A state hospital is a hospital funded and operated by the government of a state. In some countries, such as South Africa, the term is synonymous with public hospital. In other countries, like the United States, general public hospitals are operated by local governments. Due in part to the efforts of Dorothea Dix, the term "state hospital" generally refers to a public psychiatric hospital operated by a state government for persons committed to compulsory psychiatric care after being found not guilty of serious violent crimes on the basis of insanity.
In the United Kingdom, the term may refer to one particular psychiatric hospital:
- State Hospital for Scotland and Northern Ireland
Famous quotes containing the words state and/or hospital:
“The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes, which you say you have heard insisted on by some, I assure you was never mine.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)