Affiliations

The Menninger Clinic affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital in Houston in the spring of 2003. The Clinic relocated from Topeka, Kansas, to Houston in June 2003.When C.F. Menninger and his sons, Dr. Karl and Dr. Will, founded this organization in 1925, they envisioned “a better kind of medicine for a better kind of world.” Menninger’s affiliation with Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital ensures that Menninger will continue to fulfill its core mission of providing patient care, training future clinicians, and conducting innovative research.

Education
The Menninger Clinic’s relocation to Houston in 2003 reflects its ongoing commitment to quality education. A partnership with an accredited medical school was essential to ensuring education opportunities for tomorrow’s leading mental health professionals. The psychiatric department at Baylor became the Menninger Department of Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine. Menninger treatment programs offer clinical placements for child psychiatry, advanced adult psychiatry, clinical psychology and social work fellows.

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Research
Globally, research in psychiatry and behavioral sciences involves efforts to understand physical and genetic factors of complex or recurring psychiatric and brain disorders. These studies require the use of cutting-edge technology, which is prohibitively expensive for an independent organization. Partnering with a medical research university enables Menninger to better pursue discoveries in medical and behavioral psychiatric research, advancing treatment for individuals seeking the best in psychiatric care.

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The Menninger Clinic
In 1925, C.F. Menninger, a Topeka medical doctor, and his physician sons, Karl and Will, opened a 13-bed sanitarium in a farmhouse. The Drs. Menninger believed every patient was treatable. Instilling hope, as much as diagnosing disease, emerged as an integral part of treatment.

Dr. Will contributed significantly to the establishment of a guide, which gave incomprehensible mental illnesses names. The guide developed into the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, now in its fourth edition, which serves as the basic tool of mental health professionals worldwide.

Five years after Menninger opened, Dr. Karl published the first of 15 books he would write. The Human Mind featured case studies of patients and deft insights into the human psyche in language understandable by the public. The book became a best seller. Books and scientific writing by Menninger staff have continued to influence psychiatry.

The Menninger Clinic started Southard School for children in 1926. The school fostered treatment programs for children and adolescents, as well as research, which were nationally recognized.

Training programs for the mental health professions flourished at Menninger. After World War II, the Menninger School of Psychiatry quickly became the largest training center in the country, driven by the country’s demand for psychiatrists to treat military veterans. The School of Psychiatry and The Clinic became the hub for training professionals in the bio-psycho-social approach. The treatment approach integrated medical, psychological, developmental and social-family systems affecting the overall health of patients. Addressing the needs of the whole person with quality diagnostic and individualized treatment remains the hallmark of care at Menninger.

In 1935, Fortune magazine cited Menninger as one of the best psychiatric clinics in the nation. Later, the Drs. Menninger took over management of the dismal public psychiatric hospital system in Kansas. Within five years, Kansas advanced from among the worst systems into one of the nation’s finest. What became known as the miracle in Kansas attracted the attention of the nation’s governors, who turned to Menninger for its reform model.

Time magazine featured Dr. Will on a 1948 cover for his national mental health advocacy. Dr. Will later influenced President John F. Kennedy to establish community mental health centers across the nation. Menninger alumni—more than 3,200 combined—have also played major roles in shaping the treatment of mental illness across the country and abroad.

Our researchers have advanced understanding of mental illness and treatment. Developments have included applications for psychiatry to business and industry, biofeedback for mental wellness, new medications for migraine headache and psychotic disorders, and, most recently, a promising model to prevent school violence.

Peer psychiatrists continue to recognize Menninger for its excellence. Menninger remains one of the best psychiatric hospitals in the country in the annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report.



Baylor College of Medicine
Born in Dallas on the cusp of the 20th century, Baylor College of Medicine was among those new medical schools dedicated to excellence in teaching and attracting the best students.

Sixty years ago, the College moved to Houston as the first institution of medical education in the city. It soon established the first graduate school of biomedical sciences in the city and made its home in the first new building on the land donated by the M.D. Anderson Foundation to become the Texas Medical Center.

In 1969, as the only private medical school in the greater Southwest, the College established itself as an independent institution and formed a partnership with the state of Texas to train Texans as physicians to fill a statewide physician gap.

Today, Baylor College of Medicine enjoys an international reputation and is recognized as one of the top 15 medical schools in the United States. It ranks 10th in funding from the National Institutes of Health.

With total research support of $327 million, the school is home to more than 70 research and patient care centers, including the DeBakey Heart Center, the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, the Texas Children's Cancer Center, the Human Genome Sequencing Center, the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, the Breast Care Center, a unit of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Child Health Research Center, the Huffington Center on Aging, a Center for AIDS Research, and federally-funded research units that collectively form an influenza research center.



The Methodist Hospital
For over eight decades, The Methodist Hospital has cultivated a reputation as the city's preeminent hospital and a provider of medical care to the world.

The Methodist Hospital is affiliated with the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, two of the nation’s leading centers for medical education and research. In 2002, U.S. News and World Report recognized The Methodist Hospital as one of America's best hospitals in 10 specialties, including ophthalmology, otolaryngology, neurology/neurosurgery, gynecology, nephrology and urology. The hospital's medical staff includes hundreds of physicians listed in The Best Doctors in America. The Methodist Hospital recently was named one of the country's top 15 major teaching hospitals by Solucient, a company that maintains the nation's largest health care database.

The Methodist Hospital corporation is recognized by Hospitals and Health Networks as one of health care's "100 Most Wired" for its use of Internet technologies to connect with patients, physicians and nurses, employees, suppliers and health plans.

Affiliated with the Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, The Methodist Hospital corporation works closely with local church leaders to bring compassion and spirituality to all of its endeavors. Methodist also maintains a work environment that lives up to its goal of being a "spiritual environment of caring."

For 55 years, Methodist has been the medical home of internationally acclaimed heart surgeon Dr. Michael E. DeBakey. The Methodist DeBakey Heart Center, a comprehensive center for the treatment of cardiovascular conditions and surgery, carries on the clinical care and research of its namesake. DeBakey and Methodist have been linked with a number of medical firsts, including the first coronary bypass surgery; the world's first multiple-organ transplants of a heart, one lung and both kidneys from one donor to four recipients; and development of the MicroMed DeBakey ventricular assist device (VAD), the new generation of heart assist devices.

Treatments of the future are being developed in The Methodist Hospital's Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, operated in partnership with Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital. The program is the first of its kind in the world, combining basic science and clinical research with pediatric and adult cell and gene therapy transplant units. The Center treats patients with cancer and other genetic diseases.