Lunatic Asylums and Psychiatric Hospitals
Ranked #332 in Culture & Society, #7,901 overall
Exploring the purpose and practice of lunatic asylums and psychiatric hospitals
The Scream by Edvard Munch is perhaps the most famous depiction of mental anguish and illness. It taps into an almost primeval fear that we all have of becoming disconnected with normality (whatever that is) and becoming institutionalised in a place of mental care.
What is the purpose of mental health and welfare and the places that have been designed to look after us when we have a mental illness. Most of us will experience some sort of mental illness in our lifetime, either directly or by being close to someone who becomes ill. Attitudes to the mentally ill and the treatment solutions have changed over the years as new insights into neurological and cognitive science have been brought to bear.
Societies have always sought ways to care for people who have mental health problems. People suffering from the most severe and intractable conditions have not always been understood. Sometimes for their own protection, sometimes for the protection of others and sometimes to simply hide problematic people away from view, lunatic asylums have been a strange mix of sanctuary, medical institution and prison.
Lunacy is a slang term for mental illness and stems from the mistaken belief that abnormal behaviour was associated with movements of the moon (hence Lunacy)
This article Moon Season takes a skeptical look at ancient and even more recent claims that mental illness has any correlation to the activity of the moon's orbit.
My first exposure to mental illness was a supplier who had a break down at work. I worked in the gambling industry. He came into reception claiming he could 'here the bells ringing' and he could 'smell the fruits'.
My second exposure was a friend who stopped engaging in conversations. She then started to tell the time by how far down a cigarette she had smoked.
Contents at a Glance
"I always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly - a desire to be convinced that the most helpless of God's creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly."
Nellie Bly
Nellie Bly
undercover reporter and author of Ten Days In A Madhouse
19th century journalist Elizabeth Cochran used the name Nellie Bly when she authored the book Ten Days In The Madhouse. It is perhaps one of the first works of under cover journalism, although there is some controversy over its truth.
Apparently she feigned insanity so that she could investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island.If her experiences are to be believed the conditions in the asylum were dreadful. Rats in the rooms, appalling food, and ice cold baths for the inmates.
Here is an audio version of Ten Days In The Madhouse
The Story of Nellie Bly
Disused Mental Health Hospital Poll
Mclean Hospital
mental health care in New England
Mclean Hospital was founded in Charlestown Mass in 1811 and moved to Boston in 1895. It has an exceptional reputation for first class psychiatric care. The hospital was the idea of philanthropist John Mclean. Today is a leading institution in neurological research with connections to Harvard Medical School. Both Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted are based on experiences at the Mclean Hospital
""The insane asylum seems to be the goal of every good and conscious Bostonian"
Clover Adams
1879
Books About Mclean Hospital
Denbigh Asylum
...don't knock it down
Denbigh Asylum has a vibrant Facebook Site
and here is their petition:
Save Denbigh Asylum
Girl, Interrupted
Girl, Interrupted
Amazon Price: $6.82 (as of 06/02/2012)
An amazing insight into psychiatric care and the assumptions of society in the 1960s. Simply brilliant.
Lunatic Asylums
History and Stories from Lunatic Asylums
- Life in a Victorian Lunatic Asylum
- What was it like in the asylum?
- Greater Manchester Lunatic Asylums
- Learning resources
- High Royds
- Images and stories
- Construction of Government Lunatic Asylums
- e-Book
- Norfolk Lunatic Asylum
- Story of a UK county asylum
- St John New Brunswick
- The First North American Asylum
- Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum
- West Virginia USA
- Abandoned Babcock Mental Asylum
- From fellow Squidoo lensmaster Anticloud
Asylums Erving Goffman
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates
This book focuses on the relationship between the inmate and the institution, how the setting affects the person and how the person can deal with life on the inside.
Mental Health
- What Is A Nervous Breakdown
- A very helpful article from Psych Central
About Lunatic Asylums
- Index of English and Welsh Lunatic Asylums and Mental Hospitals Based on a comprehensive survey in 1844
- Compiled by Andrew Roberts at Middlesex University
- Bedlam: Custody Care and Cure 1247-1997 A Museum of London Exhibition
- Bethlem is the world's oldest institution caring for people with mental disorders.
