The Horrors of Historic Mental Asylums
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 พ.ค. 2024
- Delve into the chilling history of historic mental asylums, where dark nightmares became reality. From barbaric treatments to the rise of psychotropic medication, witness the evolution of mental health care.
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They needed to reform the state hospitals, not shut them down and turn out vulnerable people to the streets.
Thank Ronald Reagan for that and a whole lot of other things.
@grindcoreninja6527
Actually JFK was the one who started closing down State Hospitals.
But if put them out on the streets we can then jail them for being homeless /s
@@grindcoreninja6527 Whole lot of other things could include middle eastern wars of the 1990s-present and repealing the fairness doctrine in media, effectively giving us the scenario we're in today with fake news. He also once called another country's elected leader (who was black) a gorilla. In fact, you can still listen to him be outright racist on this very website. Oh, also forgot that we learned last year that he actually got the Iranian hostages to be held longer so Jimmy Carter would lose in 1980.
@@michaelmayhem350 This guy for profit prisons.
I feel like we threw the baby out with the bathwater when the assylums were closed down. The abuses were terrible, and reforms critically needed. But we act today like every problem can be solved with a prescription and a weekly appointment with a therapist. Which, while that works for some people, there are conditions that simply do not respond well to "medicate and forget." People that simply cannot live on their own. Oh well, damage is done now I suppose.
Amen!
We still have long term inpatient treatment. We just don't call them asylums anymore.
Very easy to say that from the luxurious perspective of 2024…
We still have inpatient facilities tho. We just don’t send people there cause they have minor issues. I actually was in a partial hospitalization program for 7 weeks earlier this year.
@@the_real_rascalexactly! For fcks sake I was literally at one two months ago
I feel like because of these terrible institutions it's one of many reasons why the explosion of mentally ill homeless people seems so impossible to find a "solution" for.
We've swung to the opposite end of the spectrum from going way too far and aggressive to now doing next to nothing
Part of the problem is the lower income of the patient, the lower paying the psychological treatment facility usually is to staff. That leads to huge amounts of employee turnover as they find better jobs, so mental patients never have an established therapist they trust for very long. If you see someone 1-2 a month, but its a new therapist every 3 months, what help will *anyone* really get.
And this is just how bad _outpatient_ care is. Don't ask about being in a state run hospital with a mental ward... yes, they *do* still exist.
Bring back asylums
Yes these vulnerable people need a safe place to live. Instead they are not living well and are mostly uncared for. I'm in New Zealand and it's a huge problem here too
@@sandcat66 the entire ruling world class has decided to strip away everyone's rights and wealth and we all wonder why the healthcare system and mental health is failing
Ronald Reagan.
We had a mental health hospital in my town close in the late 80’s. Now those who truly need help are often subjected to being locked up in jails or thrown out onto the streets 😞
Me too. One guy left to wander the streets for years ending up stabbing a 21 year old to death.
Yep. We need more updated ones (with better conditions of course). But there are soooo many that need to be in places for help.
Yuuupp. I live in Chattanooga TN and we have a mental hospital here but the streets are still crawling with homeless, addicts. It's really sad
@@BDEntertainment423 Addiction isn't a mental illness; it's a lack of willpower.
My grandpa was put in one of these for a while in the early 70s. He had severe bipolar disorder. They "treated" him with electroconvulsive therapy. When he woke up, he didn't recognize his wife or sons. He couldn't remember that he was married and a father. Thankfully, he did regain his memory over time, but it's chilling to think about.
It's terrifying losing your memory, I lost a week due to sepsis, I was conscious the whole week but remember nothing.
I was in a youth facility in Colombia South Carolina in the early 2000s . It was one of the most traumatic experiences I've ever had. Inmates prayed on the younger and staff wasn't much better. Waking up to people over my bed cause the doors didn't lock properly. Smoking was allowed (I was 16). I'm a big guy and always have been I fought every day not until we were separated but when we tried out. The guards would just watch and laugh. Yelling " you better fight white boy!!" Unfortunately I have been in and out of facilities all my life including jails. This was the worst psychiatric and top 3 worse even when I factor in jail. I've managed to put that all behind me and approaching my 40s I've been out of any hospital for two years and put in incredible amounts of work in myself. Now I'm happily married with kids a good job and feel I'm finally achieving true happiness whatever that may be.
So sorry you went through that. Hope you can continue to find happiness!
#WayToGo!!
Did you attend university?
@@barneyronnie seems like a wildly unrelated question to that 😂 but no.
As a social worker , I have to say, the hardest part about the job are not my clients. It’s the amount of paperwork and red tape you have to do for HIPPA, ROIs , and trying to advocate for the client to their provider re: medications.
We’ve come a long way, but people with certain diagnosis are still misunderstood and stigmatized.
Same. (Nurse) One of the most frustrating parts.
How do you find your job? I have depression and am thinking about being a social worker as I know what these people have been through
Hello fellow social worker!
@@Mannsy83 call up your local community college (to save money, I’m telling you, the education itself is just as good), and ask if they have a social work program. You won’t be able to practice until at least your bachelors, so you’ll have to go to a 4 year, but going first to a community college will save you a ton of money. In my experience, I wasn’t able to do much with just an associates.
Keep in mind though, please, that these programs are not meant to help you better understand yourself and your condition. I’m not saying that’s what you would do, but many, many of us who do suffer from mental illnesses go in and try to “fix” ourselves with what we’re taught. It just doesn’t work that way (trust me, I’ve tried 😅)
As someone with schizoaffective disorder I still get "I'm inside your walls" comments
The worst part of this, for all the steps forward that were achieved with regard to those with mental illnesses, we in the US have taken a massive step back with the closing down of mental hospitals. They basically dumped all these poor people out in the street with no assistance or even a plan for treatment. So now all these people with mental illnesses are now part of the correctional system where you have a group of people, with absolutely no training with regard to mental illnesses, having to supervise and attempt to assist them.
