About Us
Hospital Overview
Fulton State Hospital consists of four treatment units including maximum-security (Biggs Forensic Center, 201 beds), intermediate security (Guhleman Forensic Center, 200 beds), minimum-security (Hearnes Psychiatric Center, 67 beds) and the Hope Center. The Hope Center/Annex is a 28-bed program that offers individuals an open campus atmosphere as an effort to assist individuals in getting back to a state of control, balance and self-determination in their own life choices.
Individual Population
Service recipients come to Fulton State Hospital on both a voluntary and involuntary basis, sometimes being committed by the courts for evaluation or treatment. Fulton State Hospital also serves as a statewide treatment facility for persons found not guilty or unable to stand trial by reason of mental disease or defect.
Fulton State Hospital treats an individual population that is both clinically and demographically quite diverse. Our current individual population is 59% Caucasian and 38% African-American, with the remaining3 % comprised of individuals from Latino and Asian-American backgrounds. Most individuals are male (86%). A small percentage identifies themselves as having a homosexual orientation. The vast majority (65%) are single/never married. Thirty-four percent of our individual fall in the range of 36-45 years, but our population ranges in age from the teens to the 90s.
Fulton State Hospital has a small number of hearing-impaired individuals, which poses special challenges to the treatment staff. The hospital retains a part-time consultant to provide sign language services for these individuals, and to teach staff members the fundamentals of signing in order to enhance their own abilities to communicate and interact with our hearing-impaired individuals.
Due to our location and our catchment area, we have many individuals who come from small communities in rural parts of the state. However, we also have many individuals from urban centers since we provide the state’s only maximum and intermediate security psychiatric units.
Clinically, our individuals have a very wide range of diagnoses, covering virtually all the major categories of the DSM-IV. The most common primary diagnoses include Schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, affective conditions (primarily Bipolar Disorder), and Antisocial and Borderline personality disorders. Also treated are individuals committed for sexual offenses, and have corresponding diagnoses of paraphilias. Additionally, many individuals have primary or secondary diagnoses of substance abuse, borderline intellectual functioning, and anxiety disorders, while a smaller number suffer from dementias (including those due to Alzheimer’s disease, vascular conditions, HIV, or traumatic brain injuries), Huntington’s Disease, other organic disorders, and dissociative conditions. The average length of stay for individuals on the inpatient wards is 2.7 years.
Treatment Overview
As would be expected with such a diverse individual population, a correspondingly wide variety of services are offered at Fulton State Hospital including: forensic evaluations and admissions, competency restoration treatment, acute inpatient treatment for Department of Corrections inmates, substance abuse treatment, and long-term treatment and rehabilitation for individuals with severe and persistent mental disorders and personality disorders. Our long-term treatment and rehabilitation programs emphasize the application of state-of-the art technologies in the form of structured ward-wide programs. Psychologists have been important leaders in the development of these treatment initiatives and currently fill active and critical roles in the implementation and oversight of these programs.