St Patrick's Hospital

St Patrick's Hospital is a psychiatric facility located in Dublin 8, Ireland, near Kilmainham and the Phoenix Park. Founded with money bequeathed by Jonathan Swift. In his poem "Lines on the Death of Dr Swift", Swift famously wrote:

"He gave the little wealth he had /To build a house for fools and mad, /And showed by one satiric touch /No nation needed it so much."

The hospital retains Swiftian touches, with wards named after Stella ( Esther Johnson ), Vanessa ( Esther Vanhomrigh ), Henry Grattan, the village of Kilroot where Swift worked as Prebend at the church, and Laracor when he also worked as a clergyman.

It is a now a private not-for-profit hospital. It has departments of occupational therapy, social work and clinical psychology as well as psychiatry. It offers day hospital and outpatient services as well as inpatient ones. Its motto is "Festina Lente." Prominent psychiatrists such as Anthony Clare are associated with it. Maurice Drury, a friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein, was also associated with the hospital. The poet Austin Clarke was an inpatient there for a year in 1919.

The hospital provides a wide and growing range of treatment programmes for particular disorders and attracting patients from throughout Ireland and from abroad. These specialised treatment programmes include programmes for mood disorders (depression and bipolar depression), anxiety disorder, an alcohol dependence / substance abuse programme, the largest inpatient unit in Ireland for the treatment of the eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, a young adult programme, a treatment programme for those who suffer severe forms of chronic fatigue syndrome as well as a memory clinic and general psychiatric care.