The worst part of this, aside from the government basically turning their backs on people in dire need of help, is that critics constantly trash the correctional system because of their inability to help mentally ill people. Shocking that a group of workers, with no training or even help, can't take care of them.
Jails/prisons are the number one treatment place for the mentally ill in the US. It shows how few places there are that actually treat the mentally ill
I agree. One side wants small government with no social assistance and the other wants to reorganize the correctional system but nothing for the mentally impaired. Neither side wants to help the mentally disabled people. It’s a sad reality for many
In the UK we have similar problem. In my city- there are mentally ill and homeless people wandering around all day. Some speak to themselves, some are harmless, some are aggressive.
this is what lowering taxes really looks like.
I used to work in a jail and people really don't understand the reality of mental health treatment in the US. We would send a handful of officers off to get special training to deal with the mentally ill inmates but there are just so many. We have a couple mental health facilities we could send them to but only the worst cases had the chance to go.
People underestimate how hard it is to have your freedom taken away, all the way down to not being allowed to see loved ones or go outside. I don't regret any of my stays because they saved my life but it's not like they're enjoyable. They're HARD.
Sometimes I end up on the psych ward for 4-10 days and depending on where I end up, going outside doesn't happen, you have to tell a staff member where you're going or what you're doing if they ask; i.e., there's no privacy besides the bare minimum, and you can even lose that if you keep trying to hurt others or yourself; you can end up with somebody watching you shower and go to the bathroom.
Your whole day is on a schedule as though you're at school except it's 24 hours a day, if you want to take an ibuprofen you have to get a prescription for it, and good luck getting in touch with a doctor unless it's Monday through Friday between 8 and 4, in most places you don't get your phone, if there's a TV you can't watch certain things like the news or anything PG-13 or more if you're an adult and PG or more if you're a kid.
The clothes you can wear are limited, and contrary to popular belief, at a lot if not most places, you don't get to wear grippy socks and pajamas everywhere, you have to have daytime clothes and shoes on whenever you're out of your bedroom. You often have a roommate, and they might be chill, or they might be insufferable, or a snorer.
It's a total culture shock and there's a reason inpatient wards of that caliber are only for attempting to stabilize a person before they can be released somewhere else. Because those kinds of restrictions make mental health WORSE. Of course if somebody can't stay stable in "the real world" and they're constantly a danger to themselves or others, well, a longer term solution is definitely a good idea. But if somebody's treated like garbage whenever they're not in the hospital, of course they're not going to stay stable. If they don't have somewhere to stay, it's almost impossible to keep your balance.
We need to fix the stigma against people with mental illness and we need better social supports: accessible healthy food, clean and potable water, warm, ventilated shelter, weather-appropriate clothing, and quality medical care for everybody. Unfortunately those things are far, far away as things stand. For now I only wish people would have less animosity toward people with mental illness. It's not our fault we're ill.
We were still closing asylums in the UK at the beginning of my career in the late 1990s - meeting ex-residents and learning about the horrors that my patients had endured was one of the saddest things I have ever personally experienced.
Seeing toddler-sized straitjackets reminded us that many of our patients had spent their entire lives being effectively tortured and I have never forgotten the heartbreak of reading on a patient’s file “family only to be contacted in case of death” and knowing that that family had been told to leave their child or family member there and forget about them 😞
My close friend battles with severe depression. It’s next to impossible to find a psychiatrist with availability, much less any long term support. Unless you can really put in a lot of work your best option is keep working with your doctor. And without her family’s support, she’d be without any options.
Greatest country on earth, am I right?
Psychiatrists in America are an absolute joke. They're simply pill farms for their overlords. Thank God for social media in this instance. The importance of diet, exercise, lifestyle and so much more has been able to help many, many people. The doctors in the government only want your money and will do just enough to keep you alive so they can collect it.
A a brazillian almost graduated psychology student, we do a very deep dive into this topic and oh boy, it's usually extremely grim. We have one of the worst cases in history regarding a mental asylum, where under the pretense of sending away the "crazies" people would send instead anyone they saw as "inadequate". queer people, homeless people, people who had a different political opinion and whatnot, all hauled into a train to the "Hospital Colônia de Barbacena". Might be worth an episode someday, but it's grim as fuck.
Our history of asylums IS grim af for sure. If you didn't like your neighbor or mother-in-law or heaven forbid you're wife's not jumping to your every whim *bam* in the asylum. Then they were in hell.
I would be very interested in that!! Good luck with your degree 🎉❤
That’s what they did in America too. Anyone unwanted or different was sent to asylums. It is grim af you are not wrong.
@@daniellewieners4750 thanks, it's currently being quite a lot of stuff to deal with xD but i'll make it through
@@berja3895 yep, just like that and with very little way of contesting anything, not much proof needed other than saying someone is insane before they got hauled to a probable death or life-destroying scenario.
As a history buff, I've learned more about history from your content that I have in all my school years. Thank you for the informative, deep and truly splendid content.
My grandmother was a nurse at these places in canada in the 60s and 70s and she said it was like a horror movie on those assylums
Then, why didn't she get another job? Maybe she enjoyed the suffering and abuse; sounds like it!
