The evolution of human rights and mental health awareness is honestly horrifying and interesting at the same time.

The fact that mentally unwell people were being sent to an asylum and are basically just tortured instead of rehabilitated is the most mental thing about it all.

the scariest part is knowing that most people today believe the medical industry is now 100% safe, caring and only has your wellbeing in mind

I wrote my undergrad thesis about Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days In a Madhouse” from 1887, where she actually went undercover in a New York asylum as a patient. They would force anyone with “un-American” and unfavorable qualities into these asylums; the poor, immigrants who didn’t speak English, elderly, women who spoke back against bosses/husbands, etc. Patients would be starved, beaten, and stripped of clothes/blankets while doctors used the asylum funds for their own huge feasts and personal use. Her exposé began discussions on treatment of patients in asylums and acceptance of female journalists, super interesting read.

The way they "proved" that dude was insane is how my family "proved" i was using drugs at 12 years old. Just accuse someone of something over and over again, then when they get mad at you for not listening to them go "well, if you weren't you wouldn't get so defensive and mad at us for saying so".

I am so thankful I don’t live in a time where you’d get institutionalized for being slightly stressed out or bummed out about something

A family member of mine suffered from hard drug use and was sent to a psyche ward. A week into her stay her mom finally got in touch her with and the first thing she says is “I haven’t spoken to a doctor I think. I’m covered in my own vomit.” She was pulled out of there pretty quick but I can’t imagine sitting in your own filth and not being allowed to move.

wards haven't gotten much better. i was traumatized my last stay and never wanna go back. they treated us like animals and i'd have way more access to things in prison, like a bed, a pillow, better food. yes that bad. i almost really lost it but i wantwd to go home. the nurses were verbally abusive and refused meds. it smelled like shít. i have ocd bad and it all triggered me. so packed no beds were left and we were locked in a room together. a lot of tension. juiced people up for petty reasons or having legit concerns. i was there 10 mins and a schizo tried to attack me. so much more. the place has a horrific rating and reviews. the nurses told us if we tried to call the police or sue, they wouldnt believe us bc we're crazy 🤦‍♂️ so much happened. not all wards are bad but that one ruined it for me. i panic in any medical setting now. i fear they'd either trying to kill me or send me back.

Another wild thing is that doctors didn't start regularly washing their hands between procedures until the 1840s.

After a suicide attempt, my aunt was sent to the psych ward, which thankfully allowed phonecalls. She was there for about three days till an inmate was so cracked out they lit themselves on fire. She called her mom the same day and mom was like, ok, this is clearly antithetical to trying to cure suicidal tendencies, and pulled her out. That side of the family was and still is tight, that is to say, all members are kept abreast of eachother and pooling money was common. The family quickly decided to just give her a motel room with a phone, tv and food money (college age) and let her be for a few months. It ain't therapy but it's still a heck of a lot better than the psyche ward.

16:08 I actually dealt with something like this with my previous psychiatrist (i was in the hospital, it was for observation, it turned out that i have Autism Spectrum Disorder) - I had to visit her throughout the High school - and during the last visit, around 7 years ago, just moments after my mom went out from that psychiatrist's room (to finish some paper work at the reception) the psychiatrist told me that "she would be watching my every move, and if she discovers that i made some bad decision, she would do everything to make sure that i would end up back in the psychiatric hospital and if this would happen, the next time, she would make sure that I would never leave it" Of course, her demeanor changed, when my mom returned to the room, and she was like "oh, we were just saying goodbye and talked about few important things" When it comes to the hospital - welp, to explain all the bad stuff and outright abuse that happened there to both me and other patients, the one comment would not be enough, I would need book to describe, what happened. But At least, i could say that when it comes to groups in hospital, there were three groups: 1. Communicative (people with verbal autism/asd, like me, some mood disorders, People with anorexia/bulimia etc.) 2. the ones that needed care from other people, (some people with non-verbal autism, some severe disorders that made them act either aggressive towards environment and themselves, or who had other problems that prevented them to doing basic things by themselves) and the 3. Criminals, for whom "there wasn't that much room in regular prison" - I'm not joking, I was talking with some new people, who came there, and few of them did not even have any problems or something, just that the police or someone did not have enough space for them in prison, so they kept, idk, people who beat their mothers, thiefs and maybe even worse people, next to patients that really needed care. (and they knew about bad stuff happening there, so often if someone was too talkative and could say something to parents, they gave him some medication that caused them to feel something like depersonalization - I know this, because i was one of these people, and even my parents said that back then, when they were meeting with me every day, i looked like zombie, and from my POV, it looked like i was watching a "movie" of my life)

This still happens, my dad works at a mental hospital and they're so understaffed they don't stop patients from taking advantage of other patients

I wrote a paper on asylums and the malpractices that commonly happened/still happen and it made my teacher cry. It was very uncomfortable but she opened up to me about how her great aunt was lobotomised and basically left to rot in the asylum until her great grandma broke down and told the rest of the family what happened. I guess I hadn't realized until that moment how recently these things actually were. It's actually horrifying to think about.

