Belmont Behavioral Health System history

By 1821, 149 people had received care at the Asylum.

In June of 1826 the Asylum was renamed “The McLean Asylum for the Insane,” in honor of John McLean, a Boston merchant who bequeathed $25,000 and left a residuary legacy of more than $90,000 to the Asylum.

The famous children’s nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” was written about Mary Sawyer, an attendant who joined the McLean staff in 1832.

After she died in 1834 the hospital received a gift totaling nearly $120,000, owing to a residual legacy of more than $90,000.

While Olmsted’s involvement after 1875 cannot be documented, Joseph Curtis’ involvement in the development of the landscape and building arrangement continued through project completion and into the next century.

McLean opened the first psychiatric school of nursing in 1882.

In April 1895, the first patients were transferred from the Asylum in Somerville to Belmont.

As late as 1944, McLean was a self-sustaining community, operating a farm, an upholstery shop and a blacksmith shop.

1946 – The Biological Research Laboratory (later to evolve into the Mailman Research Center) opens.

1957 – McLean develops a procedure, adopted worldwide, for extracting and identifying brain lipids.

1973 – Established the first Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center in a private American psychiatric hospital, the nation’s largest and most comprehensive research facility of its kind devoted to the study of addictive disorders.

1978 – McLean establishes the country’s first National Institutes of Health- and private-foundation supported Brain Bank for the study of neuropsychiatric diseases.

1984 – McLean establishes the first controlled outcome study evaluating the effects of psychoanalytic psychotherapy for patients with schizophrenia.

Crossroads in Psychiatry by Silvia B. Sutton (American Psychiatric Press, Inc., 1986)

1990 – McLean is number one among private United States psychiatric hospitals in Public Health Service research.

1995 – The first study in healthy children combining anatomic, chemical and functional data on brain development begins at McLean.

1998 – McLean is the first to publish reports that the use of steroids by body builders is associated with the induction of psychiatric symptoms, including violent behavior.

2000 – The Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center at McLean (the “Brain Bank”) receives its 5,000th donated brain specimen.

2002 – McLean Hospital’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research Center (ADARC) received the largest single grant in McLean’s history.

2007 – McLean Hospital investigators conducted the first national survey of individuals with eating disorder, showing that binge eating disorder is more prevalent than either anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa.