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Mental Heath has always been around, in the past and has been treated by imprisonment, sleep, food, and liquid depredation, also brain surgery, and electrocution was common. Bandon has been in the forefront of this research for over 100 years.  
 
Brandon Mental Health Centre  
 
In June 1890 a Seventeenth Century style Reformatory Home for boys was opened on the North Hill, the Governor was John Sifton, father of Clifford Sifton, to aid him was a chief attendant, and a matron. It was known as the Brandon Reformatory, but in the first year, there was only a single resident, a 9-year-old boy sent there for stealing mail.  
 
It became apparent that the expensive facility needed a new use, and authorities intimated that insanity was growing faster than juvenile crime. To accommodate the transfer of an estimated forty persons from the Selkirk Asylum to the Brandon location, alterations were required.  
 
Staffs was hired, the Superintendent was Dr. Patterson, a general physician making a special study of insanity. The Physician in charge was Dr. Gordon Bell. The former Governor of the Reformatory was transferred to Provincial Public Buildings, and Institutions as an Inspector. By the end of 1891 the “house on the hill” remained unoccupied, but in 1892 a four story high Asylum costing sixty thousand dollars was built next to the Reformatory, newsprint described it as a “quite imposing structure, solid and substantial” the reformatory was used for Administration purposes.  
Eventually the Brandon Asylum was opened, and in an 1896 report by J. W. Sifton he said that the Asylum contained one hundred and forty patients, half of them from the Territories. The adjoining farm produced an estimated one hundred tons of vegetables, root crops and corn ensilage. This building was completely destroyed by fire on November 4th 1910, and the 643 patients had to be housed in other buildings on the grounds then they were walked to the old Brandon Arena where they stayed until December 1912. The Parkland building was built on the site of the destroyed Asylum. In 1921 the west half of the Norwood Gardens Building was completed. The Nurses Residence was occupied in 1923, the Valleyview Building in 1925, the Pine Ridge Building in 1934, the east half of Norwood Gardens in 1935, and an extension to the northwest wing of the Parkland Building in 1949.  
Names and descriptions change on a regular basis in Mental Health, and so did the name of this centre. At the start it was known as the Brandon Asylum, then it was called the Brandon Hospital for the Insane, then in 1919, the Brandon Hospital for Mental Diseases, and finally in 1972 the Brandon Mental Health Centre, commonly BMHC was used when mentioning it.  
 
There were no graduate nurses working on the wards before 1920, but on June 20th 1923 the first class graduated from the School of Nursing, seven in all, namely Mrs. Gladys Seward, the Misses M. Seaburn, E. Carson, I. Esslemont, K. Boomer, M. Rogerson, and M. Black. Dr. C established this school.  
 
Source: Brandon a City by G. F. Barker  
 
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