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Psychiatric hospital

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This article is about modern psychiatric hospitals. For historical lunatic asylums, see Lunatic asylum.
"Funny farm" redirects here. For other uses, see Funny Farm.

A psychiatric hospital, also known as a mental health hospital, a behavioral health hospital, or an asylum is a specialized medical facility that focuses on the treatment of severe mental disorders. These institutions cater to patients with conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, and eating disorders, among others.

Danvers State Hospital, Danvers, Massachusetts, Kirkbride Complex, c. 1893
Niuvanniemi Hospital in Niuva, Finland
McLean Hospital's administration building in Belmont, Massachusetts; the hospital treated several notable New England residents, including Massachusetts governor Nathaniel P. Banks, musician James Taylor, and poet Anne Sexton

Overview

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Psychiatric hospitals vary considerably in size and classification. Some specialize in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients, while others provide long-term care for individuals requiring routine assistance or a controlled environment due to their psychiatric condition. Patients may choose voluntary commitment, but those deemed to pose a significant danger to themselves or others may be subject to involuntary commitment and treatment.[1][2]

In general hospitals, psychiatric wards or units serve a similar purpose. Modern psychiatric hospitals have evolved from the older concept of lunatic asylums, shifting focus from mere containment and restraint to evidence-based treatments that aim to help patients function in society.[3][4]

With successive waves of reform, and the introduction of effective evidence-based treatments, most modern psychiatric hospitals emphasize treatment, usually including a combination of psychiatric medications and psychotherapy, that assist patients in functioning in the outside world. Many countries have prohibited the use of physical restraints on patients, which includes tying psychiatric patients to their beds for days or even months at a time,[5][6] though this practice still is periodically employed in the United States, India, Japan, and other countries.[7][8]

History

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Main article: Lunatic asylum
 
York Retreat, built in the late 18th century by William Tuke, a pioneer in moral treatment of the mentally ill

Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved from, and eventually replaced, the older lunatic asylum. Their development also entails the rise of organized institutional psychiatry. Hospitals known as bimaristans were built in the Middle East in the early ninth century; the first was built in Baghdad under the leadership of Harun al-Rashid. While not devoted solely to patients with psychiatric disorders, early psychiatric hospitals often contained wards for patients exhibiting mania or other psychological distress.[9]

Because of cultural taboos against refusing to care for one's family members, mentally ill patients would be surrendered to a bimaristan only if the patient demonstrated violence, incurable chronic illness, or some other extremely debilitating ailment.[10] Psychological wards were typically enclosed by iron bars owing to the aggression of some of the patients.[11]

In Western Europe, the first idea and set up for a proper mental hospital entered through Spain. A member of the Mercedarian Order named Juan Gilaberto Jofré traveled frequently to Islamic countries and observed several institutions that confined the insane. He proposed the founding of an institution exclusive for "sick people who had to be treated by doctors", something very modern for the time. The foundation was carried out in 1409 thanks to several wealthy men from Valencia who contributed funds for its completion. It was considered the first institution in the world at that time specialized in the treatment of mental illnesses.

Later on, physicians, including Philippe Pinel at Bicêtre Hospital in France and William Tuke at York Retreat in England, began to advocate for the viewing of mental illness as a disorder that required compassionate treatment that would aid in the rehabilitation of the victim. In the Western world, the arrival of institutionalisation as a solution to the problem of madness was very much an advent of the nineteenth century. The first public mental asylums were established in Britain; the passing of the County Asylums Act 1808 empowered magistrates to build rate-supported asylums in every county to house the many 'pauper lunatics'. Nine counties first applied, the first public asylum opening in 1812 in Nottinghamshire. In 1828, the newly appointed Commissioners in Lunacy were empowered to license and supervise private asylums. The Lunacy Act 1845 made the construction of asylums in every county compulsory with regular inspections on behalf of the Home Secretary, and required asylums to have written regulations and a resident physician.[12]

At the beginning of the 19th century there were a few thousand people housed in a variety of disparate institutions throughout England, but by 1900 that figure had grown to about 100,000. This growth coincided with the growth of alienism, later known as psychiatry, as a medical specialism.[13] The treatment of inmates in early lunatic asylums was sometimes very brutal and focused on containment and restraint.[3][4]

