America’s Mental Health & Wellness Corridor – Framingham Area Research

Given Framingham’s history of national leadership in the realm of health, area residents are invited to participate in a survey about the unique history of Massachusetts and Rhode Island as America’s Mental Health & Wellness Corridor.

Dementia and mental health are the care and concern of many Americans. Framingham’s connection with these two areas of medicine dates to the early 1900s at least, and is exemplified in the person of Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller, a Framingham resident.

Dr. Carter-Fuller worked with Alois Alzheimer to invent a new understanding of dementia that was a leap forward in knowledge and treatment. Their work echoes worldwide to this day. No less impressive is wife Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller, a Paris-trained sculptor whose work during the Harlem Renaissance was noted for its emotion and feeling. Framingham's Danforth Museum is the caretaker of the Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller Special Collection.

The phrase America's Mental Health & Wellness Corridor is a generic descriptor for a 200+ year history of innovation and national leadership in the realm of mental health and wellness that has emanated from MetroWest and surrounding areas.

America's Mental Health & Wellness Corridor was first discussed publicly in 2022 at a National Park Service event. Since then, the words have also come to describe a collaborative effort to creatively celebrate the area's rich history in order to deepen an American culture of mental health and wellness in the 2020s.

Early research into America’s Mental Health & Wellness Corridor concentrated on Worcester County. Since then, more research has rounded out the geographic contours into and beyond MetroWest, Essex County, and into Rhode Island and linked the region’s cultural leadership in the realm of mental wellness all the way back to Colonial Boston.

America’s Mental Health & Wellness Corridor has been discussed publicly in the major newspapers of the region, and in forums with community leaders and collaborators from Boston to MetroWest to Worcester County to Rhode Island. A presentation about America’s Mental Health & Wellness Corridor was made at the New England Museum Association meeting in Newport in November 2024. Even Google AI recognizes the term America’s Mental Health & Wellness Corridor.

Plans are in place to bring America's Mental Health & Wellness Corridor into the public eye in time for America's 250th birthday. The name America’s Mental Health & Wellness Corridor may be good enough to describe the region’s unique history, culture, and creativity at the crossroads of the mental life and the pursuit of happiness. Or, perhaps there is a better one.

The National Museum of Mental Health Project is proud of its history of academic research and peer-reviewed journal publication. Yet, this name research is informal and invites candor and creativity. Survey responses will serve as a last-whistle-stop before the America’s Mental Health & Wellness Corridor name is put into wider use.

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About the National Museum of Mental Health Project

The National Museum of Mental Health Project is a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization and virtual museum whose mission is to strengthen mental health through creativity, culture (including sports), and the arts nationwide by bringing the museum to you. The Project seeks a community to host the first small museum of a national museum of mental health, and to lift up its walls in a barn-raising on America’s 250th birthday - July 4, 2026.