Talk:Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital

Largest foundation?
After looking around on a few other pages and sources, I noticed a trend with other Kirkbride buildings. Many claim to be the (generic) "largest," "largest under one roof," etc. until the Pentagon was built. I'm not sure which one to believe, and without square foot figures on all of them (footprint/foundation and total square feet), I don't think we can keep the unverified info in there. However, another question is raised by this: If Greystone claims to have the largest continuous foundation until the Pentagon was built, is that the same thing as having the largest building under one roof? It seems like a very insignificant distinction to make, but everyone/every building wants its claim to fame, I suppose! I'll keep searching. Would be nice to see blueprints of all these places! I'm also in contact with the man running this website: http://www.gpph.net. I'll pick his brain on this issue, too. Rkitko 11:49, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

19 Feb. 2006 Revision/edits
Thanks to user:69.115.40.66 for drawing my attention to the below innacurate statement:

Patients were slowly transferred to smaller-capacity programs until, in 2005, no patients resided at Greystone.

I assume this user removed it because in 2005, there actually were patients at Greystone (not in the Kirkbride building, though). Sorry for the confusion. I modified it to the existing sentence:

Some patients were slowly transferred to smaller-capacity programs, reducing the number of residential patients to approximately 450 in 2005.

to reflect the information contained in the following pdf file on page 50:

http://www.lsnj.org//PDFs/budget/EyeonBudgetIIWeb.pdf, which contains this information in a table:

Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital
 * Actual FY02: 553
 * Actual FY03: 553
 * Revised FY04: 515
 * Estimated FY05: 451

Hope this helps explain why I reverted and revised this edit, user:69.115.40.66. No hard feelings. Thanks for contributing! Rkitko 04:34, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

GPPH
I currently work in a different psychiatric hospital in NJ and I can assure that GPPH is still very much open. They currently use less than half of the buildings, but still accept patients from STCF's (short term care facilities) through out Passaic and Morris counties, (and a few other counties I believe), for long term care. GPPH also houses a large number of Krol patients, (patients not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity), ISTs (incapable of standing trial)and chronically mentally ill. The patient population has been reduced to about 450. - —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Amaugust (talk • contribs) 05:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC).


 * Ahh, thanks for the information. Do you happen to have any specific resources or literature (either online or print) other than what's already cited in the article that confirms those facts?  I'd live to take your word for it, but Wikipedia can't consist of "original research".  Thanks! (and don't forget to sign the page with " ~ ")  --Rkitko 06:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Attributing a fall in psychiatric inpatients to the introduction of psychotropic drugs.
"The 1970s and 1980s finally saw some weight lifted from this overcrowded facility because of the trend toward de-institutionalization, which was a direct effect of the use of Thorazine, one of the first drugs that was capable of treating the mentally ill."

There are other factors to be considered - care in the commuity, anti-psychiatry movements, empowerment of service user groups, humanistic and psychosocial approaches. To state that de-institutionalization was a direct effect of Thorazine ignores any social, political, legal or psychological context. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.105.75.169 (talk) 11:28, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

trivia
This list was included in the text, but needs to be worked into the prose of the article instead of in a list. --Rkitko (talk) 23:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Interesting notes

 * One of the most famous patients at Greystone was Woody Guthrie, a folksinger/songwriter. During his stay from 1956 to 1961, Bob Dylan would often come visit.  Woody suffered from Huntington's disease (HD), a genetic degenerative nervous disorder. He referred to it as "Gravestone". (Sceurman and Moran, 2004)
 * Allegedly, from 1877 until the Pentagon was completed in the 1940s, the Kirkbride building at Greystone had the largest building foundation in the U.S. However, other Kirkbride buildings also claim to be the "largest under one roof" until the Pentagon was built and it is not known which one is accurate.
 * Allen Ginsberg mentions Greystone in his 1955 epic poem Howl.
 * An underground passage from a long abandoned trolley station exists which was installed to transport patients from the trolley to the hospital in seclusion.
 * The institution was served by the Morris County Traction Company, a trolley line that ran from Greystone to the Morris Plains train station, about a mile away.

