Care and Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health

"Butler Hospital for the Insane." Engraving from The Providence Plantations for 250 Years (1886), 209.

A tension between custody and care has marked the landscape of mental health treatment in Rhode Island from the colonial period into the very present moment.

Rooted in deep disparities based on race and ethnicity, social class, gender and sexuality, citizenship status, disability and other forms of difference, the systems and institutions that have proclaimed to offer respite and treatment to people with mental health challenges quite often replicated the very harms they sought to remedy.

Explore the links and resources below to learn more about some of the key people, places, and events that comprise this complicated history in Rhode Island. 

Rhode Island History Journal Articles + Special Issues

• B.F. Swan, ”Roger Williams and the Insane,” Rhode Island History 5, no. 3 (July 1946): 65-69.

• Special Issue Part I: “Days of Darkness, Days of Hope: The Care of Mentally Disabled People.” Rhode Island History 40, no. 4, November 1981. 

• Special Issue Part II: Rhode Island History 41, no. 4, November 1982.

• Valerie Quinney, “A Crisis in Rhode Island Mental Health Care: The Closing of Butler Hospital in 1955.” Rhode Island History 47, no. 2 (1989): 60-73.

History of Butler Hospital

• “Butler Hospital Prepares to Celebrate 175th Anniversary,” Butler Hospital, November 26, 2019. 

• Isaac Ray, M.D., "Description of the Butler Hospital for the Insane, Providence, R.I." [Utica? : s.n., 1848?].

• “Object Thursday: Empires of the Mind,” Rhode Island Historical Society, March 21, 2013.

• “Butler Hospital records, 1840-1892,” Ms.2007.033, Brown University Library.  

History of Dexter Asylum 

• Angela DiVeglia, “Dexter Asylum,” Rhode Tour. 

• Rhode Island. State Asylum (1844-1917) Records, Rhode Island Department of State. 

History of the Ladd School

• G. Wayne Miller, "'The Beast is Dead': The Ladd School 25 Years Later." USA Today Network. 
• "Some People Who Lived at the Ladd Center," Advocates in Action RI. Vimeo. 

Dorothea Dix (Mental Health Reformer)

• Gloria Schmidt, "Dorothea Dix in Portsmouth," Portsmouth History Notes blog, March 9, 2019. 

R.I. Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities & Hospitals

• “Our History,” Rhode Island Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities & Hospitals, April 10, 2023. 

Care & Custody Presentation, Brown University Library, May 10, 2023.