About

The Connecticut Valley Hospital opened in 1868 under the name General Hospital for the Insane of the State of Connecticut. The name was changed in 1874 to the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane, and finally in 1961 to Connecticut Valley Hospital. In the late nineteenth century the hospital became overcrowded, something that was common in nineteenth and twentieth century institutions. Additions created capacity for about 1,700 patients. In 1872, a new law required the hospital to care for convicts diagnosed as insane within the state. This caused the hospital to shift away from a curative focus to long-term care. In 1985, the hospital joined the National Register of Historic Places for its history as a facility and historically prominent architecture. The Connecticut Valley Hospital is still operating as a psychiatric facility today under a “patient-centered approach” that emphasizes recovery.

The process of recovery and rehabilitation utilized in Connecticut Valley Hospital, and many other hospitals today, became prevalent due to a former Connecticut Valley Hospital patient, Clifford Beers. In the early twentieth century, Beers advocated a shift away from the moral treatment state institutions focused on and founded the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene. He is credited with beginning the mental hygiene movement in the U.S. and helped hospitals discharge many more patients. 

The hospital began burying deceased patients in the Connecticut Valley Hospital Cemetery beginning in 1878 and continuing until 1957. As was common with many state institution cemeteries, the hospital did not include names or death dates on their gravestones, but rather inscribed each grave with a number correlating with the order in which they were buried. In the 1990s, Reverend John Hall came across the cemetery and felt that it was important to name those who had been buried, and he began the work of linking names of former patients to the named graves. Many names have been identified with a grave, but some still remain unmatched. Every year since 1999 Reverend Hall has led a memorial service at the cemetery for those buried there. Families of former patients, advocates, and former staff of the hospital meet and read aloud the names of 100 former patients each year in order to memorialize those who died in the hospital. The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2018 as a standalone historic district separate from the Hospital. 

The cemetery is accessible to the public.