Insane Asylums Of The Past – All Horrors In One Place

Today insane asylums are places for people with mental problems. But it does not mean that only complete psychos go there for eternal treatment. Such conditions as depression or suicidal mood are valid reasons to go there for some therapy which mostly includes pills and treatment interviews with kind doctors who tend to seem their patients’ best friends.

About a hundred years ago madhouses were much worse than what we have now. “Zoo-like” conditions, patients’ abuse and alternative treatment methods that degraded their mental condition or even were fatal.

Remember America Horror Story season 2, when the action took place at the insane asylum of the 60’s? You won’t take it for some horror fiction after reading these facts about madhouses of the past told by former patients, nurses, and doctors who are now willing to forget it all as a nightmare.

1. Complete control

Topeka State Hospital in Kansas always stood for complete control over their patients. First of all, doctors did all they could to prevent the growth of the population of insane and mentally sick people. They took complete charge of their patients and chose castration and sterilization as their main methods.

Together with it, they are accused of limitation of freedom operated upon mentally sick people. Facts reveal the story of a patient who had been strapped down so long that his skin had started growing over the straps.

2. Sexual abuse

By the middle of 20th-century sexual abuse was a common thing there. Aggressive patients could hardly control their instincts attacking weaker ‘colleagues’ and even nurses or doctors who ware unable to stand up to them.

However, there are witnesses that in 70% of all insane asylums all over the world there were cases of sexual relations between doctors and patients against the will of the last ones.

3. Lobotomy

Lobotomy is a neurosurgical procedure, a form of psychosurgery, also known as a leukotomy or leucotomy. It consists of cutting or scraping away most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain.

It was used in most of the Western countries as the main treatment line. Psychiatrists gladly prescribed it to their patients considering all risks and horrible side effects.

4. Zoo-like conditions

If the patients are disabled due to their mental sickness, they will hardly file a complaint. Due to this fact, no one really cared about the conditions in which they were kept. Awful dull rooms with broken beds and bed shits black of dust and dust.

Overbrook Insane Asylum, New Jersey banned relatives from visiting their patients who needed care they weren’t getting from overworked staff. At Overbrook, conditions were so bad that several patients froze to death in their beds in the early 20th century. Some went missing and were never found.

5. Fake sickness

This phenomenon exists even now but in much smaller gage. People are put in asylums and proclaimed mentally disabled. Their property goes to the third person who is more likely responsible for their sudden ‘sickness’.

Such patients went under the most horrible procedures and often wandered around, often covered in their own urine and feces, and some were sexually assaulted by staff. Literary, normal people were turned into insane thanks to meanest treatments.