Where Did All the People Go?

Where Did All the People Go?

Editor’s note: This is the fifth chapter in a series on the history of Oregon psychiatry by Robert Nikkel, who is a former Oregon State Commissioner of Mental Health and Addictions. In Oregon, there were 5,000 patients in its state hospitals in 1955. This was the start of what is known today as deinstitutionalization—the moving of psychiatric care out of the hospital and into the community.  By 1964, the population in Oregon’s state hospitals de…