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, psychiatric institutions ceased using terms such as "madness", "lunacy" or "insanity", which assumed a unitary psychosis, and began instead splitting into numerous mental diseases, including catatonia, melancholia, and dementia praecox, which is now known as schizophrenia.[14]

In 1961, sociologist Erving Goffman described a theory[15][16] of the "total institution" and the process by which it takes efforts to maintain predictable and regular behavior on the part of both "guard" and "captor", suggesting that many of the features of such institutions serve the ritual function of ensuring that both classes of people know their function and social role, in other words of "institutionalizing" them. Asylums as a key text in the development of deinstitutionalization.[17]

With successive waves of reform and the introduction of effective evidence-based treatments, modern psychiatric hospitals provide a primary emphasis on treatment; and further, they attempt—where possible—to help patients control their own lives in the outside world with the use of a combination of psychiatric drugs and psychotherapy.[18] These treatments can be involuntary. Involuntary treatments are among the many psychiatric practices which are questioned by the mental patient liberation movement.[citation needed]

Types

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Republican Vilnius Psychiatric Hospital in Naujoji Vilnia, one of the largest health facilities in Lithuania, built in 1902
 
The Art Nouveau-styled Röykkä Hospital, formerly known as Nummela Sanatorium, in Röykkä, Finland

There are several different types of modern psychiatric hospitals, but all of them house people with mental illnesses of varying severity. In the United Kingdom, both crisis admissions and medium-term care are usually provided on acute admissions wards. Juvenile or youth wards in psychiatric hospitals or psychiatric wards are set aside for children or youth with mental illness. Long-term care facilities have the goal of treatment and rehabilitation within a short time-frame (two or three years). Another institution for the mentally ill is a community-based halfway house.

Crisis stabilization

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In the United States, there are high acuity and low acuity crisis facilities (or Crisis Stabilization Units). High acuity crisis stabilization units serve individuals who are actively suicidal, violent, or intoxicated. Low acuity crisis facilities include peer respites, social detoxes, and other programs to serve individuals who are not actively suicidal/violent. [19]

Open units

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Open psychiatric units are not as secure as crisis stabilization units. They are not used for acutely suicidal people; instead, the focus in these units is to make life as normal as possible for patients while continuing treatment to the point where they can be discharged. However, patients are usually still not allowed to hold their own medications in their rooms because of the risk of an impulsive overdose. While some open units are physically unlocked, other open units still use locked entrances and exits, depending on the type of patients admitted.

Medium term

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Another type of psychiatric hospital is medium term, which provides care lasting several weeks. Most drugs used for psychiatric purposes take several weeks to take effect, and the main purpose of these hospitals is to monitor the patient for the first few weeks of therapy to ensure the treatment is effective.

Juvenile wards

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Juvenile wards are sections of psychiatric hospitals or psychiatric wards set aside for children with mental illness. However, there are a number of institutions specializing only in the treatment of juveniles, particularly when dealing with drug abuse, self-harm, eating disorders, anxiety, depression or other mental illnesses.

Long-term care facilities

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Narrenturm in Vienna, built in 1784, is named for a German language phrase, meaning "fools' tower"; the hospital was among the earliest buildings designed specifically for the mentally ill.

In the United Kingdom, long-term care facilities are now being replaced with smaller secure units, some within hospitals. Modern buildings, modern security, and being locally situated to help with reintegration into society once medication has stabilized the condition[20][21] are often features of such units. Examples of this include the Three Bridges Unit at St Bernard's Hospital in West London and the John Munroe Hospital in Staffordshire. These units have the goal of treatment and rehabilitation to allow for transition back into society within a short time-frame, usually lasting two or three years. Not all patients' treatment meets this criterion, however, leading larger hospitals to retain this role.

These hospitals provide stabilization and rehabilitation for those who are actively experiencing uncontrolled symptoms of mental disorders such as depression, bipolar disorders, eating disorders, and so on.

Halfway houses

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One type of institution for the mentally ill is a community-based halfway house. These facilities provide assisted living[22] for an extended period of time for patients with mental illnesses, and they often aid in the transition to self-sufficiency. These institutions are considered to be one of the most important parts of a mental health system by many psychiatrists, although some localities lack sufficient funding.

