Unseen Erickson P.2
FROM THE MILTON H. ERICKSON FOUNDATION ARCHIVES
Collection: The Milton H. Erickson Workshop Files
Archives Location: U: Row 6, Column 1, Shelf 3, Box 279, Folder 23
by Joyce Bavlinka, m. ed., lisac
The Beginnings of Mars-Kline Psychiatric Hospital In Haiti
Sarah Clinebell, who has been working on the Archives since June 2022, has supplied us with a folder named “Cruise Folder, January 4 – 18, 1958.” The contents include details of the cruise, correspondence setting up the lecture series, a brochure about the cruise vessel, excursions available at cruise stops, correspondence with Dr. Louis Mars (the contact person for the Port-au-Prince stay) an article regarding setting up of the first psychiatric hospital in Haiti, and correspondence regarding Erickson’s purchase of turtle specimens and a Port-au-Prince shopkeeper’s purchase of a bola tie. There are separate blog posts about the establishment and the cruise and the turtle and the bola tie.
The Mars-Kline Psychiatric Hospital
In the Cruise Ship folder there is an article, “Haiti Will Open its First Unique Psychiatric Hospital Soon” about a proposal for the opening of the first psychiatric hospital to be built in Port-au-Prince. The article is without attribution but is very interesting: we believe the article is from 1958. We found information on the establishment of the hospital and then articles about what happened to it after the earthquakes in 2010.
The article states treatment at the hospital will focus on drug therapy and will be under the guidance of Dr. Mars, (who coordinated the cruise with Erickson), and Dr. Nathan Kline who worked for the New York State Depart of Hygiene.
“The project is being financed by three U. S. pharmaceutical companies, Schering Corporation, and … Hoffman-La Roche,… and Wyeth Industries, and by the Haitian government.” The companies are providing grants as well as psychiatric drugs. “Haiti’s unique program will be under the auspices of Medico, the government of Haiti, and the Department of Mental Hygiene of the State of New York. Dr. Nathan Kline, director of research at Rockland State Hospital, Orangeberg, N. Y. will serve as consultant to the Haitian program.”
“Our first objective is to improve the care and treatment of mentally ill persons in Haiti,” said Dr. Kline. “While doing this, we hope to determine if presently available drugs and adequate treatment facilities, especially for out-patients, are not a more economical and more socially constructive method of treatment than the traditional method of institutionalizing mental patients. It may be learned that multi-million-dollar mental hospital are unnecessary.”
Kline was the research director at the Rockland State Hospital in New York State. He pioneered the use of psychopharmacologic drugs. According to his bio at the New York State Office of Mental Health website, he “has been acknowledged as a major factor in psychiatry and he was twice awarded the prestigious Albert Lasker Medical Research Award. He pioneered the use of computers in medicine, was an advisor to the World Health Association and was founder and director of the International Committee Against Mental Illness. He published over 500 scientific articles.
Additional information on Dr. Kline can be found at:
https://www.nki.rfmh.org/about-nki/our-history
The Mars-Kline hospital, when built, contained 2 wards, each serving 10 patients. The facility featured an open courtyard and natural lighting and ventilation. They provided in-patient and out-patient services and the facility was expanded over the years to serve 100 patients. As time went on, there was not adequate maintenance or improvements to the hospital. A 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, followed by 6 after-shocks registering 6.0+. There was extensive damage to the facility and many patients escaped. The courtyard became a camp group for about 150 locals who had been displaced by the earthquake, but the population decreased to about 15 because of the presence of dangerously ill psychiatric patients.
The Los Angeles Times posted these pictures of the hospital in the aftermath of the earthquake. https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-haiti-mental-pictures-photogallery.html Etan Abromovich/AFP/Gettyimages posted the following:
“The hospital was founded in 1958, which might have been when the wards received their last coat of paint, and it was in desperate shape even before the Jan. 12 [2010] earthquake. Louis Marc Jeanny Girard, a psychiatrist who has served as the hospital’s director for 10 years said Haiti has never treated mental illness with much care. Often, he said, people suffering psychosis were dismissed as being in the grip of the “mystical.” Photos included pictures of patients locked in cells and the chaos of the courtyard.
In “In Haiti: Mental Health System Is in Collapse, “a New York Times article published March 19, 2010, author Deborah Sontag details the condition of the hospital and need for mental healthservices. Dr. Franklin Normil, acting director, who has worked there for five months without pay told the reporter” Clearly, mental health care has never been a priority in the country…. Haiti’s earthquake has exposed the extreme inadequacies of its mental health services just at the moment when they are needed the most…. In the courtyard are two psychiatric tents with more than 100 people showing up daily, reporting extreme stress and post-traumatic symptoms…..” Medical staff reported that the hospital was not fully staffed before the earthquake and did not have sufficient funding for material and supplies.
We found a 2011 PowerPoint, “Centres de Soins Psychiatriques,” regarding the history of the Mars-Kline and the conditions after the earthquake. It is in French/Creole.
http://www.rebatism.org/DOCUMENTS/REBATI_Presentation_II.pdf
The PowerPoint presentation estimates that the hospital was in need of $3,000,000 to $6,000,000 for repairs and upgrades and a new psychiatric wing.
END NOTES:
Subsequent to the earthquake, individuals and institutions in the United Sates and Canada came together to provide services and develop a plan for enhanced services in Haiti. Partners-in-Health and Zammi Lasante developed an improvement plan for mental health services.
