Thirty-two students from John Benson’s Psychology classes took a field trip to the Benton State Hospital last Tuesday afternoon. The hospital south of Benton serves the mental patients of southern Arkansas.
The average stay of a patient at the Benton hospital is 40 days and the patients are charged $20 a day if they are able to pay it. Sixty percent of the 1,001 patients presently staying at the hospital are paying some of their costs.
Schizophrenia was the dominant psychotic disorder; 60 percent of the patients were alcoholics.
Miss Judith Wimberly, Social Work Supervisor of the hospital, arranged the tour, which supplemented the classroom studies of the students. The students were familiarized with some of the treatments used at the hospital, such as the shock treatment for depressed patients and the “Hip Program,” which trains patients to live and work in the outside world.