No House M.D. reference?
It should be noted somewhere that this building was used as the location for the fictional "Mayfield Psychiatric Hospital" in the season 6 premiere of Fox's "House M.D.". 70.134.77.23 (talk) 11:26, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it shouldn't. It's not encyclopedic information for this article to mention a passing use in a tv series. Should we add a note to every building article that has ever been seen in that tv series? The importance of the location must be reciprocal, e.g. mentioning this building in an article about the House episode under a "production" or "filming" section would be appropriate and warranted, however mentioning this single tv series in an article about the vast history of this building is relatively unimportant and unwarranted. This is, of course, unless the building is widely known for being a shooting location for a variety of shows and movies, then it becomes increasingly more important to mention. But, of course, we need reliable sources, and I don't believe any exist. Rkitko (talk) 13:47, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup may be needed
I've had an interest in this hospital for years and finally decided to contribute to its article here. While adding some info on recent developments I noticed a shocking lack of citations in this article. Hopefully this appeal isn't falling on deaf ears and there are people who have this watchlisted, but I believe this article could use some improvement. If there are no citations for the large majority of information in this article, I can only assume that most of the material was garnered from the rather large external links section, which includes links to articles that should be citations/references and not external links. I can also only assume that this was a simple oversight over the years as much of this work to the article was done years ago and never corrected. Per WP:ELRC sites used as sources should be cited as references, and i'm assuming much of the article content came from sources used as external links. I don't know this for certain and because the article is largely without inline citations, all of its claims need to be fact checked against sources. Some of the external links are fine, like this one and this one, but should also be cited as references per websites that can be both references and external links—include any official sites for the article topic, or websites that are specifically devoted to the topic. As it would be terrible to remove all unsourced material and leave this article nearly blank, it will be a process to attribute everything properly. Weedwacker (talk) 00:12, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ FriarTuck1981 (talk) 06:50, 15 July 2015 (UTC)


 * There's no need to remove any info. I'm the original author and the content hasn't changed very much. It was one of my first articles in a time at Wikipedia (2006) when inline citations were still new and not thought of as necessary. I just haven't bothered to spend much time rebuilding the article with inline citations. Since much has changed and there are new and better sources out there, it might be better just to build a new draft article and sack this one rather than chase down old references. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 01:27, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I've added some Wikiprojects and tags to help draw in fresh eyes. A new draft article sounds like a good idea and i'd be happy to contribute to one.  I've created the page and will begin working on it soon, if you want to help contribute to it. Weedwacker (talk) 01:53, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
 * ✅ FriarTuck1981 (talk) 06:50, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

demolition and bids for alternative uses
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/04/something_stinks_about_the_greystone_deal_di_ionno.html Jeremyb (talk) 15:15, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Article issues

 * I have just attempted to read the article but didn't get very far. The article is largely original research in the present condition and has enjoyed this status apparently since it's creation. I am an editor but I am also a reader of Wikipedia and I had to venture "outside" because of the horrible lack of references. I saw where a draft was started but just in title only. I hope someone continues with this because I am busy with other things right now. At this point it really needs to be chopped this back to a stub (it is really a glorified start and not C class) and rewritten. The very long list of external links, some of which may be able to be incorporated into the article, needs to be shortened, and any contentious material referenced.
 * Weasel words do not help Wikipedia nor does contributions that are without a doubt original research. An example of this is "...World War II had ended and left many soldiers requiring treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder...". As an editor I just happen to know that the diagnosis of PTSD, with the use of that wording, originated in 1980. This means that returning WWII troops could not have been treated for a disorder by that name that did not yet exist. If there is not a source, to support that a diagnosis of mental issues of returning WWII soldiers have now been determined to be PTSD, then it is clear OR and that tag was not even placed on the article. I would think it not appropriate to even make these assertions in a subsection of the history section not relevantly titled. This is just "one" example and I would grow weary of listing more.
 * I love these old buildings, and it will likely be torn down even though I hope not, so an historically accurate article is needed on Wikipedia. Otr500 (talk) 13:39, 18 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Yes, it certainly needs work to bring it up to our current standards, but when I first wrote this entry nearly 9 years ago, in-line citations were uncommon. It doesn't constitute original research as references were present in the external links section at the time. This article hasn't changed very much since it was first written, so many of the changes reflected in newer guidelines, such as those on weasel words, haven't been implemented here.
 * By the way, the article originally has a red link to Postwar Trauma in the section you mention, reflecting the references I had available. It was changed by an IP editor in 2008. Feel free to change it back or find references. I don't see it as original research, however, since there are many publications that assert postwar trauma was PTSD under a different name. It matters little when PTSD was coined.
 * Feel free to work on the draft to replace this article. I agree it needs work, but talk is cheap. Unfortunately, I don't have the time or interest in this subject to do much with it now. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 14:41, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Notable patients
Cullen was sent to Ann Klein Forensic Hospital not GPPH. Also, the dates he is listed as having been there wouldn't be accurate anyway. 160.93.17.45 (talk) 20:09, 8 May 2023 (UTC)