The nation's second oldest psychiatric hospital celebrated its 200th birthday last week.

Eastern State Hospital opened its doors in Lexington in 1824.

Just like the facility itself, the form of medicine practiced inside has greatly changed over the last two centuries.

Change was a strong theme during recent ceremonies as doctors, patients and parents gathered in reflection.

Mom, you can't leave me here.

If you leave me here, bad things are going to happen to me.

Unimaginable things.

The voices are telling me that you got to get me out of here.

The year was 2002.

The voice from my youngest son, Nathan.

I came away from that understanding why he was horrified to be in Eastern State Hospital.

This had nothing to do with the dedicated staff that you've all heard of.

They were the best.

I worked at Eastern State Hospital in the central triage center of admissions, but the place itself was so foreboding and so off putting and so scary that it was stigmatizing for the patients that had to go there.

Together, we decided we were going to start a campaign to make it better.

The past has brought us where we are today.

There are things that we did that were evidence based at the time that we no longer do, because we know differently.

That means that we can affect our patients in a different way.

We can help them in a different way and they can live their fullest lives.

And 200 years.

What we think about is treatment.

What we think about is science based has come a long way from the time when Mary Todd Lincoln.

I hope that wasn't a hip evaluation when West was served there.

Right.

So we always have to learn.

We always have to move forward.

We always have to take advantage of what science and best practice tells us.

I had a real jaundiced attitude about this place before I got here.

Born of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and a myriad of other movies and sarcastic stereotypes.

I was there three days and I walked the hallways with my fellow patients and we dine together.

Staff did know me from Adam.

I was just another patient, but I was listening and watching.

Not once in those three days that hear an unkind remark and uncivil remark.

On the contrary, everything I heard was compassionate and patient and professional.

My vision in the next hundred years is that we're open to anyone that we have the best care that looks like any other health care.

People seek us just like they seek any other type of health care, and that we're there to provide that.

And we can continue to help people live full lives in any capacity that they want to.

Mental health treatment works.

I can't say enough about the care I received at Eastern State along with my fellow patients.

We're entitled to the same courtesy, respect and treatment as someone that's completely mentally healthy as human beings and an Eastern State hospital.

I have 100% certainty that that takes place, and I applaud the staff and I thank you for saving my life.

Eastern States A new facility opened in 2013.

The original hospital was demolished shortly thereafter.