My mom was institutionalized against her will in a psych hospital in eastern Canada, back in the 70's and 80's - her father basically signed over all rights to her doctors, and she was subjected to both ECT and experimental trials of some of the earliest antipsychotics, miscarrying her first pregnancy as a result. She's schizoaffective and does really well on the right medication nowadays, but that experience left her with a lifelong mistrust of doctors and authority figures.

If you’re watching this you should look up the Willowbrook State School. I work for a state supported living center and one of the videos they showed during training/orientation was the history of Willowbrook and how Geraldo Rivera practically single handedly got it shut down due to the sheer lack of human rights and the horrid living conditions

I can promise you, as a severely mentally ill person who has in fact admitted myself, the things I experienced that happened regarding the way people get treated is the most baffling. I had a beautiful time aside from a lot of stuff, but I will NEVER forget what I experienced, saw, heard, etc. they STILL malpractice and experiment. I can promise you that. And then they tell you not to trust anyone who tells you anything or anything you believe you saw because everyone's crazy. They tell you to not have friends, and that everyone is a liar and a hallucinator. I did in fact become friends with a group from my time in, and no. No they are not. They are probably the most honest and sincere people I've ever met.

I was in a child’s asylum. I was just a kid that wanted to go home. I stayed on my best behavior the entire time and ignored all the weird stuff they did til the day they said I’d would be able to go home. The day came and they said that something got delayed and I won’t be able to go til a week later. Given I was 10 I threw quite the temper tantrum. Nothing violent, I would always hide or lock myself in a room. Their response was to man handle me and tie me to a gurney and leave me alone in a small room. I ended up passing out after hours in a panic. I was dehydrated and had markings on my wrist and ankles where I was tied down. Place isn’t in business anymore. Got shut down years later for abuse. Thank you for this video. I know I got off relatively light compared to some stories I heard of. It definitely colored the rest of my life with distrust.

When Regan got rid of federal funding for these facilities, they never stood a chance. I’ll never forget what happened to our small town, when the local asylum closed down. We went from having 0 homelessness and suddenly we were inundated with hundreds of mentally challenged people just thrown out on the streets with no plan on what to do with them. I will say, we eventually got our acts together and provided as many as we could with a place to stay. Many didn’t want anything to do with it. The craziest part of this story is right after this occurred, our town, which had never had a ‘Bigfoot’ sightings in its entire history. Then suddenly sightings were occurring every week within a 30 mile radius of the asylum. And no, I’m not insinuating that the asylum was hiding Bigfoot. One of the patients was known to have that disease where they grew hair all over their body. It’s sad knowing he just lived in the woods until one day, the sightings stopped. The news articles from the time are hilarious to read in regards to the sightings, not how the patients were treated and dismissed like garbage.

I was in a mental hospital twice and I never felt safe, I was struggling with an ED and I was in the same ward as a girl who had very distressing fits and I would hear screaming all the time from different patients day and night. My roommate was getting EST and there was a convicted felon sleeping in the roll next to me. The city decided to focus solely on the childrens hospital and to totally forgot the mental ward. Worst two weeks of my life

Just walking into the topeka state hospital gave you anxiety. In 2009 when I was 19 years old my brother and I broke into the topeka hospital and trust me, it was the creepiest place I've ever seen. I had to unscrew the doors because it was boarded up, came back a few hours later with flashlights and the first floor was almost completely caved in, you had to shuffle around it. they still had the beds and there was paperwork absolutely everywhere. Been to a lot of haunted places in my life and although I didn't see activity you felt the negative energy in this place. creepy as hell. Actually, Now that you told me it was demolished in 2010 Odds are It was my brother and I who are the last two people to tour this crazy building. You should have seen the paperwork floating around this place and what was on it And clearly It is paperwork that has been there for at least two or three decades.. this place literally had rooms with chains and many had rooms with chairs that were deadbolted to the floor. Yeah, the topeka state hospital was not for the faint of heart. I don't get anxiety or scared od any empty building but this place gave me the most negative energy I've ever felt. If you go to a place like that and you don't see or experience paranormal activity, it means nothing. What matter is the absolute dread, sadness, and evil you feel. It's very apparent what happened there just by walking the halls and up the staircases

