Madison Center: the community mental health center

Founded 1949 — the East Madison Street facility from 1977

The city's own psychiatric institution was a nonprofit: Madison Center's founding year is its own statement, repeated in its announcements to the end: founded in 1949. The circumstances of that founding — its founders, its first form, the ground it first stood on — are not documented in the sources reached, and they are named here as a gap rather than filled; the Tribune's archive is the settling source. What the record does establish is the institution the founding became. The city's own Northeast Neighborhood plan, in its timeline of the district, records that in 1977 the "Mental Health Center of St. Joseph County, the present day Madison Center," moved into its facility on East Madison Street — the address, 403 East Madison, that the center carried in the directories to the end, and the street its name plainly follows.

For decades it was the state-designated Community Mental Health Center for St. Joseph County, the designation being the state's assignment of the county's public mental-health duties to a single nonprofit provider. The growth under that designation is documented by the university that trained its staff: Indiana University South Bend's 2006 commencement program, profiling the center's longtime executive director Marsha Brook — associate director, then executive director from 1986 to her retirement in December 2005 — records that under her leadership the center grew from 75 employees in 1978 to more than 1,200, built satellite clinics throughout northern Indiana, and extended services through discrete programs for children, on-site school and nursing-home services, and case management, under the motto "We Help People." By 2001 the trade record describes Madison Center and Hospital as a private, not-for-profit corporation providing a continuum of behavioral health services through hospitals, clinics, and residential facilities in the South Bend area, its primary market the four Indiana counties around it and two in Michigan; in October 2000 it had merged with Family & Community Services of Michigan City, which became a Madison regional clinic.

The plant matched the description: the city's 2003 plan counts the Madison Center and Hospital complex at some twenty-three acres on the east bank of the St. Joseph River, six buildings along Niles Avenue — Madison Center, Madison Hospital, Madison Apartments, Madison Center for Children, Riverside Hospital, and Providence House — totaling approximately 300,000 square feet of clinical space. The campus kept building into its last years: its GeroPsych Institute, a facility for the mental-health needs of older adults with forty acute-care beds, opened in July 2007 after a $20 million building program, and federal earmarks of the era document the model's reach — a 2008 appropriation of $143,000 for facilities and equipment for an attention-deficit clinic, carried by Senators Bayh and Donnelly. The 2010 designation announcement records one more standing fact: the center's partnership with the University of Notre Dame, which the announcement pledged would continue on its inpatient base. For sixty years, in short, the county's public psychiatry was this: a nonprofit corporation, born in 1949, headquartered from 1977 on the street that named it, and grown by 2006 into one of the largest behavioral-health employers in northern Indiana.

Sources:

1. Madison Center / Oaklawn Psychiatric Center, joint announcement of 7 September 2010 (PR Newswire) — Madison's founding in 1949, its five-county service, and the Notre Dame partnership, each as the center's own statement gives them.
2. City of South Bend, Northeast Neighborhood Development Area Plan (2003) — the project timeline's 1977 entry ("Mental Health Center of St. Joseph County, the present day Madison Center, moves into facility on East Madison Street") and the campus description: some twenty-three acres, six named buildings along Niles Avenue, approximately 300,000 square feet of clinical space.
3. Indiana University South Bend, fortieth commencement program (9 May 2006), biographical sketch of Marsha P. Brook — the growth from 75 employees in 1978 to more than 1,200, the satellite clinics, the school and nursing-home services and case management, the motto "We Help People," and Brook's executive directorship from 1986 to December 2005.
4. OPEN MINDS market intelligence (2001 and 2000) — Madison Center and Hospital as a private not-for-profit corporation providing a continuum of behavioral health services through hospitals, clinics, and residential facilities, with its four-county Indiana and two-county Michigan market; and the merger of 2 October 2000 with Family & Community Services of Michigan City.
5. "Northern Indiana update," Indiana Business magazine (2008), via the Free Library — the GeroPsych Institute's opening in July 2007: $20 million, 90,000 square feet, forty acute-care beds, for the mental health needs of older adults. LegiStorm, Madison Center earmarks — the fiscal 2008 appropriation of $143,000 for an attention-deficit clinic's facilities and equipment, sponsored by Senators Bayh and Donnelly.
6. Hospitals section of this history — the designation's standing ("for decades the state-designated Community Mental Health Center for St. Joseph County"), cross-referenced here in a line as briefed.