An historic chapter came to an end in Dutchess County on January 26^th when a 145-year-old institution, Hudson River Psychiatric Center, closed its doors for the last time. The only state hospital closure among 28 in existence in the state, Governor Cuomo targeted HRPC in the 2011 Budget in an attempt to close a $10billion deficit. It now joins Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center in Wingdale that closed in 1994 under the previous Governor Cuomo. Both hospitals once housed 6,000 patients in their heyday at a time when Dutchess County led the state in in-patient psychiatric care. Today, this historic role is preserved in a museum documenting the county’s leadership role in psychiatric care still housed on the HRPC grounds but perhaps destined for relocation to Marist College.

                I studied psychopathology at Marist beneath HRPC’s former director and learned via slideshows and anecdotes a wealth of history regarding HRPC’s role in the lives of its patients. Some I had already seen firsthand through visits as an advocate for mental health services as a member of the county mental health subcommittee, and secondly as a provider at PEOPLe Inc., a mental health nonprofit at which I work. But my strongest impression of HRPC predates my professional focus.

                In 1986, I was introduced to Hudson River Psychiatric Center when my mother became a patient there. I was eight years old. My dad brought me there to visit her to help her get better, and largely because I missed my mom. Even then I realized that the hospital was there to help mom get well so she could return home. At the time HRPC was part of a much larger campus, so that more people were treated locally meaning that families like me could come and visit and help our loved ones heal quicker so that they could come home faster. In subsequent years, as HRPC downsized and Saint Francis Hospital likewise cut back on beds, when mom needed hospitalization she was forced to Westchester and Putnam counties. This made visitation much harder for both of us, as it has for the roughly 80 county residents a month whose families must now travel great distances because local care has been severely undermined.

                I don’t have a lot of memories of HRPC, but I have a strong memory of when one visit ended. At the end of visitation hours the guards would let us out the iron-thick doors. My mom stood there alone, with tears in her eyes, waving just as she did when I boarded the bus most mornings for school. On one visit a female patient attempted to race out the door. I watched as the guards struggled to hold her back. Mom stayed motionless except for the tears falling and the hand waving. In time she was well enough to come home, and life resumed although never quite the same for any of us.

                Today the last of HRPC’s patients have now been transported miles away to the New Jersey border of Rockland County. In the weeks ahead our county will explore ways to spend the $1.875 million to be reinvested in the community. There will be much talk of diversion, safety nets, mobile crisis and other feel-good substitutions for inpatient care – gone will be the close-to-home hospital beds for our sick loved ones.

                Now with the closure of HRPC complete, I feel a lot like my eight year-old self watching the door slam hard on the thousands of county residents who like my mom at times struggle in coping with sanity, emotion and life’s challenges. I think also of that nameless lady who tried to resist the closing of the HRPC door so many years ago. How I wish our state politicians would have showed similar courage to resist the systematic abolition of Dutchess County mental health hospital beds. Instead economic egoism and the erosion of compassion in public policy have permanently slammed the door shut.