I have a good family friend who was institutionalized in the state mental asylum back in the late 60s when abuse was still totally unchecked in any way. The did disgusting things to him. Burned him with cigarettes, smashed food under their shoes then forced him to eat it, locked him in a room with an aggressive sex addict for days knowing part of his psychosis was being super religious and basically made him fight off this woman feeling him up non consensually for days where he couldn't even sleep safely. I ended up touring there in the 90s with a class and they brought up the past of abuse and I specifically asked if those older employees were let go and he kind of looked nervous and said they went through "extensive retraining" and I gave him an evil eye and my teacher changed the subject really quick. So yeah especially if there are older staff at these places, I could never trust them.

Unfortunately, from experience, these things still occur to this day in mental hospitals. My ex-partner had psychosis and it got so bad she had to go into a mental hospital, where the doctors were giving her medication that sedated her and made her worse, and the staff ended up abusing her to which I tried calling the police but they didnt have any jurisdiction in the hospital.

They're called "State Hospitals" now.

They sterilized my aunt at a hospital in NC because she had schizophrenia. This was around the late 70s or early 80s. The hospital wasn't shut down until the late 2010's. honestly hospitals haven't gotten much better. It's still horrible the amount of overdosing, patient on patient violence and staff SAing patients is still alarming. I wish more was done to keep the mentally ill safe when they need to get help.

It's not asylum-related, but on the topic of good old lobotomies, my mom was mistaken for a lobotomy patient when she was having me due to the papers getting mixed up, and the doctors gave my dad the most disgusted look while "going in slow" as to not scare who they thought was a pregnant lady with a lobotomy. They did end up finding out otherwise from my mother's confusion and explanation to them, but that likely means there was a woman in that same hospital with a lobotomy in the grandiose year of 2007!

Unfortunately there is much malpractice within these facilities to this day. In my younger years I was mandated to stay at a psychiatric facility for a short period of time. During those few days I was over medicated to the point of sedation and mental unclarity and told by a NURSE that the abuse I was suffering under my mother was my fault for lacking faith and being a bad child. They kept us in the day room for almost the entire day where we received little therapeutic treatment outside of being overly medicated. Mental health facilities, from my experience, typically either traumatize a patient further which only makes their health deteriorate even further and requiring a longer stay, or in my case, it scares the patient into pretending to improve so they may get out as soon as possible.

In the 90’s, my nan was put into a psych ward after being caught 3 times trying to jump off a bridge. She had severe depression and got electroshocks as “treatment”. These electric shock treatments caused her to get early onset dementia at 59.

Me personally my favorite asylum is got to be the Fernald state school. They sell a book called the state boys rebellion which is a nonfiction book based off of this place. It follows the story of a couple of boys who were dropped off at this place in the late 1940s and they’re horrible experiences there up until they left in the early 1960s. The Fernald state school is most infamous for is the radiation experiments from 1946 to 1956 where they fed boys radioactive oatmeal that were part of the science club. It wasn’t until the 1970s when all this was out to the public, with the mayor calling it a pigpen, but Fernel started to turn around they started renovating buildings and only housing severely retarded children but nonetheless the governor by early 2000s wanted the place closed but the people protested so it was to stay open until 2013. Mind you this place opened up in 1848 moved locations in 1870 where it is currently today. One of the craziest stories from the book is when a group of boys got together and were sick and tired of their treatment there, so when they were in the day room, they ran they’re “caretaker” out the door shut it locked it, they started tearing into the walls, shoving sheets and pillowcases in the walls, setting it on fire, trying to make the building burn from the inside out. They smashed all the windows the toilets, the sinks, the mirrors they destroyed the building. They even got the emergency fire hose on the inside of the building and held back the state police for hours on end, until eventually they gave up they were all sent to Bridgewater. Only some of them came back to Fernald, but others would spend the rest of their lives in Bridgewater. My favorite building there has to be Waverly Hall. It was built in 1891 and the second oldest building there it’s never been renovated and it was abandoned in 1991 so that means it would’ve been 100 years old when it was abandoned. Originally it served as the administration building but up until 1933 It was residence houses. There used to be a college next to this place they’re still is it still open but back then the girls would run over to the state hospital and would go over there, sneaking into the buildings and score with the boys because after all they had all been neutralized, I guess you could say. The reason the boys had their balls cut off, was simply because back then it was believed that if you stopped the reproduction of retarded people, then there would be no more of them on the planet, but that’s just simply wrong. This place is located in Waltham Massachusetts. Many of the buildings still stand but they’re trying to demolish all of them and sell the property unfortunately. It’s so horrible that their history has been left to rot, and that their history is actively being erased as we speak. There are over 80 buildings so it may be a while before the entire property is level but still. Something horrible that happened there a few years ago was when the Waltham lions set up a Christmas parade there that ran right through the middle of the place. They did this for 2 to 3 years and people protested hard. Eventually they stopped. Unfortunately, these past few years, the place has really gone downhill with Vandals, sightings of the KKK and gangs, making this their hotspot, so visiting the place, especially at night is extremely dangerous because of people.

