FACILITY'S 60-YEAR HISTORY REFLECTS CHANGES IN TREATMENT.

Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer

Their upturned faces lit by the glow of fireworks, patients and staff at Camarillo State Hospital gathered on the brush-covered north lawn in October to celebrate the hospital's 60th birthday.

The event provided a rare moment to reflect on the history of an institution that began as an outpost in an alfalfa field and quickly grew to become the largest mental hospital in the Southland. Far off the nearest highway and tucked in the shadow of the Santa Monica Mountains, the hospital has been a retreat and repository for the sick, addled and alcoholic of Southern California.

As they celebrated the past 60 years last fall, patients and staff knew the story of Camarillo Hospital was coming to a close. While state funding steadily dwindled, the kind of confined congregate care offered at Camarillo had gradually fallen out of favor.

For those who lived and worked at the hospital, the closure has meant the end of a community.

``In 42 years out there I was always proud of what we did,'' said Buster Smith, who first started work at the hospital in 1951. ``It just doesn't make sense to me that the hospital should end like this.''

The history of the hospital paralleled changes in the treatment of the mentally ill over the years, evolving from a lockup-and-electroshock approach to the current emphasis on community care and patient rights.

When it opened in 1936, Camarillo State Hospital was California's fifth state hospital for the mentally ill. Built in the model of Stockton State Hospital, which was established in 1851 just a year after the state joined the union, Camarillo State Hospital was created to ease overcrowding at other state hospitals and to ``warehouse'' patients who couldn't function in the outside world.

The hospital stands on 1,648 acres that includes a stretch of Calleguas Creek and the western foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. The Spanish-style architecture includes red tile roofs, two enormous courtyards and a four-story bell tower (later rumored, erroneously, to be pictured on the cover of the hit Eagles album ``Hotel California.'').

Ten years after opening, the state legislature authorized funds to build an additional wing for children. By 1945, the hospital population topped 4,000 patients, who were kept busy working at a hog farm, ranch house and dairy operation that included more than 500 Holstein cows. The operation was almost entirely self-contained, with everything from food production to laundry handled by patients and staff.

Buster Smith started work at the hospital as a ward attendant. Smith made what he said were ``starvation wages'' of $180 a month to look after patients and administer treatments, all the while dressed in a crisp white suit and black bow-tie.

It was a very different place then, he remembers.

With primitive drugs and minimal state regulation, patients were left mainly to their own devices. Treatment was dominated by electroshock therapy. Control was handled with straitjackets. Admittance policies were so liberal that people would literally drop off troubled relatives at the front gate, Smith recalled.

Shock therapy was used to cure depression, but also to calm aggression.

``If patients blew up and got totally out of control, we would put them in cuffs and belts and take them to another unit for treatments until they got over the acute stage of aggression,'' he said.

Smith returned to the hospital in 1956 after a stint in the Army to discover major changes. While the population climbed to more than 7,000, physicians had begun using new psychotropic medications like Thorazine that had a dramatic impact on treatment, he recalled.

In the 1960s, the state Legislature began applying higher scrutiny and strict controls. The Lanterman Petris Short Act in 1968 mandated that doctors give annual reviews to patients to end what it called ``inappropriate, indefinite and involuntary commitment of mentally disordered persons, developmentally disabled persons and persons impaired by chronic alcoholism.''

Following the establishment of a distinct program for the developmentally disabled, the hospital reorganized to establish separate programs for patients with distinct afflictions, each staffed by its own management team.

``It really raised the standard,'' Smith said. ``Everyone had an individual treatment program.''

While state control tightened, fewer patients were admitted. The population reached its lowest point in 1984, with the wards housing just 630 people.

CAPTION(S):

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Chart: DECLINING POPULATIONS