50 Years Ago

Sunday, April 11, 1971

Groundbreaking set for mental hospital

Lt. Gov. Lester Maddox and the State Board of Health will participate Wednesday in groundbreaking ceremonies for the Northwest Georgia Regional Mental Hospital on Redmond Circle. The ceremonies are scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.

The hospital will be built by Ranger Construction Co. of Atlanta on the present site of Battey State Hospital. It will provide facilities for the treatment of tuberculosis and mental illness, primarily.

Ranger has contracted with the State Hospital Building Authority at a cost of $9,850,216. It has been allotted 900 calendar days (nearly three years) to finish.

The hospital will contain 550 beds. Three hundred beds will be used for mentally ill patients and 250 beds will be used for tuberculosis patients. However, the hospital has been designed so units for tuberculosis patients may be converted for use by patients with mental illness if the tuberculosis caseload should decline.

During the early 1960s the State Health Department proposed construction of reginal mental health hospitals to relieve crowded conditions at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville and to improve the quality of treatment for mental health disorders. The hospital here will be the only facility on the East Coast providing a combination of treatment for mental and physical health impairments, state health officials said.

There are to be a total of eight regional mental health hospitals throughout Georgia. Such hospitals are already in operation in Atlanta, Savannah and Augusta. Others will be built here, and in Columbus, Gainesville, Macon and Albany.