From Sanctuary to Snake Pit: The rise and fall of asylums

[AcadieLibre]

I found this photo essay as I was reading New Scientist. I found it to be a very interesting photo essay. I have seen some of these institutions first hand when I was an orderly in one of my previous lives. It was still fairly barbaric, it was getting better but once you see several people after shock therapy you see the world in a different light. I also now believe we like the article states come back to a place where even the most disturbed people are treated like well people at least in some of the more civilized societies, ill treatment is still the main stay of those with mental afflictions in many parts of the world.

From Sanctuary to Snake Pit: The rise and fall of asylums

[casil403]

Very interesting article...amazing to see the original lofty ideal and the fiasco it eventually morphed into. Wouldn't it be cool if they could figure out a new use for those beautiful buildings! Ill treatment is the mainstay for many types of disability be it mental or physical in many parts of the world.
Reminds me a bit too of the low income housing projects that started up in the 60-70's...kind of ended along the same lines in a way.
Thanks for sharing......

[AcadieLibre]

Well here in Toronto they did save the buildings at the former Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital and turned into a college campus. Two summers ago I spent a few days volunteering to find the remains of those buried with no markers or headstones, it was sad what they did even to them at the end. Here is the history of this one institution. I have photos from there but I cannot access them right now they are on my external drives on my desk.

Asylum by the Lake

[casil403]

Two summers ago I spent a few days volunteering to find the remains of those buried with no markers or headstones, it was sad what they did even to them at the end. Here is the history of this one institution. I have photos from there but I cannot access them right now they are on my external drives on my desk.

Asylum by the Lake

Very interesting...
That is so sad...no grave markers nothing....and that they used "patient labour" ...sounds like slave labour from the description actually..... to construct the buildings without pay or any restitution!

Mental illness has such a negative stigma attached to it.....I also have to wonder how many patients with intact cognitive ablility but physical deficits such as CP were housed in these places as well and deemed insane?

[casil403]

Here's an article I found from Alberta:
The Famous Five - Emily Murphy - Sterilization of the Insane

[AcadieLibre]

Unfortunately it was common for those deemed unfit, incorrigible, Mental Deficiencies they were sterilized all over North America, what a horrible thing that was done to these poor people. Tragic all around. Thanks for the link, very disturbed thinking behind the authour of that 1932 article and justifies it with religion, how sickening.