Many of those who were treated at West Penn during its earliest days had mental illnesses, and it was soon clear that they needed more than hospital care — they need a specialized facility of their own. In 1862, West Penn opened the Dixmont Hospital (known officially as the "Department of the Insane in the Western Pennsylvania Hospital of Pittsburgh”) on a steep bluff overlooking the Ohio River, about eight miles downriver from West Penn. That hospital, the first specialized mental health facility in Western Pennsylvania, remained under West Penn's ownership until 1907, after which Dixmont was independently controlled.