Imagine fighting for your country only to come home with terrible nightmares and debilitating PTSD. Then imagine your family taking you to an institution where you are cared for by strangers, abandoned by the people you love most. Imagine fighting for your country and then being buried on a hillside in the woods with a simple slab that identifies you just as “283.”

Imagine having postpardum depression and being sent away from your children by your husband who can’t handle your being sad. Imagine being unable to leave without your husband or a male family member signing you out. Imagine your husband  abandoning you there so he can divorce you and marry someone else to care for your kids. 

Imagine being old and sick, perhaps forgetful and sent to live in an asylum. Imagine being committed because you were a moody woman or one who reads too much and has too many opinions.

These are all perfectly acceptable reasons why real human beings were committed to places like the Athens Lunatic Asylum. I have written before about a similar asylum called the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia. You can read here about the day I toured that place.

The old asylum on the hill in Athens is not open for tours. Intead, it’s owned by Ohio University and repurposed into an art museum, campus police, research space and class space. You can also explore the grounds and there are nature trails. There’s also room for events, an adventure course and sports fields. 

My response to being there is always so complex. I look at these stately old buildings and can’t help but wonder about the atrocities that went on in this facility. They famously conducted partial labotomies here. Plus, the sheer horror of just being a smart woman whose freedoms were stripped away by a weak husband hits pretty close to home. 

And don’t think it didn’t happen. 

Designed by Dr. Thomas Kirkbridge who was a leader in the Moral Treatment Philosophy, the Athens Lunatic Asylum opened in 1874 in what was then countryside overlooking Athens. Kirkbridge believed that mental institutions should be located in pretty rural settings with plenty of acreage for exercise and labor thorough farming, gardening and occupations that might aid in a patient’s treatment while helping run the facilities. 

I believe the terminology they used was “Healing Landscapes.”

Once upon a time, the grounds felt parklike with a waterfall, four poinds, and a variety of trees, plants and flowers that might be enjoyed along walking paths. It was so beautiful that many residents from town and country surrounding the asylum would come visit for walks and picnics. 

Then there are the cemeteries. Three of them are the final resting places for over 1,900 patients who died here. Lucky patients had famillies who claimed their bodies but so many had no one to take them. The hillside cemeteries are probably the saddest I’ve ever seen because most individuals were buried with simple slabs and no name to identify them. They are identified by numbers only. This went on until the 1940s when they began using names. At some point, the state ceased caring for these cemeteries and they were left to vandals and to damage done by time and nature. 

Forgotten. 

People who in life were sent to a place to be forgotten remained forgotten in death as well.

About 25 years ago, the Athens Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness began reclamation of the cemeteries and found other organizations and people to rally around the cemeteries and the grounds. They have brought attention to a place once forgotten and peace and respect to people who perhaps received neither in life.

Adam and I explored here some on Saturday. We’ll go back another day when my leg is better and we have more time. As a person just out for walkabout, the history is fascinating. The place is extraordinary and it’s so peaceful up there above the city. But the cemetery is sobering and the thought of what went on here, all that the patients lost in being sent here, all that was forcibly taken from them, all the ways they suffered, well it’s almost too much to think about. 

As mental health treatment evolved over time, so did the use of this space. By the time I was a child in the eighties, people joked about sending someone to the mental hospital at Athens. Later, as mental health treatment changed and transitioned from large facilities, we saw many individuals around the city who it seemed had been turned out and left to figure out life and health on their own. That may be an unfair assessment but that’s certainly how it appeared. 

There are a number of these Kirkrbride institutions left around the country and many have historic register status. I highly recommend visiting the one in West Virginia because they tell the stories of patients and of staff that worked there. Click here for details.