Political imprisonment

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In some countries, the mental institution may be used for the incarceration of political prisoners as a form of punishment. One notable historical example was the use of punitive psychiatry in the Soviet Union[23] and China.[24] Like the former Soviet Union and China, Belarus also has used punitive psychiatry toward political opponents and critics of current government in modern times.[25][26]

Secure units

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In the United Kingdom, criminal courts or the Home Secretary can, under various sections of the Mental Health Act, order the detention of offenders in a psychiatric hospital, but the term "criminally insane" is no longer legally or medically recognized. Secure psychiatric units exist in all regions of the UK for this purpose; in addition, there are a few specialist hospitals which offer treatment with high levels of security. These facilities are divided into three main categories: High, Medium and Low Secure. Although the phrase "Maximum Secure" is often used in the media, there is no such classification. "Local Secure" is a common misnomer for Low Secure units, as patients are often detained there by local criminal courts for psychiatric assessment before sentencing.

Run by the National Health Service, these facilities which provide psychiatric assessments can also provide treatment and accommodation in a safe hospital environment which prevents absconding. Thus there is far less risk of patients harming themselves or others. In Dublin, the Central Mental Hospital performs a similar function.[27][28]

Community hospital utilization

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Community hospitals across the United States regularly discharge mental health patients, who are then typically referred to out-patient treatment and therapy. A study of community hospital discharge data from 2003 to 2011, however, found that mental health hospitalizations had increased for both children and adults. Compared to other hospital utilization, mental health discharges for children were the lowest while the most rapidly increasing hospitalizations were for adults under 64.[29] Some units have been opened to provide therapeutically enhanced Treatment, a subcategory to the three main hospital unit types.[citation needed]

In the UK, high secure hospitals exist, including Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside,[30] Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne, Rampton Secure Hospital in Retford, and the State Hospital in Carstairs, Scotland.[31] In Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands, medium and low secure units exist but high secure units on the UK mainland are used for patients who qualify for the treatment under the Out of Area (Off-Island Placements) Referrals provision of the Mental Health Act 1983. Among the three unit types, medium secure facilities are the most prevalent in the UK. As of 2009, there were 27 women-only units in England.[32] Irish units include those at prisons in Portlaise, Castelrea, and Cork.

Criticism

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Traverse City State Hospital in Traverse City, Michigan, U.S., in operation from 1881 to 1989

Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz in Hungary has argued that psychiatric hospitals are like prisons unlike other kinds of hospitals, and that psychiatrists who coerce people (into treatment or involuntary commitment) function as judges and jailers, not physicians.[33] Historian Michel Foucault is widely known for his comprehensive critique of the use and abuse of the mental hospital system in Madness and Civilization. He argued that Tuke and Pinel's asylum was a symbolic recreation of the condition of a child under a bourgeois family. It was a microcosm symbolizing the massive structures of bourgeois society and its values: relations of Family–Children (paternal authority), Fault–Punishment (immediate justice), Madness–Disorder (social and moral order).[34][35]

Erving Goffman coined the term "total institution" for mental hospitals and similar places which took over and confined a person's whole life.[36]: 150 [37]: 9  Goffman placed psychiatric hospitals in the same category as concentration camps, prisons, military organizations, orphanages, and monasteries.[38] In his book Asylums Goffman describes how the institutionalisation process socialises people into the role of a good patient, someone "dull, harmless and inconspicuous"; in turn, it reinforces notions of chronicity in severe mental illness.[39] The Rosenhan experiment of 1973 demonstrated the difficulty of distinguishing sane patients from insane patients.

Franco Basaglia, a leading psychiatrist who inspired and planned the psychiatric reform in Italy, also defined the mental hospital as an oppressive, locked, and total institution in which prison-like, punitive rules are applied, in order to gradually eliminate its own contents. Patients, doctors and nurses are all subjected (at different levels) to the same process of institutionalism.[40] American psychiatrist Loren Mosher noticed that the psychiatric institution itself gave him master classes in the art of the "total institution": labeling, unnecessary dependency, the induction and perpetuation of powerlessness, the degradation ceremony, authoritarianism, and the primacy of institutional needs over the patients, whom it was ostensibly there to serve.[41]

The anti-psychiatry movement coming to the fore in the 1960s has opposed many of the practices, conditions, or existence of mental hospitals; due to the extreme conditions in them. The psychiatric consumer/survivor movement has often objected to or campaigned against conditions in mental hospitals or their use, voluntarily or involuntarily. The mental patient liberation movement emphatically opposes involuntary treatment but it generally does not object to any psychiatric treatments that are consensual, provided that both parties can withdraw consent at any time.[citation needed]