- UK County Asylums
- From 1811 until 1948 the Counties of England , Wales and Scotland provided their own system of custody and care and treatment for the Mentally Ill People. These Asylums often took the form of large structures - ranging in capacity from 40 to 3,500 inmates.
- Asylums
- English Asylums Scottish Asylums Welsh Asylums Irish Asylums Lunacy Commissioners
- Historic Asylums of America
- A comprehensive link list and other resources
- Till the Break of Day
- History of Mental Health Care in Singapore. e book
- Danvers State Hospital
- Danvers State Hospital
- The Invisible Plague
- The Invisible Plague By Edwin Fuller Torrey, Judy Miller ebook
- Athens Lunatic Asylum
- Athens Ohio a hospital with reptuable design
- Mental Health History Timeline
- Mental health history including asylum and community care periods and consumer accounts.
- Kew Asylum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Kew Lunatic Asylum
- Lunatic Ideas and the Truth about Asylums
- Times higher article that begins...Foucault said that madhouses in the 18th and 19th centuries were nothing more than prisons for social nuisances, but he was wrong. They were also hospitals where attempts were made to cure the mentally sick. Roy Porter explores 50 years of Bedlam
Exploring Abandoned UK Lunatic Asylums
check out these fascinating photos from Nile Guide. Click photo for more.
Nile Guide features many more photos of abandoned UK Asylums. The article points out that whilst they may be abandoned they are still private property and entry can be illegal. These photos give a really good idea of the exterior and interior designs of these institutions.
Books About Lunatic Asylums
Bedlam Books
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Dr. W.C. Minor, gave thousands of entries to the editors of the OUD. Minor, an American expatriate in England and a Civil War veteran, was a certified lunatic was a patient in the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.
Broadmoor Books
A Tour Of Upper Saxondale site of the Saxondale Hospital
Nottingham County Asylum
Now a residential estate Saxondale hospital became the site of the Sneinton Asylum in 1902.
Modern Saxondale looks like this.Locals perpetuate the myth that the gazebos are linked by tunnels that were used to move dangerous patients about the hospital. The were in fact merely service tunnels.
Hikkomori
the case of mental health care in Japan
Famous Inmates
- Lunatics of Royalty
- Article from the New York times. Follow link to read pdf
- Marquis de Sade
- Wikikpedia says...Sade was incarcerated in various prisons and in an insane asylum for about 32 years of his life; eleven years in Paris (10 of which were spent in the Bastille) a month in Conciergerie, two years in a fortress, a year in Madelonnettes, three years in Bicêtre, a year in Sainte-Pélagie, and 13 years in the Charenton insane asylum.
- Ian Brady
- Notorious partner of Myra Hindley(dec). Known as the Moors Murderers.
Brady and Hindley abducted youngsters from the Manchester area in the UK in the 1960s, tortured, murdered and buried their victims on Saddleworth moor. - Ezra Pound
- U.S. poet spent nearly 13 years in St Elizabeths Hospital
- Sylvia Plath
- American poet, novelist, children's author, and short story author.
Deolali Sanitorium
the inspiration of the phrase 'Doolaly'
Accoring to Fraser & Gibbons', Soldier & Sailor Words, 1925 the phrase 'doolaly' comes from a mispronunciation of the name Deolali a town in India that was a British sanitorium in the 1800s. It was also a transit camp, but the boats only left for home every six months which meant stopping in the town would drive you crazy waiting.
Going Round The Bend
A Victorian euphamism for being taken up the long winding driveways that led to asylums. Asylums were often designed like prisons with one long winding road in and one long winding road out.
Madness and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland
Madness and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Oxford Studies in Social History)
Amazon Price: $189.72 (as of 06/02/2012)
This is an important study of a society and its attitudes towards insanity
Psychiatric Hospital Blogs
- Florida hospital ignores pregnant mental patient's pleas, and tragedy ensues
- A baby was born with severe brain damage after caregivers at the state's largest mental hospital dismissed a woman's cries for help. By Carol Marbin Miller Held against her will at Florida's largest state mental hospital, and fearing that she was about ...
- Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital tours Brookhaven Retreat
- Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital had two representatives tour Brookhaven Retreat, a unique voluntary residential facility exclusively for women with mental health and/or substance issues. In an effort to expand networking throughout the community, ...
- State sanctions private Corpus Christi psychiatric hospital
- By Rhiannon Meyers CORPUS CHRISTI ? A private Corpus Christi psychiatric hospital has been sanctioned by the state for incomplete medical records and failing to provide a qualified dietitian. The Department of State Health Services found the ...
- Proposed psychiatric hospital in Wake years away
- UNC Health Care's proposal, announced last week, to build a 28-bed psychiatric hospital in Wake County is designed to address the problem of mentally ill patients who are crowding emergency rooms and hospital wards throughout Wake County and the region ...
Psychiatric Hospital News
- Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital tours Brookhaven Retreat
- Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital had two representatives tour Brookhaven Retreat, a unique voluntary residential facility exclusively for women with mental health and/or substance issues. In an effort to expand networking throughout the community, ...
- Florida hospital ignores pregnant mental patient's pleas, and tragedy ensues
- A baby was born with severe brain damage after caregivers at the state's largest mental hospital dismissed a woman's cries for help. By Carol Marbin Miller Held against her will at Florida's largest state mental hospital, and fearing that she was about ...
- State sanctions private Corpus Christi psychiatric hospital
- By Rhiannon Meyers CORPUS CHRISTI ? A private Corpus Christi psychiatric hospital has been sanctioned by the state for incomplete medical records and failing to provide a qualified dietitian. The Department of State Health Services found the ...
- Lincoln mental health head retiring amid changes
- The number of people being served by community mental health programs: medication management, 4125; day rehab, 1607; residential rehab, 598; community support, 2100; day treatment, 592. During his last few days as Community Mental Health Center ...
Psychiatric Hospital Architecture and Design
Spaces for care and healing
- Dykebar hospital
- FindingSpace.org has been launched to explore models of environmental development, art and architecture within psychiatric hospitals.
Dykebar Psychiatric Hospital has commissioned artists Chris Helson and Sarah Jackets to research and develop FindingSpace.org. Their aim is to research and document models of contemporary practice, with the intention of building a resource to inform and expand environmental development at Dykebar. - Veterans Affairs Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif.
- How practioners influence hospital design
- Architecture and Mental Health
- Can the collision of healthcare and architecture really be analyzed? Markus Miessen and Matthew Murphy posed this question at the start of the undergraduate course they taught at the Architectural Association (AA) in London last year.
- Otto Wagner and the Steinhof psychiatric hospital: architecture as misunderstanding
- Otto Wagner and the Steinhof psychiatric hospital: architecture as misunderstanding from Art Bulletin, The in Arts provided free by Find Articles.
- Seacliff Lunatic Asylum
- The hospital in what has been called a Gothic-themed 'fantasy castle' design.
- From Toxic Institutions to Therapeutic Environments: Residential Settings in Mental Health Services:
- From Toxic Institutions to Therapeutic Environments: Residential Settings in Mental Health Services: Penelope Campling, Steffan Davies, Graeme Farquharson:
Architecture of Madness
The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States (Architecture, Landscape and Amer Culture)
Amazon Price: $25.74 (as of 06/02/2012)
Amazon says...asylums such as the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum in Trenton and the Buffalo State Hospital for the Insane are investigated and how doctors thought patients could be cured.
Mental Institutions
If you loved Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875, you might also enjoy:
Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940 by Gerald N. Grob
"What caused deinstitutionalization? Why were more...0 points
Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital by Alex Beam
Its landscaped ground, chosen by Frederick Law Olm more...0 points
The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America by Gerald N. Grob
The Deadly Truth chronicles the complex interactions more...0 points
The Deadly Truth chronicles the complex interactions between disease and the peoples of America from the pre-Columbian world to the present.
Grob's ultimate lesson is stark but valuable: there can be no final victory over disease. The world in which we live undergoes constant change, which in turn creates novel risks to human health and life. We conquer particular diseases, but others always arise in their stead. In a powerful challenge to our tendency to see disease as unnatural and its virtual...
