ASYLUMS

Today’s psychiatric hospitals have come a long way in providing more humane treatment for the mentally ill. It wasn’t too long ago that the word “asylum” summoned images of grimy straitjackets, cold metal beds, and padded walls that resonated with the screams and cries of restrained patients. The majority of psychiatric hospitals were closed at the end of the twentieth century due to underfunding and overcrowding, new healthcare laws, and repeated cases of abuse. The halls of these asylums still show signs of the people who once called them home, isolation rooms, lobotomy tables, and hydrotherapy baths left behind still serve as reminders of these institutions’ troubled past.