‘UK at the Half’: Honoring Eastern State Hospital’s 200th anniversary
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Nov. 11, 2024) — On May 1, 1824, the original Eastern State Hospital opened its doors on the site of Fayette Hospital, located on Lexington’s Newtown Pike. At the time, it was considered to be just the second state psychiatric hospital in the nation. Through epidemics, storms, fires, floods and overcrowding, Eastern State has remained a constant, continuing to serve the community over the past two centuries.
The state opened a modern, 300,000-square-foot facility on the University of Kentucky’s Coldstream Research Campus in 2013. Owned by the Kentucky Department for Behavioral Health, Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities and managed by UK HealthCare, the facility houses 195 acute care beds and provides critical, recovery-focused psychiatric care for adults from a 50-county region of the state.
In this “UK at the Half,” Eastern State Hospital Chief Administrative Officer Lindsey Jasinski and Chief Nursing Officer Marc Woods discuss misconceptions about psychiatric illness and how modern-day mental health care is an integral part of overall health.
“UK at the Half” airs during halftime of each UK football and basketball game broadcast on the radio and is hosted by UK Public Relations and Marketing. To hear the “UK at the Half” interview, click the play button above.
UK HealthCare is the hospitals and clinics of the University of Kentucky. But it is so much more. It is more than 10,000 dedicated health care professionals committed to providing advanced subspecialty care for the most critically injured and ill patients from the Commonwealth and beyond. It also is the home of the state’s only National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, a Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit that cares for the tiniest and sickest newborns, the region’s only Level 1 trauma center and Kentucky’s top hospital ranked by U.S. News & World Report.
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