My family has a history of autism over at least 7 generations (I'm autistic myself). Now, don't forget, autism is _not_ a mental illness. The horrors of asylums continue far more recently than most realise - my great aunt was committed to one at the age of 15, because she was autistic (with a presentation similar to myself) and had an autistic meltdown in public. That was in 1923. Over the course of the rest of her life, she was subjected to horrific drug regimes, ECT and (we suspect, although it's been denied) a lobotomy. From just before the outbreak of the second world war until the day she died, she would only ever be found either restrained and catatonic or standing at a window, screaming.
She died in 1992, in conditions which most people today would consider more appropriate to the 18th century's understanding of medicine. I visited her once, in 1990, and I still have nightmares about it to this day.
She was a bright young girl, by all accounts, with similar sensory issues to myself and many in my family, she was a phenomenal artist and had an exceptional talent for botany. The meltdown that sealed her fate was the only one that _ever_ occurred in public, because we have a family tradition of keeping our autism under wraps...as it turns out, for a damn good reason. That poor woman was - quite literally - hollowed out and destroyed by her "treatment".
I'm also autistic. My mom used to tell me if I had been born ten years earlier, I'd been put in an asylum.
you are right, Autism is not a mental illness, it is a Developmental and Neurological Disorder.
What a truely horrific thing to do to someone. I'm sorry. (Also ASD)
@@Large_Marge_Sent_Me_ - I was born in 1977, but only diagnosed three years ago because the strain of masking was killing me. My mother and grandmother taught me how to mask pretty much as soon as I was able to understand language, and for damn good reason. Folk these days might think it's bad now, but even just 40 years ago the fear of "special school" and a life's potential forever curtailed was very, very real.
@@ReiverBlue1971 - yes. The NT world's punishment for being different was inhuman, and in some places still is (see the Judge Rotenberg Education Center, with electro punishments endorsed by the US government for the crime of being autistic).
I can highly recommend Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly. Short book available as audio where she went undercover in Blackwell islands mental asylum for women back in the 1887, an early case of investigative journalism and rather horrifying read/listen.
Great book!
I loved reading this!
Actually was made into a small budget movie too. It's a shame we don't really have too many Nellie Blys today, all we have are Hannitys and Blitzers, who aren't even actually journalists, they're mostly pundits and commentators.
The movie is also amazing.
I have some pretty gnarly mental illness going on and I often complain about how badly people with mental illness are treated but with stuff like this, I think I'd rather be ignored and left to my own decives than wind up somewhere like this
I live in STL and I was in the ER last Thursday, a mentally ill man came in barefoot in the rain begging for help. Security surrounded him and were screaming at him and threatening him. He started screaming that last time you took out one of my teeth with some cursing involved. He was just begging to be admitted, I was crying because I couldn't do anything to help the man and their security at Barnes Jewish Hospital started threatening me. We have so much further to go and that man obviously needed medication, food, clothing and serious help. It's odd that this just popped up today, I was just thinking back. 😢❤ I'm going to pray for that man, it's not his fault and if I felt scared and helpless, I cannot imagine how he felt. St. Louis is horrible on the Mentally ill and it sickens me.
My friend, AMERICA is horrible on the mentally ill.
Cry about it welcome to corporate America now bow down to your corporate overlords .
So much for being god fearing when they mistreat their fellow man like them. I would deny them the chance to enter the Promised Land
@@Spooky_Platypus America is for sure bad on the mentally ill. However, if you want to know about horrible do a deep study on China and how they deal with the mentally ill.
😂😂😂😂😂cry like a baby 😂😂😂😂
I wish people would understand that having a mental illness isn't something you can just decide to not have. Just like a broken leg or having a cold, mental illness needs to be treated properly, not brushed off as something small or something someone is faking.
Lock ‘em up
I've grown up in mental hospitals and I can speak from experience that not much has changed. They only know how to conceal it better. But I can tell you that none of my disorders were ever even given any treatment and they even added one to the list because spending so much time in those places and experiencing so many traumas gave me PTSD.
My sister wrote her Dissertation about the "modern" history (past 300 years) of mental health treatment. Really puts into perspective how broad, misused, abused and undefined the word "humane" can become. I think Metallica really puts most of the modern history into perspective best,
"Welcome to where time stands still
No one leaves and no one will
Moon is full, never seems to change
Just labelled mentally deranged"
...
"They think our heads are in their hands
But violent use brings violent plans
Keep him tied, it makes him well
He's getting better, can't you tell?"
😂😂😂😂
Metallica & Piggy-backing off a dissertation you didn’t even write? Criiiiinge
In Evansville Indiana, we used to have a large, gothic style kirkbride. When the Evansville State Hospital restructured into a much smaller facility, they released a few thousand patients back into society. Now we have people walking around the city having violent conversations with people only they can see, people streaking down the expressway, people shadow boxing with traffic light poles. Medication only goes so far Simon
Thank you for bringing attention to this subject. As one suffering from lifelong depression. This subject, and the shortend life expectancy which goes with chronic mental suffering needs to be communicated as much as possible.
I've read Nelly Bly's 10 days in the Madhouse. Chilling. A great bit of investigative journalism.
i worked in a former 1850s asylum, by the 1990s the original building in the centre of the grounds was only used for admin though, so we didnt see much of it. a housemate was working in construction on the site and he told me the builders found chairs with shackles on and a skeleton.
A skeleton? Cool story bro, sounds totally legit
@@BroodykayBroodyfourhow old are you? 16? 😂
@@Spooky_Platypus not sure why my age matters but you are about 30 years off the mark with your guess
@@BroodykayBroodyfour Give us your reasoning for why you think finding a skeleton strapped to a chair is impossible? It's well documented that people throughout history have been condemned to be walled into a room or a crevice and forgotten about, and we are talking about Asylums here, places where people were dropped off and forgotten about by their families and society at large.
