Mental Asylums
To give these people the care they deserve, we need to bring back psychiatric asylums. Not the dismal institutions that were shuttered in the past, or settings of gothic fiction, but asylums based on the true meaning of the word: places of sanctuary and safety for vulnerable people - Dominic Sisti
HWN Suggests
It’s Time to Bring Back Asylums
The very word “asylum” brings shivers to those old enough to remember its abuses. It has a disturbing cultural legacy to confront in the sadistic Nurse Ratched of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Bringing it back in any form will face the twin obstacles of cost and image. But for the most vulnerable among us, who exist in a world of peril to themselves and to others, it is a far better option than the alternatives of homelessness and incarceration.
Articles of Interest
The Truth About Deinstitutionalization
A popular theory links the closing of state psychiatric hospitals to the increased incarceration of people with mental illness. But the reality is more complicated.
A Victorian mental asylum
What was life really like in Victorian mental asylums? The story of Hanwell Mental Asylum reveals that they were kinder places than we might think.
America's first investigative journalist got her start in an asylum
Trailblazer Nellie Bly first went undercover in a New York psychiatric hospital in 1887, when she exposed its horrific conditions.
Declared Insane for Speaking Up: The Dark American History of Silencing Women Through Psychiatry
On a hot summer’s night in June 1860, the heavy door of the insane asylum clanged shut behind Elizabeth Packard and she felt all hope desert her. Because she was not mad. She was merely independent.
Film goes behind the doors of the asylum
Documentary explores the sesmic shift in mental health care.
Four horrifying medical procedures we’re glad history forgot
The annals of medical history are filled with some bizarre treatments. They range from the infamous, like leeches and bloodletting, to the obscure. Here, four of the most shocking medical procedures you’ve probably never heard of...
Inside the Abandoned Asylum That Was Made Infamous by Geraldo Rivera
Letchworth Village is a place where unspeakable atrocities were committed. Now, it's a playground for graffiti artists, punk kids, and dog walkers.
Is it time to reconsider the asylum?
They have become associated with chaos and cruelty. But a new exhibition argues that we need to reclaim asylums as places of refuge.
Prisons Are the New Asylums
Across the country, correctional facilities are struggling with the reality that they have become the nation’s de facto mental-health-care providers, although they are hopelessly ill-equipped for the job.
Psychiatric Institutions Are a Necessity
To give these people the care they deserve, we need to bring back psychiatric asylums. Not the dismal institutions that were shuttered in the past, or settings of gothic fiction, but asylums based on the true meaning of the word: places of sanctuary and safety for vulnerable people.
Psychiatric Institutions Are a Necessity
Behind the bars of prisons and jails in the United States exists a shadow mental health care system where nearly half a million inmates have a serious mental illness like schizophrenia. In hospitals, severely mentally ill patients languish for months in acute care units, which are designed to stabilize patients, not to help their long-term recovery. To give these people the care they deserve, we need to bring back psychiatric asylums.
Should the U.S. Bring Back Psychiatric Asylums?
A new paper argues that re-opening long-term facilities would help solve the country's mental-healthcare crisis.
Should the U.S. Bring Back Psychiatric Asylums?
A new paper argues that re-opening long-term facilities would help solve the country's mental-healthcare crisis.
The Crazy Talk About Bringing Back Asylums
Neither side wants to return to the era of “insane asylums,” the warehouselike hospitals that closed en masse between the 1960s and 1980s. Nor does anyone disagree that the “system” that replaced them is a colossal failure. Nearly 10 times as many people suffering from serious mental illnesses are being kept in jails and prisons as are receiving treatment in psychiatric hospitals.
The History of Inhumane Mental Health Treatments
While terrifying mental health remedies can be traced back to prehistoric times, it’s the dawn of the asylum era in the mid-1700s that marks a period of some of the most inhumane mental health treatments. This is when asylums themselves became notorious warehouses for the mentally ill.
The Life, Death, and Possible Resurrection of the Asylum
Half a century ago, state mental hospitals closed after a series of horrific abuses—but in the aftermath, many mentally ill people were forced onto the streets or into jails. Now some are arguing it's time to bring these institutions back.
The Reporter Who Went Undercover at an Asylum
Nellie Bly committed herself to the infamous Blackwell Island Asylum just to get the story.
The Rise and Fall of the Asylum
Until a few decades ago, the United States relied on mass confinement in mental asylums, for the mentally ill, as well as extreme treatments, from lobotomy to coma therapy. Today, at Cook County Jail in Chicago, more than one-third of inmates have a mental health diagnosis. Meet the detainees whose lives hang in the balance and discover the harsh realities of care both in and out of jail.
What life was like in mental hospitals in the early 20th century
When we think of mental hospitals, images of Gothic Victorian asylums, or the fluorescent-lit linoleum of modern psychiatric wards often spring to mind. Many of our ideas about what it was like to live and work in these institutions come from films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which portray mental hospitals as cruel and authoritarian.