Undercover journalism

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Alongside the 1973 academic investigation by Rosenhan and other similar experiments, several journalists have been willingly admitted to hospitals in order to conduct undercover journalism. These include:

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "White House Intruder Put in Mental Ward". New York Times. 1 June 1995.
  2. ^ Mahomed, Faraaz; Stein, Michael Ashley; Patel, Vikram (18 October 2018). "Involuntary mental health treatment in the era of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities". PLOS Medicine. 15 (10). Public Library of Science (PLoS): e1002679. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002679. ISSN 1549-1676. PMC 6193619. PMID 30335757.
  3. ^ a b "Life Magazine". Archived from the original on 2012-11-30. Retrieved 2011-01-18.
  4. ^ a b "Life Magazine" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
  5. ^ "Number of patients physically restrained at psychiatric hospitals soars". The Japan Times Online. 9 May 2016.
  6. ^ 長谷川利夫. (2016). 精神科医療における隔離・ 身体拘束実態調査 ～その急増の背景要因を探り縮減への道筋を考える～. 病院・地域精神医学, 59(1), 18–21.
  7. ^ Khandelwal, SudhirK; Deb, KoushikSinha; Krishnan, Vijay (2015). "Restraint and seclusion in India". Indian Journal of Social Psychiatry. 31 (2): 141. doi:10.4103/0971-9962.173294. ISSN 0971-9962.
  8. ^ Reyes, Emily Alpert (2023-10-19). "How often are psychiatric patients restrained at your local hospital?". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2024-08-28.
  9. ^ Miller, Andrew C (December 2006). "Jundi-Shapur, bimaristans, and the rise of academic medical centres". Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 99 (12): 615–617. doi:10.1177/014107680609901208. PMC 1676324. PMID 17139063. Archived from the original on 1 February 2013. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
  10. ^ Youssef, H. A., Youssef, F. A., & Dening, T. R. (1996). Evidence for the existence of schizophrenia in medieval Islamic society. History of Psychiatry, 7(25), 055–62. doi:10.1177/0957154x9600702503
  11. ^ Rooney, Anne (2009). The History of Medicine. Rosen Publishing. p. 191. ISBN 978-1448872282.
  12. ^ Unsworth, Clive."Law and Lunacy in Psychiatry's 'Golden Age'", Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. Vol. 13, No. 4. (Winter, 1993), pp. 482.
  13. ^ Porter, Roy (2006). Madmen: A Social History of Madhouses, Mad-Doctors & Lunatics. Tempus: p. 14.
  14. ^ Yuhas, Daisy (March 2013). "Throughout History, Defining Schizophrenia Has Remained a challenge". Scientific American Mind (March 2013). Retrieved 2 March 2013.
  15. ^ Goffman, Erving (1961). Asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Anchor Books. ISBN 9780385000161.
  16. ^ "Extracts from Erving Goffman". A Middlesex University resource. Retrieved 8 November 2010.
  17. ^ Mac Suibhne, Séamus (7 October 2009). "Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and other Inmates". BMJ. 339: b4109. doi:10.1136/bmj.b4109. S2CID 220087437.
  18. ^ "- Reports of the Surgeon General - Profiles in Science Search Results". profiles.nlm.nih.gov.
  19. ^ "Psychiatric Times". An Imperfect Guide to Crisis Stabilization Units. Retrieved 4 November 2024.
  20. ^ "Residential Facilities and Long-Term Psychiatric Care". Medscape.
  21. ^ "Hospital.com". Archived from the original on 2009-11-15. Retrieved 2009-11-07.
  22. ^ Vaslamatzis, G.; Katsouyanni, K.; Markidis, M. (1997). "The efficacy of a psychiatric halfway house: a study of hospital recidivism and global outcome measure". European Psychiatry. 12 (2): 94–97. doi:10.1016/S0924-9338(97)89647-2. PMID 19698512. S2CID 26503203.
  23. ^ Matvejević, Predrag (2004). Between exile and asylum: an eastern epistolary. Central European University Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-963-9241-85-5.
  24. ^ LaFraniere, Sharon; Levin, Dan (11 November 2010). "Assertive Chinese Held in Mental Wards". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 March 2012.
