Central Clinic

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Founded in 1923, Central Clinic has been providing quality Behavioral Health and Forensic services for over 85 years to children, adults and families. Central Clinic's main location at 311 Albert Sabin Way is a converted nurse's dorm on the University of Cincinnati Medical Campus. This building, called Logan Hall, was designed by the Samuel Hannaford and Sons Architect firm and is on the National Historic Registry. When the Public Health Federation was organized in 1917, it had several Councils consisting of persons interested in particular phases of public health. One of these was the Mental Hygiene Council, which is now the Mental Health Association of the Cincinnati Area. At that time there was an upsurge of interest in mental health. Drs. Lurie and Greenebaum refer to it in an article "The Perspective of the Mental Hygiene Movement in the Jewish Community" (1) in these words: "Dr. Adolph Meyer, at Johns Hopkins, had introduced the term 'mental hygiene, ' the Binet-Simon psychometric tests had become very popular, and Dr. E.E. Southland at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital had begun to stress the importance of social and environmental factors in the determination of human behavior and the development of the personality. In Europe, Freud and his disciples were advocating the psychodynamic approach to the study of emotional problems of man. As a result, tremendous public interest was aroused in the study of the causes and prevention of mental illnesses, and especially in the study of the causes and prevention of juvenile delinquency and criminality." They mention also the fact "that since psychometric testing had become the rage", feeblemindedness was believed, on the basis of these tests, to be far more extensive and a greater factor in delinquency and other social problems that subsequent and more careful studies proved to be the fact. Mrs. Rebecca Boyle, then a social worker on the staff of the Associated Charities and later chief psychiatric social worker of the Central Clinic, makes some pertinent observations as to conditions that stimulated concern about mental hygiene in the era. The Army draft in 1917 was causing general unrest, tensions and disruption of family life. Delinquencies among young adolescents increased. Illegitimacy became more prevalent. Institutions, including Longview and the Columbus Institution for the Feebleminded, were overcrowded. There was a shortage of trained social workers, due in part to their being drained off for service with the Red Cross. This meant that the limited group of social workers was overtaxed and beset with frustrations. In those days there was no full time Professor of Psychiatry at the College of Medicine of the University of Cincinnati. The teaching was done by Dr. H.H. Hoppe in what was then called The Department of Neurology and Psychiatry. Community mental hygiene facilities were very limited. Among them were the Vocation Bureau of the city schools which did psychological testing, the Child Guidance Home and the Psychiatric Consultant who served in the Juvenile Court. The Vocation Bureau was headed by Mrs. Helen Woolley and the Juvenile Court by Judge Charles W. Hoffman with Dr. William Ravine serving as consulting psychiatrist. The Juvenile Court sent some pre-delinquent children to the Bureau of Juvenile Research at Columbus for study and recommendations. Dr. Louis Lurie directed the professional program at the Child Guidance Home. He and Mrs. William Rosenthal, the founders of this valuable organization, both gave voluntary service over a long period of years. The Home's function was primarily diagnostic. Children were studied for periods varying generally from two to four weeks and recommendations were made for such disposition and treatment as seemed feasible in the light of the then existing community facilities. Some of the children were followed for considerable periods as out-patients.1 Longview Hospital cared for the mentally ill committed by court acti