Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital (LPPH) is a psychiatric teaching hospital, part of the Psychiatry Department at the
University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It is part of the University of California system and is dedic ...
. It was located on the Parnassus campus of UCSF until 2023, when it moved to the UCSF Medical Center at Mount Zion.
Langley Porter Clinic was the first psychiatric institute in
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
, and is the oldest facility of the UCSF Psychiatry Department.
History
The foundation stone of the hospital was laid in 1941. The hospital opened in 1942 with 100 beds, and was completed in 1943. The hospital was first known by the name "Langley Porter Clinic", which later changed to the "Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute", and later again to "Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute", or informally, "LPPI". In 1948, "the clinic's director, Karl Bowman, was transforming it into one of the world's most important hubs for research into transgender sexual identities." It was also "an important early center for the development of
psychedelic therapy
Psychedelic therapy (or psychedelic-assisted therapy) refers to the proposed use of psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin, ayahuasca, LSD, psilocin, mescaline (peyote), DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, Ibogaine, MDMA, to treat mental disorders. As of 2021, psych ...
."
The LPPI became part of the medical center's accreditation in 1962. It was named after Dr. Robert Langley Porter, a prominent and influential dean of UCSF.
The eminent psychologist
Paul Ekman
Paul Ekman (born February 15, 1934) is an American psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco who is a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He was ranked 59th out of t ...
worked here from 1960 to 2004. Anthropologist
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropology, anthropologist, social sciences, social scientist, linguistics, linguist, visual anthropology, visual anthropologist, semiotics, semiotician, and cybernetics, cybernetici ...
, a former OSS officer; and poet
Weldon Kees
Harry Weldon Kees (February 24, 1914 – disappeared July 18, 1955) was an American poet, librarian, painter, literary critic, novelist, playwright, jazz pianist, short story writer, and filmmaker. Despite his brief career, Kees is consider ...
also worked here in the 1950s with psychiatrist
Jurgen Ruesch Jurgen Ruesch (born Jürgen Rüsch; November 9, 1909 – July 8, 1995) was an American psychiatrist.
Life
Jurgen Ruesch was born in Naples, Italy, to Swiss parents. He studied at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and moved to San Francisco i ...
. During WWII,
Virginia Prince
Virginia Charles Prince (November 23, 1912 – May 2, 2009) was an American transgender woman and transgender activist. She published '' Transvestia'' magazine, and started Full Personality Expression, which later became Tri-Ess, for male he ...
, a trans woman and pharmacologist who became "an early transgender activist" also worked at the clinic.
Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital relocated to a renovated space on the seventh floor of the UCSF Mount Zion Medical Center in 2023. The former LPPI building at UCSF's Parnassus campus (dating to 1942) was then demolished to make way for a new 15-story, 324-bed hospital for the
UCSF Medical Center
The UCSF Medical Center is a research and teaching hospital in San Francisco, California, and is a medical center of the University of California, San Francisco. It is affiliated with the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Helen Diller Famil ...
, which is estimated to cost $4.3 billion and open in 2030.
References
Further reading
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Hospitals in San Francisco
Psychiatric hospitals in California
Teaching hospitals in California
University of California, San Francisco
Hospital buildings completed in 1942
1941 establishments in California
Hospitals established in 1942