Winnebago Mental Health Institute

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Winnebago Mental Health Institute, formerly the Winnebago State Hospital, is a psychiatric hospital near Oshkosh, Wisconsin, United States located in the unincorporated community of Winnebago, Wisconsin.HistoryThe Winnebago State Hospital was one of several 19th-century psychiatric hospitals in the United States built on the Kirkbride Plan, a style of mental asylum design advocated by Philadelphia psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride in the mid-19th century. The site of the hospital was the object of a competition between Green Bay and Oshkosh in 1870. The voters in the area approved an expenditure of $16,700 to begin construction.Construction first began for the institute in 1871. It opened in 1873 as the Northern State Hospital for the Insane, with the first patient admitted on April 21, 1873. The original building (now gone) was completed on November 11, 1875, with a capacity of 500 beds. Capacity was said to be 650, by 1891. The name was later changed to Winnebago State Hospital c.1930s then to Winnebago Mental Health Institute c.1970s.John Flammang Schrank, the attempted assassin of Theodore Roosevelt, was committed to the Northern Hospital for the Insane at Winnebago in November 1912. He later died at Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun, Wisconsin.