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:
“Thus we steadily worship Mammon, both school and state and church, and on the seventh day curse God with a tintamar from one end of the Union to the other.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The church is a sort of hospital for men’s souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor’s Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)