there. It usually peaks after wars just from the, you know, the syndrome get there. But not always. There's some weird things. I will mention this about the only five year period where more women were committed than men was right after the Civil War. And I was man, that's so weird because most of those guys served for four years and they saw things nobody's ever seen.
[00:48:55] Speaker B: Maybe they lost, maybe they lost children, though.
The women.
[00:49:00] Speaker C: Well, a lot. I think a lot is the laws hadn't changed. You came home and the women had run the state for four years, and they're not willing to just listen to this guy who is obviously not right. And so they have them committed. Commitment laws in Alabama were unconstitutional up to 1977, and we didn't even fight that law lawsuit. We didn't talk about that. Lynch versus Backseat, that's another. That's more acutely.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: That's part two. We need to have a part two, don't we?
[00:49:27] Speaker C: That. That grew out of Wyatt. But. But as far as having immediate change in Alabama, lynch versus Backseat was actually more powerful than Wyatt. Yeah, so you have those things, but I think it just goes on and on. Today we got that. Today is just as chaotic in many reasons. And whether you want to believe it or not, I think social media is really, really stunts the mental health of children because they're on it 24 7, and they don't talk to each other, and they're worried about Ukraine, and I didn't worry about whatever Ukraine.
I didn't know that was doing, you know, I mean, you know, just give me a sandwich. And so, you know, you're sitting there, and I don't think we understand the pressure that's put on children from every angle. And so now we're trying to get counselors into grammar school rather than high school.
So I don't. I don't. I don't think there's any special time. There've been a lot. A lot of, you know, we didn't get into a lot of the change from oral treatment and probably don't have time.
I just think it's always there. I think we're better equipped to treat people in the community and keep people out of institutions. And I think there's not as much stigma within this. Within the community, I think.
[00:50:51] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:50:52] Speaker C: I think you can go to counseling.
[00:50:54] Speaker B: It has improved. And even our students who are coming here now, they have no idea about Bryce, which is probably not bad, because for a long time it was like. I think you had mentioned this to me when I sent the invite for you to come to be on the show for a long time. And I don't know how much you still have trespassing and vandalism, but when I was in school, that was like a thing that you heard about, you know, it was like kind of a joke to go over, you know, to jump the fence to get to Bryce and that kind of stuff, which I don't know if you have that, that much anymore. Because these kids don't really know about Bryce that much. Know that the university, you know, they have that property and that's part of the university, but they don't know the history.
[00:51:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that, you know, I. I mean, I like. I like for people to know the history, but I. I do like the fact that the stigma of getting. Getting help doesn't seem to be there like it was. And because. And when I was little, if you were bad, they said, we're going to send you to Bryce.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: Oh, that was a threat.
[00:51:59] Speaker C: That was a threat. So, you know, you thought Bryce was.
[00:52:02] Speaker B: My mother used to say, if you're from Alabama, you know where Springville School for Girls is. That's what my mother used to threaten me. Catherine, I don't know if you know about that, but mother used to say, I'm going to put you in Springville School for Girls, you know, to straighten me up. And I wasn't bad, but, you know, I had a mouth on me. I will. I know y'all can't believe that.
Let me. Let's just wrap up the show. I really appreciate you being on. This has gone by really fast. And like I said, I feel like we didn't get to hardly any of the questions that I had written out for you, but you covered a lot of ground and on a daily basis, you said you have people all the time, you know, like, reaching out to you about their loved one. And that's good to know that there's somebody still here that can help them with that. And I mean, because there will be people who don't know even if they had loved ones at Bryce, you know, that's true.
[00:52:54] Speaker C: And what is really interesting, when I say every day, somebody will say, I just saw a census from 1920, and then my great grandfather was at Bronx. But can you tell me about that?
But as far as resources, I really encourage people to go to the museum and take time to actually look at the exhibit and to look at the films. I mean, it takes. It's a. You know, it ended up being a small museum, but.
[00:53:18] Speaker B: But it takes a long time to go through it, you know, but.
