Hastings State Asylum for the Insane opened in 1900, and over the next seventy-eight years it housed 16,015 patients. By the 1940s it was a city in itself, with its own farm, power station, and residences. Due to improvements in the treatment of mental illness, however, including the use of psychotropic drugs, the number of residents declined until the hospital was no longer needed. It closed on May 1, 1978.
The Minnesota legislature authorized the creation of Hastings State Asylum for the Insane in 1899. At the time, state governments used asylums to house mentally ill persons, but also to isolate them and “protect” society from them. Staff provided minimal treatment, offered patients little enrichment, and restrained them with cuffs, belts, and straitjackets. Institutionalization of this kind was the norm for fifty years.
Local boosters had promoted Hastings as an ideal site for a new state hospital starting in 1895. In addition to railroad access, the area had good drainage, water power, lime kilns, a brickyard, and onsite dolomite for building materials. The state legislature noticed and purchased 643 acres west of the city for $15,000.
Design of the hospital’s buildings was influenced by the work of Dr. Thomas Kirkbride, who in 1854 had first advocated for asylums to include an administrative building with attached wings for patients to live in. The state legislature authorized construction of a complex costing up to $56,500, and Hastings opened in April of 1900 with 115 patients transferred from Rochester State Hospital. After Anoka State Hospital, which had opened a month earlier, Hastings was the second asylum in Minnesota created exclusively for people with mental illness.
The hospital received patients over the next two years for a total of 308 by August 27, 1903. In that year, administrators abandoned Kirkbride’s arrangement of wards for the cottage plan, which allowed patients to live in standalone houses for a more home-like setting. At Hastings’ peak in the 1940s, there were forty buildings with tunnels connecting them.
A 460-acre farm was established soon after the hospital opened. Patients did much of the work, growing oats, potatoes, corn, onions, parsnips, rutabagas, squash, beans, and fruit. They also raised dairy cows, pigs, turkeys, and chickens. In 1921, there were five employees and thirty-one patient workers. The hospital’s kitchen canned food and made pickles and sauerkraut. Also in 1921, an industrial department operated for a short time, making mattresses, pillows, sheets, towels, and napkins.
In the 1930s, Hastings introduced a program to improve patient behavior. Under the new rules, patients lost the privileges of watching movies, attending parties, and eating in the dining room when they mistreated staff or each other. The change allowed Hastings to reduce the number of patients wearing restraints from fifty-two-to four over six months. The program was not adopted by other hospitals until the 1960s.
Treatment of the mentally ill changed over the years. A process called hypothesized focal silent infection therapy could involve the removal of patients’ teeth, pancreas, ovaries, and parts of the colon. In the 1930s and 1940s, doctors administered insulin therapy to chemically induce comas with the intention to “rest” patients’ brains. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) to cause seizures began in the 1930s. Until the 1950s, doctors at Hastings (as at other hospitals) performed a frontal lobotomy by placing a pick through a patient’s eye socket and chiseling away brain tissue. In the mid-1950s, tranquilizers and psychotropic drugs were discovered that enabled more humane and successful treatment.
As of May 1958, Hastings employed 271 staff, including two resident psychiatrists, two consulting psychiatrists, three resident doctors, and one dentist. The nursing department had 148 positions.
The federal Community Mental Health Acts of 1963 and 1965 led to de-institutionalization—the transfer of mentally ill people from state hospitals to alternatives like group homes. Medicare and Medicaid forbid payment to state hospitals, but they allowed payment to outpatient clinics and providers. Community psychiatry began.
By 1968, Hastings had become a multi-program mental health treatment facility for people with chemical dependencies and intellectual disabilities. In the 1970s, a regional approach was created, with Hastings responsible for Ramsey, Washington, and Dakota counties.
The transition from custodial to community-oriented treatment was successful. In 1972, Hastings had the shortest length of hospitalization of any state hospital, with 50 percent of patients discharged in fifty-three days or less. Only 19 percent of patients were hospitalized for two years or longer. Staff consistently reported a congenial working atmosphere, and several lived on site. Staff families attended weekly movies, sleigh rides, dances, and parties.
A February 17, 1970, report on Hastings to the Minnesota legislature noted an average daily patient census in 1961 at 880; by January 7, 1970, it was 415. Instead of expanding, however, the hospital closed on May 1, 1978. All patients (130) were transferred or discharged to homes or other state hospitals.