FACTS ABOUT McLEAN
McLean Hospital Overview
As the nation's most honored psychiatric hospital, McLean has always been known for its superior and innovative care. Our mission is to ease the burden of psychiatric illness for our patients and their families, to improve treatment outcomes and to advance our understanding of mental illness. McLean, the largest psychiatric affiliate of Harvard Medical School, is staffed by world-renowned specialists in the research, diagnosis and treatment of complex behavioral and psychiatric illnesses, including schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, personality disorders, trauma, Alzheimer's disease and substance abuse. The hospital offers a full continuum of care, including specialized academic programs for children and adolescents. Supported by $46 million annually in research grants, McLean maintains Harvard's largest psychiatric neuroscience program and the largest research program of any private psychiatric hospital worldwide. McLean is an affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of Partners HealthCare.
- Founded in Charlestown, Mass., as the original psychiatric department of Massachusetts General Hospital.
- Moved to Belmont, Mass., just outside Boston, in 1895.
- Renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted was instrumental in selecting the Belmont site.
- Clinical programs focus on the treatment of alcohol and drug abuse/dual diagnosis, Alzheimer's disease and other geriatric psychiatric disorders, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, child and adolescent psychiatric disorders, depression and anxiety disorders, developmental disabilities, dissociative and trauma-related disorders, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and women's mental health.
- In 1888, established the nation's first laboratory dedicated to studying the role of biological factors in mental illness.
- Operates the largest psychiatric neuroscience research program of any Harvard University-affiliated hospital, department or school.
- Ranks in the top five percent of U.S. hospitals receiving research funding from the National Institutes of Health.
- Home to the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, the world's largest "brain bank."
- Co-founded and jointly operates the Massachusetts General Hospital/McLean Hospital Adult and Child Psychiatry Residency Training Programs.
- McLean scientific publications are among the most commonly cited sources for neuroscience, according to the Institute for Scientific Information.
- Developed BASIS-24, one of the most widely used behavioral health outcome assessment tools.
- Established the nation's first mental health information center to be run for and by consumers of mental health services.
- Developed and implemented national health screenings for alcohol, depression and memory disorders.
Recent Achievements
- Opened an adult self-pay residential treatment program for substance abuse in bucolic Princeton, Mass., approximately 40 miles from downtown Boston
- Opened a state-of-the-art Fitness and Social Recreational Center for McLean inpatients, residential patients, partial hospital patients and students from the hospital's school programs.
- Achieved nearly $8.8 million in donations, a number that exceeded McLean's annual goal and continues the strong giving history of the past eight years.
- Added $10.5 million to board-designated funds in a major land sale with the Town of Belmont. A related agreement included the preservation of more than 100 acres as open space.
- Increased research funding to a record $48 million in 2005. Based on total revenues, McLean's research program is two times larger than it was just five years ago.
- Operates the world's largest psychiatric imaging facility dedicated solely to psychiatric and substance abuse research.
- Purchased a sophisticated, high-power scanner for research that will help McLean investigators better understand the complex brain mechanisms involved in mental health and illness.
- Added a new laboratory to study the genes that underlie the risk of developing psychiatric illness.
- Continued to produce groundbreaking research results. In the past six months, McLean researchers: have shown that there is no evidence that regular use of peyote causes brain damage or psychological problems; have established for the first time a direct link between findings seen in the postmortem brains of individuals with schizophrenia and electrophysiological recordings in rats' brains after experimentally-induced simulations; have reported that binge eating disorder runs in families, raising the possibility that this condition may have a genetic basis; have found that Kudzu, a Chinese herb, moderates alcohol consumption.