@DeliciousBoi Oh, I'm well aware that people were indeed walled up, for instance, the Countess Elizabeth Bathory, but we're talking about the 1600s there. "Modern " assylums though come much later and although families and indeed society "walled them up" there were staff there at all times you might "lose" a patient due to the poor conditions but you didn't just lose patients. These places were overseen by various entities from nuns to plain old doctors as well as different government agencies. Now I can agree these people were neglected, and Ill treated but there was a formal process of shutting these down. Everyone was sent paking, anything of value taken, and the rest left behind for whomever bought the assylums to clean up or, as you suggest, urban explorers to comb through.....but, and I can't stress this enough, everyone didn't just run for the hills leaving living patients strapped to beds to slowly dehydrate and starve to death. I mean, these were brutal places. Someone had to hide the bodies. This is the kind of shit you cover up. But I'm open to being wrong. Just point me to a legitimate source, and I will concede immediately
The town I grew up in had an asylum that closed in the 70s. They released all of the prisoners & they all had nowhere to go so a lot of them just starved to death in the fields (because it was also a farm). They threw them all in a pit & put a tiny placard commemorating them. My exs grandparents live right behind it & they’d always tell me the story of when a bunch of lunatics were hanging around in their yard.
Calling them lunatics just for being mentally ill is wild.
@@Avaa-vanilla995Agreed
@@Avaa-vanilla995 take your political correctness somewhere else lame.
The line between genuine care and treatment of troubled individuals and the general warehousing of society's problematic people has, unfortunately, always been vanishingly thin, and the former has an uncanny habit of becoming the latter.
Geraldo Rivera, then a young reporter for a local New York news station, played a significant role in exposing the inhumane conditions inside the Willowbrook State School. His investigative report, titled "Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace," revealed overcrowding, inadequate staffing, and a lack of proper hygiene, leading to public outrage. In response, New York State entered into a consent decree in 1975 to improve conditions and ultimately close the facility by 1987. Willowbrook's closure was part of a broader national movement towards deinstitutionalization, which aimed to replace institutional care with community-based services. However, these services were often underfunded, resulting in many individuals being released with insufficient support. Families with institutionalized relatives suddenly found these individuals returned to their care with little more than a "good luck" communication from the state mental health authority. The result was that thousands of patients, left to fend for themselves, struggled without proper support, highlighting the inadequacies of the deinstitutionalization movement.
This one hits home on 2 fronts. 1. Had I been alive then, I would absolutely have been a resident of one of these facilities. 2. I grew up at the bottom of the hill that Danvers State was on. My grandfather took a facilities maintenance job there after retiring from the police force. 1 year he thought it'd be fun to take us kids trick-or-treating there. He kept us in non-patient areas of course, and the staff gave us candy. H.P. Lovecraft grew up about 2 hours away and spent a lot of time touring the towns in that area. Many have theorized it is the principle inspiration for Arkham Asylum.
I'm a disabled veteran with mental health problems, the past truly was the worst! I actually just got out of the hospital last week. And I am truly thankful that they provide medicine and therapy while you're there. Thank God!!!
Hope things improve for you :]
As someone who has been in modern-day physche wards, I can tell you, they're still not great.
Even if it was my bias from being in there and feeling like you and everyone else doesn't belong there, you are treated so much more differently in there by the same people who'd treat you like a normal person if you were put.
It's f*cked up and with good reason, you're in there for a good reason.
I was in that type of facility when I was 12. I was there because I had no respect for any authority.
To get out of there, I had to lie to the doctors every day and stay on my script so no one noticed my lies.
Now I'm 27, but the nightmares about the facility never end.
It was the most painful experience of my life.
Thank you for your video on this. As someone with multiple psychological issues, I've no doubt I'd have been in one of these places if I had been born a few years earlier. There is no cure for my condition, but there is treatment not to make things so difficult to cope.
Actually, as someone who has spent a good deal of time in the physc hospital I can say, it can be a nice vacation to reevaluate your life and direction. Sometimes I miss the hospital, except for the not being able to leave part.
One patient of my mothers would always stand by the door opening and closing it almost constantly. I asked one day why he did it. Apparently he had his eyes removed in an asylum food hall by a violent patient. I think about him often. Poor soul. ❤
"the past was the worst"
- Ghandi (maybe)
Gotta give props to Geraldo Rivera for his work back in the day exposing willowbrook hospital in NY. Despite his goofy mustache and “gotch ya” style of journalism, that story was instrumental in showing people what occurred at these places at the time.
Shame they couldn’t have cleaned it up and given the patients the care and treatment they needed rather than closing them all down and throwing them into the streets though.
That video will put the fear of god into anyone.
It's a shame what Rupert Murdoch can do to a person. I think he's come to realize that after Fox News started fearmongering and demonizing all hispanics. It's just a shame it took him that and not the "president wasn't born in America" or "they hate us for our freedoms" or any of the other insane stories they covered before they jumped on the trump train.
It's like a bunch of people got together and instead of figuring out how to improve things, they just agreed on the one thing that could make it even worse.
They need to bring them back, without all the horror of course. But there are definitely people out there that cannot live on their own. And then there are some that are just beyond any help.
"Autism/ADHD/mental illness didn't exist in my day."
Oh, they did exist, but they just ended up in places like this.
It's quite disturbing to imagine that I, having autism and an extensive history of self-harm, would have ended up institutionalised in a place like this. I would have been at best electrocuted and almost certainly lobotomised. Bloody terrifying.
