Insane Asylums

Insane Asylums are hospitals for mentally incompetent or unbalanced people, specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders, such as clinical depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorders. Asylums date back many years and were in many different places. There are many different myths and facts about all the Mental hospital treatment. The Traverse City Asylum is now redone and attracts many tourist to the area.

Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham London was opened in 1330 and admitted its first mental patient in 1407. In 1247 the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem was founded, devoted to healing sick paupers. Those who became patients were usually the poor and marginalised - sometimes believed to be dangerous - who lacked friends

Building fifty was the hospitals first and main building and was designed by architect Gordon W. Lloyd is was a three story victorian heart of the hospital. 50,000 patients resided there being treated for mental illnesses, later tuberculosis, typhoid, dishtheria, and polio. Also dealt with great outbreaks of influenza, and other highly infectious pandemics and expanded greatly to meet the demand. Traverse City Asylum was the 3rd asylum opened in Michigan after Kalamazoo and Pontiac. In the asylums underground tunnels were built to transport patients from wing to wing without expossing them to the elements or each other. Rumor has it that a “ Portal to Hell” was discovered in one of the underground passages. It portrayed its theme that “beauty is therapy”philosophy, patients were treated through kindness, comfort, pleasure and beautiful gardens. The flowers were provided by the year round greenhouse and there was also a variety of trees Munson planted on the grounds that the patients would work with. Restraints, such as straight jackets, were forbidden in the Traverse City hospital. Another philosophy that they used at the hospital was “work is therapy”, which provided the patients opportunities to gain a sense of purpose through farming, furniture construction, fruit canning, and other trades that kept the institution fully self-sufficient. In 1885 they began to farm with only cows, the farm then grew to get chickens, pigs, milk and meat cows and many vegetable fields. Between the years of 1910 and 1930 it was the home to a world champion milk cow. The hospital operated for 104 years until it was shut down in 1989 after Health Care reforms in the state, the rise of new medicines and declining use of such massive mental health facilities in