Mental Health, History, Mental Illness, Pathologies, State & Local, Historical Study & Educational Resources, World, Sociology, Social Services & Welfare 

McLean Hospital is one of the most famous, and elite, and was once among the most luxurious mental institutions in America. Its famed “alumni” include Syvia Plath, John Forbes Nash, Ray Charles, and Susanna Kaysen. James Taylor found inspiration for a song or two there; Fredrick law Olmsted first designed the grounds and later signed in as a patient. In its’ “golden age.” McLean provided as gracious and gentle an environment for the treatment of mental illness as one could imagine.
Boston Globe Columnist Alex Beam’s Gracefully Insane is an entertaining and poignant biography of McLean from its founding in 1817 through today. The story of McLean is also a story of the hopes and failures of psychology and psychotherapy; of the evolution of attitudes about mental illness; and of the economic pressures that are making McLean-and other intuitions like it-relies of bygone age.