“S” is for South Carolina Lunatic Asylum / State Hospital

“S” is for South Carolina Lunatic Asylum / State Hospital. The South Carolina Lunatic Asylum, located on Bull Street in Columbia, was established by the General Assembly in 1821 but did not open until 1828. It is the third oldest state mental institution in the United States. In 1896 the institution was renamed the South Carolina State Hospital for the Insane and it gradually adopted a custodial function, caring for large numbers of patients deemed primarily chronic and incurable. By the 1960s and 1970s anti-psychiatry and civil rights movements, community care initiatives, and Medicaid led to deinstitutionalization, a gradual process by which the number of patients in the hospital dropped markedly. By 2015 the Department of Mental Health had sold all of the property of the old South Carolina Lunatic Asylum / State Hospital.