I’m talking about the United States, specifically. I’m sure at a minimum the term “insane asylum” is no longer used, but are the institutions still there? I mean, where people are involuntary committed for being insane, rather than criminal?
Sure. Generally they’re called “mental hospitals” now. Involuntary commitment is unusual – it must be ordered by a court and the burden to get involuntarily committed for any length of time is pretty high. One recent controversey is the forced committment of sex offenders after their prison sentences are up.
Yep, forced psychiatric treatment is still very much present in the US. The latest trend is “involuntary outpatient commitment” —if you show up and let them shoot you up with long-acting pharmaceuticals, you get to live in the community, but they can toss you back in for not participating in mandated treatment. Kind of like parole for mental patients.
The inpatient population of psych bins is much much smaller than it was in the heyday of institutional psychiatry. But I’m unaware of any region with any significant population that doesn’t still have them, and you can still be locked in against your will indefinitely on nothing more than the professional opinion of a couple of shrinks that you’re mentally ill and dangerous (or, in many states, merely mentally ill and gravely in need of treatment or some such thing).
I know of one place that fits the bill, we used to hate getting calls here when I was an EMT. They are kinda a specialty psych hospital for severe geriatric psych cases.
I was in and out of plenty of psych facilities, but this place at the time was almost surreal. Someone was almost always screaming, people shuffling around aimlessly, dropping off articles of clothing at random, walking into walls, talking to people that were not there. This would just be over a 50 yard stretch of corridor.
Granted, these are people with decades of major difficult to manage psych problems, who are not going to get any better.
Sure, think about places like where they put criminals who are declared not guilty by reason of insanity. I know of one long-term one in the Boston area. It is in Cambridge near Fresh Pond and looks like a small college with manicured grounds where people can walk around.
We have a mental hospital here in Columbus (Mr. SCL used to work there). The state has been chopping it to pieces over the last decade or so - first the Juivenile Unit was closed, then the Mental Retardation unit - so the closest help is in Milledgeville or Augusta. Kinda difficult to get to visit your kid or participate in his therapy if he’s in Augusta and you’re in Columbus and you don’t own a car.
Now the State of Georgia, in its infinite wisdom, wants to shut the place down completely. In addition to leaving no in-patient psych services for a rather large community, this is really going to put more of a burden on the sherriff’s department, who will now have to transport patients to Central State Hospital in Milledgeville for evaulation. I see this resulting in a lot of people getting put into the prison system who really don’t belong there, and who will end up getting hurt.
Some of these people just can’t function on their own, and have no place to go for help. I forsee more homeless people in the future of this city, also.
It’s sad. I know there are posters here that do not believe in the validity of mental treatment, but it’s hard for me to just watch people just go out and get hurt or killed because they’re not capable of caring for themselves.
Are you talking about McLean? Because I’m not sure people are involuntarily committed there, and even so, I would hardly call it an insane asylum.
Yes. My old home town of Cherokee, IA still has one. The inpatient load is way down but it still serves as a center for outpatient treatment. The physical facilities have changed little since I was on a paint crew there over 60 years ago.
A decade ago, people were involuntarily committed there from time to time.