[00:53:20] Speaker C: But if you look at everything, it will take time. And we've had a lot of visitors. And you got the original transom trying to recreate what it would be like to walk in the front door of Bryce. Of course, you go up the original staircase, which was purchased in 1855, to get there. Original transom. Things that we got out of the Wall.
[00:53:38] Speaker B: And I'll tell you, working on the campus even than when I volunteered, I never, I never, never was allowed to go in Bryce Main. Most people weren't because that was the seriously mentally ill. That's where their patients were. And I never. This was the first time I've ever been in that building.
[00:53:58] Speaker C: I love that building.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: I do too.
[00:54:00] Speaker C: I wish you could go through the basement if you want to see something from 1850.
[00:54:03] Speaker B: But anyway, maybe after the show.
That would be fascinating though.
[00:54:09] Speaker C: But that's a great, that's a great resource. I think HOOL has a pretty good collection. Infection.
[00:54:15] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:54:16] Speaker C: One thing about studying mental health is you've got hipaa.
And you know, of course HIPAA comes in play night 1996, I think. But the very first paragraph, this applies to all people living in dead. So we've got all these records that go back to 1860. But Alabama law, statute 22, only allows immediate family to look, you know, so. So there's no 50 year rule. They've been dead for 50 years like a lot of states have as far as looking at the medical record record. But who has a lot of support records? State archives has the most because by state law, they're the repository for state agencies.
[00:54:55] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:54:56] Speaker C: So like when Governor Ivey leaves office, the next governor, they're going to say, we don't care who you are. We get her files and they come to archives. So unless it's something they're working on, it goes on. Yeah, it goes to archive. So a lot of our stuff go to archives. But we've got superintendent records there, there, our board of trustees records there, and annual reports that are chock full of statistics. You wouldn't believe how many people died, how many people buried, what the diagnosis of everybody was. That. That would be interesting, you know, so that. And Tuscaloosa Public Library has that. And who has most of them? And there's some more. I'm supposed to take over there. I'm just remiss because I haven't been able to get them over there.
[00:55:36] Speaker B: It just sounds like so much. Thank you so much for being on the show. I just, I love this. I could talk about this for another hour, you know, I could. Catherine. Catherine's shaking her head. She knows I could. I appreciate you being on the show and taking out. It sounds like you're in high demand to come and talk about mental health in the state of Alabama. All over the state. I bet you. I bet you're invited all over the state, not just in this area.
[00:55:59] Speaker C: That's true.
[00:55:59] Speaker B: That's cool. Hey, don't forget our shows are recorded and podcasted On Apple Podcast, audioboom.com and voices ua.edu. just type in Brain Matters and you'll find some of our past shows. And there's also a link to Voices UA Edu on the Counseling Center's website at Counseling ua Edu I always like to thank people who have made our show possible. Dr. Greg Vanderwaal, he's our executive director here at the Counseling center, of course, my producer and colleague Katherine Howell, my colleagues here at the Counseling Center, Katharine Ratchford, who edits our shows for WVUA, and of course, the WVUA staff and my guest tonight, Steve Davis. We'll skip the next couple of weeks for Thanksgiving and I'm going to a conference, the ALCA Alabama Counseling Association Conference, actually. So we'll run some reruns of past shows, but then we'll be back for dead week, and that's the week before finals and you can join us for that show. We're going to talk about trends and substance use on college campuses. So join us then, and thanks again for listening. Have a good night and we'll see you back in a few weeks.
[00:57:11] Speaker A: The show was not intended as a substitute for professional counseling. Further, the views, opinions and conclusions expressed by the show hosts or their guests are their own and not necessarily those of the University of Alabama, its officers or trustees. Any views, opinions or conclusions shared on the show do not create a relationship between the host or any guest, and any listeners in such a relationship should never be inferred. If you feel you're in need of professional mental health and are a UA student, please contact the UA Counseling center at 348-3863. If you are not a UA student, please contact your respective county's crisis service hotline or their local mental health agency or insurance company. If it is an emergency situation, please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