I have ADD, Autism, General OCD & Social Anxiety. I would of been shoved in one of these Asylum's less than 100 years ago
Looking for a comment like this, and found it. I've heard horror stories of people with autism being absolutely mistreated in asylums like this. We never had a THOROUGH understanding of autism as we do now from fifty years ago. It breaks my heart to know that people with "disabilities" were treated less than human in appalling conditions, and could have been the same case in my home country. Thankfully, the research conducted by *less-than-stellar individuals* brought forth the understanding of mental illnesses and disabilities we have today, and ushered in a newer wave of treatment that is more catering to individuals like myself in helping with independence.
My Mum was treated terribly when she was sectioned, and this was only 14 years ago. Things definitely haven't improved with the UK government decimating budgets for public services and institutions.
We think that many of these horrific practices went away in the early then you might expect. My friend was committed to an asylum as a child in the 1980s and was subjected to electroshock therapy. He now suffers from regular seizures as a result they tormented him as an 8 year old and later on when he was 12.
So many centuries of absolute nightmarish horror...
Imagine being someone who has nothing but confusion about what's going on and then getting punished for it.
Years from now, a similar video will be made about our current mental healthcare systems, of that I am certain.
As someone who has spent time in the Psych Ward of a local hospital in Ontario.... A lot has changed but not enough, in my experience.
Restraining "unruly" patients to beds and their own rooms is still very much a thing, I watched nurses doing just that to a patient with dementia, or perhaps Alzheimer's after asking where he was to many times.
withholding water and food if you bother the wrong nurse is very much a thing. being loaded up on medications to knock you out, is a threat i heard often. A few years later and i still have scars on my shins from the restraints that were over tightened. And these are just a handful of examples from a 5 day experience. I can only begin to imagine what happened to the patients who were there when I arrived, and still there when I left. The doctors have the ability to essentially remove your right of choice and make decisions on your behest, and if they don't feel your well enough for society, this can be extended, I was threatened with a 6 month stay.
Mental health care while being a massive improvement from the past is still a LONG way from where it should be.
I actually grew up in Weston, WV where the trans Alleghany Lunatic Asylum (or known to the locals as the state hospital since that is what is was called in the 90s) is located. It was a working hospital up until 1994, when it closed down. Weston is a small town, so it's rare to meet someone who didn't work there, knew someone who worked there, or was a patient there.
My mom worked there for a short time for a summer job in her youth, washing windows and cleaning up the place. This was back in the 70s, so while conditions had improved greatly since the darker days of the hospital, my mom still told me stories how some patients would be so drugged up on Thorazin they reminded her of zombies shuffling down the halls.
As a kid, my friends and I would dare each other to break into the place, since everyone in town knew it was haunted. As an adult, I became a tour guide there for awhile and learned all the history of the building, dating back to it's construction all the way to it's closing day. It's a fascinating building, one full of history, both good and bad. It's worth a visit if anyone finds themselves in the area.
And oh yea...and it's haunted AF!
Spot on. We’re not getting it right. We still see those that can live in the community have a hard time finding safe and affordable housing, jobs, and access to needed services. We have come a long way, but we are from the goal.
I was briefly in the psych ward of a hospital in 2016 (by choice because I was desperate for help) and it was awful. No going outside. No fresh air. No exercise. I wasn’t allowed my music or books. There were a small handful of movies and books and that was it. By day 3, I was literally walking in circles around the ward. And the psychiatrist was truly horrid. He was rude, condescending, and utterly vile. He decided to diagnose me with a “severe” personality disorder; his notes in my records don’t talk about diagnostic criteria, just basically how much he disliked me and what a lost cause I was.
Turns out I was actually undiagnosed autistic and ADHD, and now with a proper diagnosis and medication, my life has totally changed - thanks in NO way to my stay at the hospital.
I'm so sorry that happened. People like that should NOT be in that profession.
@@Avaa-vanilla995 how anyone can call a 24 year old with a literal lifetime of documented trauma, abuse, mental health struggles, self-harming behaviors, and suicidal ideation "melodramatic" is absolutely beyond me. I feel so sorry for people like me who went through his care who didn't have my deep-seated spite and hatred to keep me going and get a proper diagnosis.
As a fellow neurodivert therapeutic abuse survivor, my righteous rage at the systemic failures has kept me going when little else has.
A lifetime of being underestimated, dismissed, ignored and _PROVEN RIGHT_ again and again has taught me to keep fighting.
It takes us more time and effort to do pretty much everything in life -- but when I'm determined to "set the record straight" there's no license or professional degree that is gonna intimidate or re-traumatize me into remaining silent.
@@NataliaMichalova exactly the same for me. I was misdiagnosed and dismissed and belittled my entire fucking life. It took me 25 goddamn years to finally get the right diagnosis, the right medication, and find an amazing therapist who actually truly listens to me. It’s completely changed my life, BUT it sucks that it had to go that way at all. It shouldn’t have.
So now you're hooked on amphetamines, too.
Every city, even town's now have a Tent City, Oh yeah we're doing great. From shunning, hiding and torturing to just for the most part shunning and ignoring
Aren't some towns just criminalizing homelessness now?
Fr. Our treatment towards the mentally ill hasn’t improved, it’s just changed
This is a uniquely American problem that is rarely seen anywhere else in the world.
Yeah, I would have for sure been locked up in one of these. If not before I left for war, then definitely when I came back.
I would be in one simple for being in my 30's as an unmarried woman, especially since I don't want to marry or kids.
