Take a look at the most infamous insane asylums from centuries past and the horrors that once took place inside their walls.
In 1851, Isaac Hunt - a former patient at the Maine Insane Hospital - sued the facility, describing it as the “most iniquitous, villainous system of inhumanity, that would more than match the bloodiest, darkest days of the Inquisition or the tragedies of the Bastille.”īut not all former patients were lucky enough to get out, as Hunt did. It wasn’t until the terrifying conditions at these mental health facilities were revealed through undercover investigations and patient witnesses that they were brought to light.
Patients endured horrifying “treatments” like ice baths, electric shock therapy, purging, bloodletting, straitjackets, forced drugging, and even lobotomies - all of which were considered legitimate medical practices at the time. These “insane asylums” subsequently turned into prisons where society’s “undesirable citizens” - the “incurables,” criminals, and those with disabilities - were put together as a way to isolate them from the public. But mental health stigmatization coupled with an increase in diagnoses led to severely overcrowded hospitals and increasingly cruel behavior toward patients. These facilities catered to mentally ill people with treatments that were supposed to be more humane than what was previously available. The origins of mental asylums - an antiquated and loaded term that is now retired from the field of mental health medicine - came from a wave of reforms that professionals tried to enact in the 19th century. Insane asylums have a long, unsavory history - but they weren’t originally intended as sites of horror.
Stock Montage/Getty Images An engraving depicts a scene at Bedlam, the first asylum in England founded in 1247.
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