Menninger Clinic

MENNINGER CLINIC

The Menninger Clinic is an international facility for mental-health treatment, education, research, and prevention. It was started in 1925 by Dr. Charles Frederick, Karl A. Menninger, and his two sons, Karl and Will Menninger out of a small farm house on the outskirts of Topeka, Kansas. In the 1930s a small group of highly dedicated clinicians began to develop methods of applying psychoanalytic ideas to hospital treatment. By 1942 the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis was founded as part of the Menninger Clinic.

After World War II the psychiatric residency program at the Menninger Clinic greatly expanded, with the result that the center became a major training site for American psychiatry. More than 2,000 mental-health professionals have graduated from Menninger training programs. As the Clinic developed, research became a high priority. The Menninger Psychotherapy Research Project, for example, was a seminal investigation of the outcome of psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

As Menninger clinicians became increasingly sophisticated at applying psychoanalytic principles to hospital treatment, the clinic became internationally known as a tertiary-care referral center for treatment-refractory patients. Patients came from all over the world for extended hospital treatment with an intensive psychoanalytic focus.

The Menninger Clinic continues to be rated as one of the best two or three psychiatric hospitals in the United States. While a psychoanalytic perspective is still at the core of its treatment philosophy, clinicians have integrated modern psychopharmacologic approaches into their psychotherapeutic efforts. Largely because of the influence of the managed-care movement within the United States, patients who come to the Menninger Clinic stay in the hospital for much shorter periods. As inpatient services have contracted, the clinic's partial-hospitalization and outpatient services have expanded.

The Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis continues to thrive as part of the Menninger Clinic. Training programs for psychiatry residents, postdoctoral psychology fellows, and post-master's social-work fellows are a central part of the facility. Also flourishing at the clinic are psychoanalytically oriented research programs on the psychotherapy process and outcomes and on child development.

The Menninger Clinic provides comprehensive evaluations for patients from all parts of the United States and abroad. The clinic also has specialized treatment programs for trauma survivors, impaired professionals, substance-abuse patients, eating-disorder patients, and chronic psychotics.

Glen O. Gabbard

See also: Blank/nondelusional psychoses; Bornstein, Berta; Devereux, Georges (born Gyorgy Döbo); Ellenberger, Henri Frédéric; Menninger, Karl A.; Norway; Philippines; Racker, Heinrich; Rapaport, David; Rubinstein, Benjamin B.; Stone, Leo; United States; Weiss, Edoardo.