Voices from Central State: People, Places, and Experience

FAIN: ZRE-284287-22

Indiana Medical History Museum, Inc. (Indianapolis, IN 46222-4599)
Sarah Halter (Project Director: May 2021 to March 2022)
Norma Erickson (Project Director: March 2022 to November 2024)

The research and development of online content related to the history of the Central State Mental Hospital, supporting two existing staff, one new part-time researcher, and two graduate student interns.

Through its Voices from Central State initiative, the Indiana Medical History Museum works to focus more attention on the lives and experiences of the patients who lived and sometimes died within the hospital grounds. Building upon past work of the Voices initiative, IMHM is now developing an online memory forum and digital archive for former patients, employees, neighbors, and families to learn about the hospital's history and share their own stories, photos, and memories. This next phase of the initiative includes collection of oral histories and scholarly research to produce a comparative analysis of race, class, and gender, through the lens of personal accounts, architectural and planning history, and the intersection of medical and legal history. We will consider how the development of psychiatry is reflected in personal accounts, the changing landscape, legal precedence, and the trend of hospital deinstitutionalization.