@@DebTheDevastatorgirl I’m 40 and same plus plenty of mental health issues. I probably would have already died in one by now 😢
The problem with mental illness is that the conditions are mostly chronic and often a live long challenge..... So their treatment prior to advancements in psychiatry was largely based on frustration with the illness
Every time I hear/read someone suggesting govt. re-open and operate the Mental 'Institutions' that would be needed, to treat everyone suffering severe mental distress/anguish, I remind them of exactly how abhorrent said 'Institutions' truly were, or to at least do a LITTLE bit of homework/research the truth.
As a USMC Veteran, I already have a VERY good idea of what it's like for 'Govt.' to manage me.
I can't imagine what those poor Souls trapped within a Govt. 'Institution' would have to suffer...
The piano music was very calming 😂
Today we still battle with the Stigma,
and insurance problems, not covering
needed treatments. 😮
I met a dude once in the hospital who couldn't afford his copays and had schizophrenia. He was about 6'6" and 300+ pounds. He was such a nice guy once he got his medication after 4 or 5 days, but exactly WHY we need universal healthcare. Anyone who disagrees can try and sedate him next time he can't afford his copay, because it supposedly took 4 men just to hold him down.
@@SconnerStudios Thanks 😊 Some story
All those centuries passed without someone saying “Hey, it doesn’t look like torture is working… maybe we should try something else?”
Simon and his team forgot to mention the correctional population in the USA. Those with mental illness are often incarcerated for offenses such as trespassing instead of getting help. This results in jail time and probation, which leads to an endless loop of probation violations and recurrent incarceration. The big asylums closed, and we just transfered then over to corrections.
I worked as a psych RN for 17 years, and it still amazes me the number of people with no experience as either a patient or health care professional whose impression of psychiatric care seems to have come from watching "The Snake Pit." For example, while psychotropic drugs work for many patients, there are those whose condition doesn't respond to medication. This was notable in my experience in cases of deep-seated depression. For some, ECT was *literally* a lifesaver. But I've met with looks of horror for saying so. Likewise with the use of restraints. While the system is certainly flawed, and there are indeed bad apples working in mental health, I'd say most are caring individuals doing their best within a barrage of paperwork, lack of adequate staff, and a lack of respect for both the mentally ill and the people who care for them.
I suffered from severe depression, but a love of mathematics saved me. Ultimately, my love of of mathematics led me to graduate school where I earned a PhD in mathematical physics at a top research university. I had full scholarships. Now, I am happily retired, and still doing mathematics to my heart's content😊!
I was on an inpatient ward with a number of people who received modern ECT and honestly it’s still barbaric. After each session the patients would come back unable to even recognise their own names, where they were, their family it’s was awful and then just as they were starting to relearn those basic things I’d be time for their next ECT session. Staff did sod all so we as the other patients started making them memory boards and created videos for them with their basic information, name, age, birthday, partner’s name, children’s names and ages etc. still the only “positive” that came from their ECT sessions was that they were so out of it that they were easy to handle just plonked into a chair and left, yes it reduced their risk for sh or suicide during treatment but they all just became shells of people, no personality, no understanding it was horrible to see how they disappeared after treatment just nothing behind their eyes
If theres something i want to know about one of Simon's countless channels are sure to cover it! I'm amazed how the level of quality is maintained across so much content and different topics
Nice to see my local Danvers State Hospital making a cameo at the beginning. I live about 15 minutes from the former hospital, my dad worked there briefly.
Thank you for speaking about this!
A decade ago I went to Danvers CAB, an inpatient detox facility in the same grounds as the Danvers State Hospital. I was in a bad place on my way there but I’ll never forget driving past that Goliath of a building.. Secondly my best friends (RIP) went to the detox at Tewksbury state hospital, only a wall seperates the detox from an active asylum (for lack of a better term). Tewksbury State Hospital was similar to Danvers and only a couple towns away. I’ve heard from a couple people that Tewksbury CAB was haunted, people claiming to be held down in their beds, etc… Granted people are detoxing typically off heroin there but the place gave me a very strange vibe… Long story I know lol
Living in the NZ oldest (still running) psychiatric hospital 1882. I love watching these. Really amazing to know the history mostly sad and horrible history but still informative. 😊 Would like to see more
The state run mental facilities are just as bad as the old ones. They just do it all more subtly. They may have done away with lobotomies, now it is chemical lobotomies. Restraints are still used as are straight jackets and electroshock. The only available institutions are for the criminally insane. Inpatient therapy's are available but at a major cost. I am thankful for my outpatient treatment but it is very hard to come by without paying 300 bucks an hour for treatment. If you want to be housed as a mental patient now days you just end up in jail. The stigmatization of mental illness and the horrors of the past have wreaked havoc on the care available. Between lack of government funding, and the fact that mental illness is still stigmatized and treated like a false illness (invisible illness) has put a major damper on progress for the mentally ill.
With my panic attacks and anxiety disorder, not to mention depression and just the simple fact that I'm female...this would have been where I was put to be forgotten about. It's utterly terrifying.
Same here. And the first time either of us was so bold as to have a personal opinion on anything the treatment would have gotten even more barbaric.
Congratulations
Why are you just gleeful to list all your mental illnesses like they’re Pokémon cards lmfao
West Virginia's Trans-allegheny Lunatic Asylum is currently a haunted house. I'm not too far away from it, couple hours, but unfortunately haven't been. I heard it fantastic though!
When I think about this subject, stories from the island of Poveglia come to my mind. On that island close to Venice there was a mental asylum run by a degenerate who experimented on his patients. The bastard threw himself from the asylum tower, although some say he was pushed and fell to his death. That place was a real horror story.