  25. ^ Polska Agencja Prasowa (29 August 2013). "Belarus: forced psychiatric treatment for inconvenienced doctor". Polskie Radio (in Polish). Warsaw. Retrieved 2023-01-15.
  26. ^ Polska Agencja Prasowa (26 March 2012). "Belarus: hunger striker Kavalenka taken to psychiatric ward". Wprost (in Polish). Warsaw. Retrieved 2023-01-15.
  27. ^ "The Central Mental Hospital is being closed down". 3 June 2015.
  28. ^ "Not guilty by reason of insanity: Inside the Central Mental Hospital". The Irish Times.
  29. ^ Weiss AJ, Barrett ML, Andrews RM (July 2014). "Trends and Projections of U.S. Hospital Costs by Payer, 2003-2013". HCUP Statistical Brief (176). Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
  30. ^ Official site, Accessed 2 June 2010
  31. ^ Official site, Accessed 2 June 2010
  32. ^ Georgie Parry‐Crooke (June 2009) My life: in safe hands?. Accessed 2 June 2010
  33. ^ Szasz, Thomas (2011). "The myth of mental illness: 50 years later" (PDF). The Psychiatrist. 35 (5): 179–182. doi:10.1192/pb.bp.110.031310. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 27 April 2012.
  34. ^ Deleuze and Guattari (1972) Anti-Oedipus p. 102
  35. ^ Michel Foucault [1961] The History of Madness, Routledge 2006, pp.490–1, 507–8, 510–1
  36. ^ Davidson, Larry; Rakfeldt, Jaak; Strauss, John, eds. (2010). The Roots of the Recovery Movement in Psychiatry: Lessons Learned. John Wiley and Sons. p. 150. ISBN 978-88-464-5358-7.
  37. ^ Wallace, Samuel (1971). Total Institutions. Transaction Publishers. p. 9. ISBN 978-88-464-5358-7.
  38. ^ Weinstein R. (1982). "Goffman's Asylums and the Social Situation of Mental Patients" (PDF). Orthomolecular Psychiatry. 11 (4): 267–274. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
  39. ^ Lester H.; Gask L. (May 2006). "Delivering medical care for patients with serious mental illness or promoting a collaborative model of recovery?". British Journal of Psychiatry. 188 (5): 401–402. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.105.015933. PMID 16648523.
  40. ^ Tansella M. (November 1986). "Community psychiatry without mental hospitals—the Italian experience: a review". Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 79 (11): 664–669. doi:10.1177/014107688607901117. PMC 1290535. PMID 3795212.
  41. ^ Mosher L.R. (March 1999). "Soteria and other alternatives to acute psychiatric hospitalization: a personal and professional review" (PDF). Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 187 (3): 142–149. doi:10.1097/00005053-199903000-00003. PMID 10086470. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 February 2012.
  42. ^ ""Seven Days in the Madhouse!" - Frank Smith - Chicago Daily Times · Undercover Reporting". undercover.hosting.nyu.edu. Retrieved 18 July 2022.
  43. ^ "Blog4 — 7 days of Frank Smith doing undercover reporting at a mental hospital by Baidi Wang". C409 - News Media Ethics. 4 April 2018. Retrieved 18 July 2022.
  44. ^ Hofschneider, Mark. "Historical Archive: Awards No Longer Given by the Foundation". Lasker Foundation. Retrieved 18 July 2022.
  45. ^ ""I Was a Mental Patient" - Michael Mok - New York World-Telegram & Sun · Undercover Reporting". undercover.hosting.nyu.edu. Retrieved 18 July 2022.
  46. ^ Kroeger, Brooke; Hamill, Pete (2012). "HARD TIME". Undercover Reporting. Northwestern University Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-8101-2619-0. JSTOR j.ctt22727sf.15.
  47. ^ "Central State Psychiatric Hospital Exposé - Frank Sutherland - Nashville Tennessean · Undercover Reporting". undercover.hosting.nyu.edu. Retrieved 18 July 2022.
  48. ^ Kroeger, Brooke; Hamill, Pete (2012). "HARD TIME". Undercover Reporting. Northwestern University Press. p. 196. ISBN 978-0-8101-2619-0. JSTOR j.ctt22727sf.15.
  49. ^ ""Trip Into Darkness" - Betty Wells - Wichita Eagle and Wichita Beacon · Undercover Reporting". undercover.hosting.nyu.edu. Retrieved 18 July 2022.
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