Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health units or behavioral health units, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialize only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients. Others may specialize in the temporary or permanent containment of patients who need routine assistance, treatment, or a specialized and controlled environment due to a psychiatric disorder. Patients often choose voluntary commitment, but those whom psychiatrists believe to pose significant danger to themselves or others may be subject to involuntary commitment and involuntary treatment. Psychiatric hospitals may also be called psychiatric wards/units when they are a subunit of a regular hospital.
Insanity, madness, lunacy, and craziness are behaviors performed by certain abnormal mental or behavioral patterns. Insanity can be manifest as violations of societal norms, including a person or persons becoming a danger to themselves or to other people. Conceptually, mental insanity also is associated with the biological phenomenon of contagion as in the case of copycat suicides. In contemporary usage, the term insanity is an informal, un-scientific term denoting "mental instability"; thus, the term insanity defense is the legal definition of mental instability. In medicine, the general term psychosis is used to include the presence either of delusions or of hallucinations or both in a patient; and psychiatric illness is "psychopathology", not mental insanity.
Historically, mental disorders have had three major explanations, namely, the supernatural, biological and psychological models. For much of recorded history, deviant behavior has been considered supernatural and a reflection of the battle between good and evil. When confronted with unexplainable, irrational behavior and by suffering and upheaval, people have perceived evil. In fact, in the Persian Empire from 550 to 330 B.C., all physical and mental disorders were considered the work of the devil. Physical causes of mental disorders have been sought in history. Hippocrates was important in this tradition as he identified syphilis as a disease and was, therefore, an early proponent of the idea that psychological disorders are biologically caused. This was a precursor to modern psycho-social treatment approaches to the causation of psychopathology, with the focus on psychological, social and cultural factors. Well known philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, etc., wrote about the importance of fantasies, dreams, and thus anticipated, to some extent, the fields of psychoanalytic thought and cognitive science that were later developed. They were also some of the first to advocate for humane and responsible care for individuals with psychological disturbances.
Barnwood House Hospital was a private mental hospital in Barnwood, Gloucester, England. It was founded by the Gloucester Asylum Trust in 1860 as Barnwood House Institution and later became known as Barnwood House Hospital. The hospital catered for well-to-do patients, with reduced terms for those in financial difficulties. It was popular with the military and clergy, and once counted an Archbishop amongst its patients. During the late nineteenth century Barnwood House flourished under superintendent Frederick Needham, making a healthy profit and receiving praise from the Commissioners in Lunacy. Even the sewerage system was held up as a model of good asylum practice. After the First World War service patients, including war poet and composer Ivor Gurney, were treated with a regime of psychotherapy and recreations such as cricket.
The Meteor was an internal newspaper written, edited, printed and published by the patients of the Alabama Insane Hospital, soon renamed as the Bryce Hospital after superintendent Dr. Peter Bryce, from 1872 to 1881.
Pliny Earle II, MD was an American physician, psychiatrist, and poet. He was the son of the inventor Pliny Earle of the Earle family.
The Athens Lunatic Asylum, now a mixed-use development known as The Ridges, was a Kirkbride Plan mental hospital operated in Athens, Ohio, from 1874 until 1993. During its operation, the hospital provided services to a variety of patients including Civil War veterans, children, and those declared mentally unwell. After a period of disuse the property was redeveloped by the state of Ohio. Today, The Ridges are a part of Ohio University and house the Kennedy Museum of Art as well as an auditorium and many offices, classrooms, and storage facilities.
The Retreat, commonly known as the York Retreat, is a place in England for the treatment of people with mental health needs. Located in Lamel Hill in York, it operates as a not for profit charitable organisation.
Moral treatment was an approach to mental disorder based on humane psychosocial care or moral discipline that emerged in the 18th century and came to the fore for much of the 19th century, deriving partly from psychiatry or psychology and partly from religious or moral concerns. The movement is particularly associated with reform and development of the asylum system in Western Europe at that time. It fell into decline as a distinct method by the 20th century, however, due to overcrowding and misuse of asylums and the predominance of biomedical methods. The movement is widely seen as influencing certain areas of psychiatric practice up to the present day. The approach has been praised for freeing sufferers from shackles and barbaric physical treatments, instead considering such things as emotions and social interactions, but has also been criticised for blaming or oppressing individuals according to the standards of a particular social class or religion.
Oregon State Hospital is a public psychiatric hospital in the U.S. state of Oregon, located in the state's capital city of Salem with a smaller satellite campus in Junction City opened in 2014. Founded in 1862 and constructed in the Kirkbride Plan design in 1883, it is the oldest operating psychiatric hospital in the state of Oregon, and one of the oldest continuously operated hospitals on the West Coast.
The Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane, also known as The Superintendents' Association, was organized in Philadelphia in October, 1844 at a meeting of 13 superintendents, making it the first professional medical specialty organization in the U.S.
Asylum Architecture in the United States, including the architecture of psychiatric hospitals, affected the changing methods of treating the mentally ill in the nineteenth century: the architecture was considered part of the cure. Doctors believed that ninety percent of insanity cases were curable, but only if treated outside the home, in large-scale buildings. Nineteenth-century psychiatrists considered the architecture of asylums, especially their planning, to be one of the most powerful tools for the treatment of the insane, targeting social as well as biological factors to facilitate the treatment of mental illnesses. The construction and usage of these quasi-public buildings served to legitimize developing ideas in psychiatry. About 300 psychiatric hospitals, known at the time as insane asylums or colloquially as “loony bins” or “nuthouses,” were constructed in the United States before 1900. Asylum architecture is notable for the way similar floor plans were built in a wide range of architectural styles.
The Brattleboro Retreat is a private not-for-profit mental health and addictions hospital that provides comprehensive inpatient, partial hospitalization, and outpatient treatment services for children, adolescents, and adults.
Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, established in 1892 as the Matteawan State Hospital by an 1892 law, functioned as a hospital for insane criminals. It was located in the town of Fishkill just outside the city of Beacon, New York; today its buildings form part of Fishkill Correctional Facility.
The Utah State Hospital (USH) is a mental hospital located in eastern Provo, Utah, United States of America. The current superintendent is Dallas Earnshaw.
The lunatic asylum was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
Rufus Wyman (1778–1842) was an American physician. He was the first physician and superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, renamed in 1823 to McLean Hospital, part of the Massachusetts General Hospital system, and the first mental hospital in the state.
John Curwen (1821–1901) was Superintendent of the first public mental hospital in Pennsylvania. He personally knew the thirteen founders of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions of the Insane (AMSAII), now the American Psychiatric Association. He served as secretary-treasurer of the Association for 34 years (1856–1890).
George Alder Blumer, M.D. (1857-1940) was a physician, a mental hospital administrator, and a journal editor. He was a leader in the provision of humanitarian care for mental hospital patients.