I'm pretty sure Simon did a Decoding The Unknown on that. Turns out like 90% of it is BS.
Thank you for touching on todays failures as well and how the lack of proper care (& abuse + negligence) contributes too larger problems.
As someone who has experienced involuntary “hospitalizations” even today it’s not much more than keeping you sedating long enough too seem “over” whatever episode you were experiencing.
The amount of people, including myself, that will attest that these holds made them much WORSE shows there’s still a way to go.
Than ofcourse a terrifying thing is that in the way of help - there is very little options for someone who is experiencing a severe mental health crisis as I empathize with loved ones who may result to this action when completely overwhelmed with the ill person.
The last time I had myself committed, when the other patients found out that I was there by choice, they were in shock. I explained that I was able to recognize that I was a danger to myself and when I felt like I was no longer a danger to myself, I would be going home. They didn't believe me until they saw me walking out a few days later. Sometimes, I just need a round the clock babysitter while my meds are adjusted. Basically just someone to hide my opioids and benzos and keep sharp objects away from me. And I'm not shy about letting the people around me know when I need to be supervised. I wish my brother had had the same sense, maybe he'd still be around.
Ironic that thinking you can spin the mental illness out of someone is totally delusional
Makes one think who the real crazies were...
I grew up in western North Carolina, in the shadow of a hospital called Broughton. Ancient in architecture, and completely mysterious to the public, this asylum cared for the mentally ill for decades and decades, doing what I am certain was a stellar job overall. As a child, though, the gothic buildings and stories told were horrifying.
I wrote a gothic horror book about a fictional asylum. It's called Fairhaven Falls. When I was researching the history of asylums and treatment of patients, I found it absolutely heartbreaking. The more you read about it the sadder it becomes.
I grew up in Danvers, mostly after it was closed. Unfortunately I was too much of a "good kid" to sneak in and explore the buildings (ignoring the abundant asbestos) like most kids in my town did.
It was used for filming the 2001 horror movie "Session 9" where workers abating the contaminates are picked off one by one.
This "hospital" was also the inspiration for HP Lovecraft's Arkham Sanitarium in "The Thing On The Doorstep". This, in turn, inspired the Arkham Asylum in the Batman stories.
The location is now mostly demolished and turned into luxury apartments, with some of the building exteriors remaining.
I grew up near Danvers State.
Where Session 9 was filmed.
It was our town haunted house.
Burned, in a hellish fire.
Its luxury housing now.
My dad lives there.
Place is still weird.
I grew up in the shadow of Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital on Long Island in New York. When they shut down most of the buildings, the homeless population spiked & sadly many did not survive very long on the streets.
We definitely need to reopen these hospitals on both a State & Federal level and get these people the help they deserve. If they can find the money to house illegal aliens, they can redirect the money to take care of our mentally ill CITIZENS.
How about we just remove them and stop spending money on them.
Well done! Another great video :).
Thanks for sharing.
We make all these technological advances at lighting speed, but we are learning about mental health at the speed of that car from the Flintstones.
Watching this since I would have been sent to an asylum only 30 years ago. I already was partially hospitalized earlier this year cause I was so depressed I didn’t get out of bed for a month.
I wish you health and strength.
The man who first suggested that doctors clean their hands before dealing with patients to reduce infection rates was ridiculed, driven insane and died in one of these institutions of infection.
The Athens Lunatic Asylum is near the university I attended. The stories about that old place were horrendous. They were so bad, they lost a patient in the 1970s. They found her much later passed away in an abandoned section of the asylum. It shut down in 1993. The university owns the building now, but as far as I know, the cemetery is still there.
I’m guessing that Simon has a personal interest in this video. He’s more animated and emotional that normal. Keep up the great work!
I work in the homeless system, and for those who aren't just scamming the system, the two biggest causes I've noticed that causes it is untreated addiction and mental illness. As a society, I feel like if we put more resources into providing housing/treatment for mental illness, it would really reduce crime
Addiction is best treated by allowing people the freedom to use what they like; I used heroin throughout my life, but earned a PhD. I retired from a 30 year teaching career, but intend to remain on methadone for life.
@@barneyronnie If you lived a successful life while being a junkie, then you're an exception to the rule. We should not be encouraging or enabling people to poison themselves. It's wrong. It's like if you know someone has a gambling habit so you just let them go to a casino whenever they want. How is that being compassionate? How is that helping anyone. I'm sorry, I'm glad you have had a successful life, but we shouldn't let people indulge in the stuff that is killing them, and we should be helping those suffering with mental illness in a way that will actually help them.
Pennhurst is another in the US, there's actually a documentary made called "suffer the little children" made by a news broadcaster if I remember correctly, it's awful, utterly heartbreaking.
The shape of your head is remarkable
😂😂😂😂😂😂
My head is so bumpy! I guess Simon wasn’t dropped multiple time as a baby. 👶🏻 I think I must have been!😂
Simon, if you are truly interested in this topic, see if you can find a copy of a book call "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden". It is a fictionalized story of a real mental patient in the 60s. She was subjected to electroshock therapy which actually did help break her psychosis. Fascinating subject!
Psychology graduate here & this feels like an apt topic with things going on in the world at the moment. Especially reading about in Canada where some people with severe mental illness were granted assisted suicide through MAID because it was less expensive than to actually help them. It feels like we are heading back to a time when people with mental illness (or even disabilities) are being forgotten and there's an increasing attitude about how they shouldn't be helped or should be left to fend for themselves or even locked away.
We haven't made much progress at all
Might I reference Disenchantment…..:Sorcerio…..”No demon could withstand this preposterous amount of jiggling”, “Ah.. I see you brought your talking cat to keep you company”.