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Asylum Lenses
Psychiatric Hopsitals
- Cawston Park
- Cawston Park Hospital in Norfolk provides assessment, treatment and rehabilitation programmes to individuals with complex psychiatric needs which are often exacerbated by substance misuse.
- About Stigma
- see me scotland - anti-stigma mental health campaign.
- The Priory Group - acute mental health, secure and step-down services, specialist education, complex care and neuro-rehabilitation services
- Europe's leading independent provider of acute mental health, secure and step-down services, specialist education, complex care and neuro-rehabilitation services.
- Parramatta Female Factory
- Female Convicts to Australia, Female Factory, Factory above the Gaol, Asylum,Cumberland hospital
- Arkham Asylum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Fictional Asylum in DC comics. Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.
- Carstairs Hospital
- Carstairs in Scotland provides assessment, treatment and care in conditions of special security for individuals with mental disorder who, because of their dangerous, violent or criminal propensities, cannot be cared for in any other setting
- Coalinga State Hospital
- The subject of a TV documentary by Louis Theorux who gained access to the asylum that specialises in administering paedophiles
- Wikipedia entries
- Lists 20 pyschiatric institutions
- The Narrenturm or Tower of Fools
- Mental health in 18th century Vienna
Criminal Insanity Stuff on Amazon
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Path's semi autobiographical novel
the bell jar
Amazon Price: $9.70 (as of 06/02/2012)
"All the asylum clothing is made by the patients, but sewing does not employ one's mind. After several months' confinement the thoughts of the busy world grow faint, and all the poor prisoners can do is to sit and ponder over their hopeless fate. "
Nellie Bly
not leaving a comment would be lunacy!
Might you know of individuals and organizations that help when mental illness happens?
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CraftaholicVeteran1
May 7, 2012 @ 5:49 am | delete
- Very Interesting. Actually Wakefield looks like Western State Mental Hospital here in Lakewood,WA; I couldn't believe the similarity. Amazing,educational, and interesting lens. Thanks. I can vouch that having a beautiful outside does help a bit when you are on the inside. Hard to sit there and do nothing for hours. I couldn't imagine back then, I probably would have just gone crazier.
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mel-kav
May 1, 2012 @ 4:24 pm | delete
- Very interesting lens! I find the history of psychiatry and psychiatric institutions to be fascinating! You've put together a lot of great information here. Excellent job!
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norcalkitten78
Apr 16, 2012 @ 6:45 pm | delete
- WOW!! your lens is really amazing. Super cool!
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themeanviolets Apr 11, 2012 @ 11:05 pm | delete
- Great lens! I should be in one of those asylums, but I escaped. Not really... had a dream about it once though... I'm not really crazy... just adhd... I like shiny objects and see squirrels in my sleep. That's enough outta me! Wow you have lots of lenses!
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TTMall
Feb 26, 2012 @ 7:37 am | delete
- Great lens with excellent pictures. Thank you very much!
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candidaabrahamson
Feb 15, 2012 @ 2:29 pm | delete
- You're right--not leaving a comment WOULD be lunacy! What a spectacular lens on a totally unique topic. Tremendous presentation.
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pinkrenegade
Jan 30, 2012 @ 10:29 pm | delete
- Very interesting lens!
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grinagallery
Dec 17, 2011 @ 4:33 am | delete
- Fascinating information and a great insight! Thanks for sharing. :-)
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tvyps
Dec 12, 2011 @ 3:26 am | delete
- What a CRAZY lens! hahaha! Very cool subject matter, a LOT of work here! Hopefully, it didn't make you insane. Squid Angel blessed!
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thesuccess
Dec 5, 2011 @ 3:58 pm | delete
- A serious and important subject: Angel Blessing
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Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism: The Native Only Lunatic Asylums of British India, 1857-1900
Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism: The 'Native Only' Lunatic Asylums of British India, 1857-1900
Amazon Price: $119.18 (as of 06/02/2012)
Cure, Comfort and Safe Custody: Public Lunatic Asylums in Early Nineteenth-century England
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Amazon Price: $160.28 (as of 06/02/2012)
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates
Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates
Amazon Price: $43.15 (as of 06/02/2012)
