Sharon Lewis

Friends Hospital is the oldest private psychiatric hospital in the United States providing psychiatric treatment to adolescents, adults, and seniors for more than 200 years. A rural oasis in an urban setting, the hospital's beautiful 100-acre campus offers a quiet refuge where healing has taken place for two centuries. In 1813, the Quakers founded Friends Hospital based on the belief that all people, even those with a mental illness, can live a “moral, ordered existence if treated with kindness, dignity and respect.” The main focus of “moral treatment” was to strengthen the mental wellness of each patient. Thus, treatment concentrated on strengthening mental health, not on curing mental illness. This was a departure from the accepted view of the time and the guiding principle on which all of the hospital’s procedures were based. Today, Friends Hospital still operates under this original mission and, using behavioral health evidence-based practices coupled with modern principles of wellness and recovery, strives to provide patients with the tools they need to understand and manage their illness in a compassionate and supportive environment. This approach has earned the facility the distinction as one of Philadelphia’s top mental health facilities and the only inpatient psychiatric hospital in Pennsylvania to achieve Top Performer on Key Quality Measures ® from The Joint Commission for four years in a row. In 2016, Friends Hospital is one of a select group of healthcare facilities in the U.S. to be named Leaders in LGBT Healthcare Equality by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).