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Few institutions in history evoke more horror than the turn of the 20th century “lunatic asylums.” Infamous for involuntary committals and barbaric treatments, which often looked more like torture than medical therapies, state-run asylums for the mentally ill were bastions of fear and distrust, even in their own era. The…

Nowadays, we have a decent understanding of mental health and many who need help can find it in psychiatric hospitals. That was not always the case, though. In the past, people with mental issues were sent to lunatic asylums; not to get treatment, but to keep them out of the way of the general population. Many historical figures finished their days in such an institution, long forgotten by the ...

It’s a shame he didn’t live in the Internet age, he would be the most famous artist in the world. Instead, he ended up penniless in a pauper’s asylum. Unfortunately, his career had a tragic start. Married at 23, Wain’s wife was soon diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. To cheer her up, Wain would draw caricatures of their family cat ...

The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an institution where people with mental illness were confined. ... Rosina Bulwer Lytton, daughter of the women's rights advocate Anna Wheeler, was locked up by her husband Edward Bulwer-Lytton and subsequently wrote of this in A Blighted Life (1880).

Dr. Semmelweis was eventually committed to an insane asylum in 1865. He tragically died in that mental asylum of a blood infection after a violent beating by workers in the asylum when he demanded to be released. Dr. Semmelweis died at the age of 47, long before the medical community realized his zeal for hand washing wasn’t mad at all.

Insane asylums have a long, unsavory history — but they weren’t originally intended as sites of horror. The origins of mental asylums — an antiquated and loaded term that is now retired from the field of mental health treatment — came from a wave of reforms that experts tried to enact in the 19th century.

A favorite location of modern horror movies and television shows, insane asylums have captured our imaginations for ages. They terrify us, but we can’t seem to get enough of the mysteries surrounding them. Many of the most famous mental institutions have sordid histories, with famous patients, terrifying ghosts, and scads of abuse.

Boy, 10, was Broadmoor's youngest patient and spent 77 years locked up there ... The asylum was a microcosm of Victorian society, taking in people from all walks of life, with all levels of ...

Here are ten examples of the somewhat famous, very famous, and downright infamous locked away in an asylum. 10 King George III. England’s King George III reigned from 1760 until his death in 1820 and suffered severe mental health problems at times.

Outrageous ways to be admitted to an insane asylum in the 19th century. When Elizabeth Packard disagreed with her husband she never expected to be locked up in an asylum — and the reason why ...

In West Virginia, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum originally opened its doors in 1863. Thomas Kirkbride, an American mental health reformist who aimed to enhance patient care, came up with the ...

Robert Stroud is likely one of Alcatraz's most famous inmates, incarcerated there from 1942 through 1959. He was deemed the "Birdman of Alcatraz," but he never actually kept any birds while there.

Women in the mid-19th century suffering from common mental health conditions were condemned to the asylum to live in appalling conditions.

Reasons existed to lock people away at Bedlam besides the treatment of psychiatric issues. Certainly, there were few better ways of silencing an opponent than trapping him in a mental institution. Not only would the person be out of your hair, but the stigma of being a patient at an asylum would undoubtedly damage said enemy’s credibility if ...

Fisher, who herself was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1985, was hospitalized multiple times during her lifetime, as People magazine reported after her death. She explained to Diane Sawyer in ...

Here are ten examples of the somewhat famous, very famous, and downright infamous locked away in an asylum. Related: 10 Historical Facts About The Kings County Insane Asylum. 10 King George III. England’s King George III reigned from 1760 until his death in 1820 and suffered severe mental health problems at times.

Bethlem Royal Hospital was England’s first asylum for the treatment of mental illness, and for many years a place of inhumane conditions, the nickname of which – Bedlam – became a byword for mayhem or madness. It was also a popular London attraction for the morbidly entertained. Paul Chambers explores what went on inside its walls…

Usually, when people died in the asylums, or spent 50 or 60 years locked up, that was because their relatives weren’t willing to take them back. Once you were sectioned, you stopped being a person.

What kind of people ended up in a lunatic asylum? Melancholy teenagers? Violent criminals? Unmarried mothers? Most of the hundreds of thousands of patients in the dark days of the “madhouses” were unknown paupers and not remembered. Occasionally though, throughout history, certain patients have been rather more well-known. Here are ten examples of the somewhat famous, very famous, and ...