:Sorcerio to Zog….”Your highness, we have applied all 3 sciences to rid Bean of the Demon with no results”.
:Zog to Sorcerio….”All 3 !!!!……Even SMOKE ?????”. Sorcerio…”In deed sire….to no avail”.
This always cracks me up. The notion that one of the “sciences applied to rid a human of a demon infestation was strapping them into an upright gurney and spinning a wheel that in turn jostles and jiggles the individual strapped to it, or even funnier…..SMOKE…..yes, smoke. I don’t recall the 3rd “science”, but those 2 I recall because of how hilarious they are, and the seriousness of their convictions into whole heartedly believing that these absurd methods would accomplish ANYTHING instills a profound sense of levity. I have to force myself to remember the belief systems and practices beholden to those individuals in those historical time periods. It doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination lead me to believe that the populous were, at face value, stupid, dumb or any other negative term anybody could conjure up. Plenty of people were intelligent and talented. The issues were with how they understood and interpreted the inflictions of others, on the mental health capacity of all subject matter that makes up us humans.
I simply found the remedies, regardless of it being a cartoon, hilarious especially when considering that some of Sorcerio’s attempts were not to far off from what was actually believed in those times.
One of my extended relatives died in a State Mental Hospital in 1969, when she went septic. She was restrained and left in her own filth so much it killed her. Reform was needed.
Not sure today's practices are right either. Turning the patients onto the streets with a perscription is not ideal either.
I worked in a hospital for people with learning disabilities, 'mental handicap' hospital it was called. there was good and bad, it was the 80s and 90s and they were well cared for and able to go out and about and socialise, with clubs, therapy and and a social club, there were bad staff but then there are bad staff in the community care homes and residents often get poor care and don't to go out as much and seem to have less freedom in many ways. i actually loved the job and working with the residents, i loved the job so much. I have also have mental health problems and been in a pyschiatric day hospital. I've been on chlorpromazine, left me like a zombie, you can get bad sun burn as well on that stuff and you have to have procyclidne to counter balance the Parkinsons like symptoms you get as a side affect of chlorpromazine
Don't take that crap; opiates work much better. I take oxycodone and DilaudidHP.
I have ADD, Autism, General OCD & Social Anxiety. I'm also an introvert and have occasional depressive phases and panic attacks. I would of been locked up in one of these less that 100 years ago.
I've been a psych nurse for over 30 years. I would not have been able to do that back then. It was truly horrendous.
The main building for Danvers State hospital is still there; it has been converted into apartment units. I worked on the restructure and halfway through the project, most of the smaller buildings burned to the ground. You can find the video on TH-cam actually.
I can certainly say that it was unsettling being in that building, and there were little hidden spaces throughout the building.
I like that Simon can pronounce North American words like a champ, that's how you can always spot a foreign video as the narrator or AI misspronounce slight words usually names
I spent 8 months sectioned living in the Bethlem “bedlam” for my eating disorder… I didn’t know much about it’s history while I was there but parts of the grounds were quite creepy.
I must admit, I found it fascinating that a sharp rise in mental illness can be traced back to the industrial revolution.
The industrial revolution and it's consequences...
Most of Tewksbury State Hospital is still intact today. The only building still in use as a hospital is a new building from the 1980s which is used mainly for veterans. The other out buildings are under contract with the state for various offices. Transitional Assistance, Women and Children Services, Health and Welfare, MassHealth. You know offices that work for the underserved members of the public. You won't see any elected officials working out of those offices. There was about a dozen small houses on the property, that were intended for employee residences. Those buildings would have been perfect, for institutionalized patients moving to society, but under the deinstitutionalization programs it was all or nothing, either be hospitalized or get out.
Mental health inpatient care facilities, along with other care facilities for the elderly and other disabled people are still Hell. The patients there still need adequate care and treatment. It’s really sad to see.
I am a Brazilian living in Portugal. My mom worked in a asylum for people suffering from several mental conditions, ranging from mild autism, dementia and sometimes schizophrenia in different severity. While it's not 18th century levels of conditions, she explained to me how the lack of higiene, proper care and, very frequently, the indiference of asylum workers to the patient's humanity. Workers sometimes let the patience sleep in their own excrement, failing to change bed sheets, serving stale food with little nutrition, sometimes my mother brought some of the food, and even us who were poor couldn't stand how bland the food tasted, it was meant to keep costs at a minimum. There was this one haunting moment when a patient, a 50 year old man suffering from schizophrenia with several other health problems, he was a very active person who made jokes, one day my mother told me he was strangely quiet, and refused to get out of bed. She knew something was off and told the other workers to make a check-out of his condition. They didn't care, pointing that he was just lazy that day. When a colleague took my mom's shift in the morning she forced the old guy to wake up, because if he was late by some minutes it would fuck all the time tables of the other workers. He was forced to eat quick that food by the other workers. He died from a aneurysm that night. The most fucked up part is that people working there mourned his death when their supervisor visited the asylum, saying how sudden and unexpected it was, and that he was loved by everyone, nevermind the beatings and the verbal harassment that they suffered on their hands.
My mom quit some months after, we are now doing much better.
I have depression and have needed to be hospitalized when it got so bad i wanted to end it all. Thank god times have changed or id be in a place like this
I'm a psychiatrist. We need to bring back asylums. The fact is that there are a lot of people out there who can't be entrusted with their own safety.
I feel like you could do an entire series on the topic of asylums, the various “treatments”, abuses, and the rise and fall of the institution and of changing medical advances
Dates like "1979" and "the 1980s" should just horrify you...