Involuntary commitment, civil commitment, or involuntary hospitalization/hospitalisation is a legal process through which an individual who is deemed by a qualified person to have symptoms of severe mental disorder is detained in a psychiatric hospital (inpatient) where they can be treated involuntarily. This treatment may involve the administration of psychoactive drugs, including involuntary administration. In many jurisdictions, people diagnosed with mental health disorders can also be forced to undergo treatment while in the community; this is sometimes referred to as outpatient commitment and shares legal processes with commitment.
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental health hospitals, or behavioral health hospitals are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of severe mental disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, major depressive disorder, and others.
Weyburn is the tenth-largest city in Saskatchewan, Canada. The city has a population of 11,019. It is on the Souris River 110 kilometres (68 mi) southeast of the provincial capital of Regina and is 70 kilometres (43 mi) north from the North Dakota border in the United States. The name is reputedly a corruption of the Scottish "wee burn," referring to a small creek. The city is surrounded by the Rural Municipality of Weyburn No. 67.
Humphry Fortescue Osmond was an English psychiatrist who moved to Canada and later the United States. He is known for inventing the word psychedelic and for his research into interesting and useful applications for psychedelic drugs. Osmond also explored aspects of the psychology of social environments, in particular how they influenced welfare or recovery in mental institutions.
Abram Hoffer was a Canadian biochemist, physician, and psychiatrist known for his "adrenochrome hypothesis" of schizoaffective disorders. According to Hoffer, megavitamin therapy and other nutritional interventions are potentially effective treatments for cancer and schizophrenia. Hoffer was also involved in studies of LSD as an experimental therapy for alcoholism and the discovery that high-dose niacin can be used to treat high cholesterol and other dyslipidemias. Hoffer's ideas about megavitamin therapy to treat mental illness are not accepted by the medical community.
Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital referred to both the former psychiatric hospital and the historic building that it occupied in Morris Plains, New Jersey. Built in 1876, the facility was built to alleviate overcrowding at the state's only other "lunatic asylum" located in Trenton, New Jersey.
Deinstitutionalisation is the process of replacing long-stay psychiatric hospitals with less isolated community mental health services for those diagnosed with a mental disorder or developmental disability. In the late 20th century, it led to the closure of many psychiatric hospitals, as patients were increasingly cared for at home, in halfway houses and clinics, in regular hospitals, or not at all.
Powick Hospital, which opened in 1847 was a psychiatric facility located on 552 acres (223 ha) outside the village of Powick, near Malvern, Worcestershire. At its peak, the hospital housed around 1,000 patients in buildings designed for 400. During the 1950s the hospital gained an internationally acclaimed reputation for its use of the drug LSD in psychotherapy pioneered and conducted by Ronald A. Sandison. In 1968 the institution was surrounded by controversy concerning serious neglect of patients. In 1989 it was closed down leaving Barnsley Hall Hospital in Bromsgrove as the remaining psychiatric hospital in the county. Most of the complex has been demolished to make way for a housing estate.
The Rosewood Center was an institution for people with developmental disabilities located on Rosewood Lane in Owings Mills, Maryland.
Fairfield State Hospital or Fairfield Hills Hospital was a psychiatric hospital in Newtown, Connecticut, which operated from 1931 until 1995. At its peak, the hospital housed over 4,000 patients. The entire facility was owned and operated by the State of Connecticut Department of Mental Health. The facility still stands, just southeast of the center of Newtown.
Dr. James MacNeill was the first superintendent of Saskatchewan Hospital, North Battleford for mentally ill patients in the province of Saskatchewan.
The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an institution where people with mental illness were confined. It was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
Whitby Falls Hospital is a former hospital for the mentally ill located in Mundijong, Western Australia. Until its closure in 2006 it was the longest operating facility in Western Australia for the care and treatment of mental illness.
Thaddeus Eugene Weckowicz was a Polish-Canadian social scientist, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Theoretical Psychology at the University of Alberta, and Research Associate, Center for Systems Research, University of Alberta, known for his research in chronic schizophrenics since the 1950s.
In a study in Western societies, homeless people have a higher prevalence of mental illness when compared to the general population. They also are more likely to suffer from alcoholism and drug dependency. It is estimated that 20–25% of homeless people, compared with 6% of the non-homeless, have severe mental illness. Others estimate that up to one-third of the homeless have a mental illness. In January 2015, the most extensive survey ever undertaken found 564,708 people were homeless on a given night in the United States. Depending on the age group in question and how homelessness is defined, the consensus estimate as of 2014 was that, at minimum, 25% of the American homeless—140,000 individuals—were seriously mentally ill at any given point in time. 45% percent of the homeless—250,000 individuals—had any mental illness. More would be labeled homeless if these were annual counts rather than point-in-time counts. Being chronically homeless also means that people with mental illnesses are more likely to experience catastrophic health crises requiring medical intervention or resulting in institutionalization within the criminal justice system. Majority of the homeless population do not have a mental illness. Although there is no correlation between homelessness and mental health, those who are dealing with homelessness are struggling with psychological and emotional distress. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration conducted a study and found that in 2010, 26.2 percent of sheltered homeless people had a severe mental illness.
The Rockland Psychiatric Center, originally Rockland State Hospital, in Orangeburg, New York, is a psychiatric facility for adults operated by the New York State Office of Mental Health. It offers in-patient and transitional treatment for adults, as well as research facilities. There are 13 outpatient facilities and 11 residential programs in the four surrounding counties. The facility shares space with the co-located Nathan Kline Institute. The inpatient treatment center has 410 beds. The current hospital replaces an older hospital on the same 615-acre (249 ha) site.
The Spring Grove Experiment is a series of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) studies performed from 1963 to 1976 on patients with psychotic illnesses at the Spring Grove Clinic in Catonsville, Maryland. These patients were sponsored by a federal agency called the National Institute of Mental Health to be part of the first study conducted on the effects of psychedelic drugs on people with schizophrenia. The Spring Grove Experiments were adapted to study the effect of LSD and psychotherapy on patients including alcoholics, heroin addicts, neurotics, and terminally-ill cancer patients. The research done was largely conducted by the members of the Research Unit of Spring Grove State Hospital. Significant contributors to the experiments included Walter Pahnke, Albert Kurland, Sanford Unger, Richard Yensen, Stanislav Grof, William Richards, Francesco Di Leo, and Oliver Lee McCabe. Later, Spring Grove was rebuilt into the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center where studies continued to be performed for the advancement of psychiatric research. This study on LSD is the largest study on psychedelic drugs to date.
Albert Kurland was a psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist at the Spring Grove State Hospital and the Maryland State Psychiatric Research Center. He was also affiliated with Johns Hopkins University as a research professor. He was a prolific researcher, conducting many studies on anti-psychotics, completing early research on the treatment of alcoholics using psychedelics, and making integral contributions to the research unit at the Spring Grove State Hospital.
Erika Ellen Dyck is a Canadian historian. She is a professor of history and Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. In 2014, Dyck was inducted to the New College of Scholars, Artists and Scientists at the Royal Society of Canada.
Ronald Arthur Sandison was a British psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Among his other work. he is particularly noted for his pioneering studies and use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) as a psychotheraputic drug. As a consultant psychiatrist, his LSD work was mainly carried out during the 1950s and '60s at Powick Hospital, a large psychiatric facility near Malvern, Worcestershire, after which he spent several years in Southampton, where he was instrumental in the establishment of the university medical school. He returned to his native Shetland Isles in the 1970s and worked in psychotherapy there. He later specialised in psychosexual medicine on the UK mainland. Sandison died at the age of 94, and was buried in Ledbury near Malvern.
