Belmont's McLean Named Top Hospital

Talk about a streak.

, which has been located in Belmont for the past 116 years, was named recently America’s top free standing psychiatric hospital for the 22nd consecutive year and third among all psychiatric services nationwide, according to the U.S. News & World Report annual "best hospitals" survey. 

The 85-acre hospital, which moved from Charlestown to Belmont in 1895 on land surveyed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, now occupies 28 buildings on its campus on the southwestern edge of Belmont. 

Today McLean has 1,311 full time employees, including many Belmont residents. 

“This year, McLean marks 200 years of excellence and innovation in providing support to those who need our care,” said Scott Rauch, McLean's president and Psychiatrist in Chief.

“These are referral centers where other hospitals send their sickest patients,” said Avery Comarow,U.S. News Health Rankings Editor.

“Hospitals like these are ones you or those close to you should consider when the stakes are high,” said Comarow.

“Although our services have grown dramatically since our founding, our tradition of providing compassionate care and improving the lives of people affected by psychiatric illness endures. We are honored that our deep commitment to our patients and their families is being recognized with a spot on the U.S. News list as one of America's best hospitals,” Rauch said.

McLean Hospital, the first psychiatric hospital in New England, is the largest psychiatric facility of Harvard Medical School, an affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital and a member of Partners HealthCare. For more information about McLean Hospital, visit www.mclean.harvard.edu.

Some interesting facts about McLean:

• The hospital is named for John McLean, a merchant, who upon his death in 1823, named the hospital the beneficiary of $25,000, payable on his widow’s passing. Upon her death in 1834, the hospital received a gift totaling nearly $120,000, due to a residual legacy of more than $90,000. 

• The famous children’s nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” was written about Mary Sawyer, an attendant who joined the McLean staff in 1832. As a child growing up in Sterling, Mass., Sawyer adopted a sickly lamb that had been abandoned by its mother. As it grew stronger, the lamb began to follow Mary every where, even to school. John Roulstone witnessed the lamb’s devotion to Mary and was inspired to write a three-verse poem. Sarah Josepha Hale decided to incorporate the poem into a children’s book and added the final three stanzas to the poem. She called the book “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

• In 1872, McLean Superintendant Dr. John Tyler became the first Professor of Mental Disease at Harvard Medical School.

• McLean opened the first psychiatric school of nursing in 1882. 

• In 1888, McLean Hospital was the first psychiatric hospital in the United States to establish basic and clinical laboratories to study the role of biological factors in mental illness.

• As late as 1944, McLean was a self-sustaining community, operating a farm, an upholstery shop and a blacksmith shop. Beyond fish and some meat and dairy products bought during two weekly tips to Quincy Market, all food was produced on the McLean grounds.  

• McLean is currently home to the world's largest Brain Bank: the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center.