Brattleboro Retreat: One of America's First Psychiatric Hospitals

In eighteen thirty-four, a Brattleboro widow named Anna Marsh left ten thousand dollars in her will to establish a hospital for the mentally ill. That donation created what became the Brattleboro Retreat, one of the first ten psychiatric hospitals in the United States.

The founders patterned care on a Quaker concept called moral treatment: patients were treated with dignity in a homelike setting, given meaningful work, cultural activities, daily exercise, and wholesome food. The Retreat pioneered what it claimed were the first patient newspaper and the first hospital gymnasium in American psychiatric care.

The hospital still operates today on the same grounds, making it one of the oldest continuously operating psychiatric facilities in the country.