Should take a look into "troubled youth" facilities. That part where you come across the fact that people paid to have others set in these facilities is too true. We do it these days with youth facilities that get paid per-client, meaning per-kid, and the worse the kid the more money they charge. It's a disturbing fact of current day, really.

Abuses still happen today all over the mental health care industry. I can only imagine what they'll say about us in 100 years.

watchiing this again made me remember when i was in the mental hospital in 2019 (for schizo affective disorder) i watched a guy having a seizure and the staff was watching him and talking as his head banged on the ground, i had to put a towel under his head and they got mad and locked me in my room. couple days later i watched a nurse or assistant push a girl into her room and lock the door right after the girl (17) asked for a pad or a tampon. the mental hospitals still do not employ based on the people, just qualifications. the doctor was a gucci wearing indian man who did not care about anything accept money meant he prescribed most of us tons of stuff we didn't need, i was on anti psychotics for weeks and all it did was make my hair fall out. be careful folks and try to never go to Freemont Mental Hospital in CA willingly

25:25 I don't think any babies were out into that skinny machine but a very popular practice was disturbingly similar. Often, pregnant women were put into a large wheel with a net positioned under their feet and spun. It was believed that the centrifugal force of the wheel would help free the baby from the woman and make birth easier. It's not the same, but it probably messed the kids up just the same.

Fun fact in the UK we also have a place called Letchworth that had a psychiatric hospital. It's now been converted into a Gym / Spa and the underground crematorium area is now a pool and steam room! Swimming down there is creepy af

As someone whos been in them, back in 2021 when i was in a mental institution there was a patient who was abandoned by his family there and he had SCARS and tape from electroshock therapy, i want people to know that this still happen, people just paying mental institutions to get rid of troubled family.

I got framed as a child at 12 and stayed in a mental hospital with no contact with my family for the next 4 years. It basically reset my brain because of the trauma and I can barely remember anything before then

I work at a mental health hospital in Kansas City and we have come so far from where we were then, they receive medication and are free to go outside in the courtyard, they can play puzzles board and card games and video games, they also can watch tv and read and aren't restrained unless they are physically violent which they have somebody watch them at all times while restrained until they calm down or up until a maximum of 24 hours. they can play basketball and volley ball and pool and many other physical activity games and they have set meal plans for each person depending on there health, like if they have diabetes or high cholesterol. and they also can go to therapy if they would like and each person gets there own room and own bed. once they have been deemed competent they will be moved to a halfway home which is in regular neighborhoods where they get to adjust back into society where they can eventually get out.

I've been inside five different mental hospitals in the last 10 years and they're all basically the same. Psychiatrists spend 30 seconds a day every few days with you (every day if you're really lucky) and give you whatever round of meds they see fit. Staff is often overworked and take out their frustrations on you. No matter which one I've been in, they're all the same. They don't care about making you well. They care about giving you prescriptions (which the doctors make money from) and sending you out. The last one I was in was definitely the worst. It was filthy and I STILL, over 3 years later, have a recurring athletes foot that is unable to be cured with treatment, that I got from their disgusting showers because they wouldn't give me shower shoes.

There is a “secret” cemetery behind the defunct Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital in NJ. It’s the burial place for ppl who died there and were unclaimed by family or were John/Jane Does. My friends and I visited after reading about it in the old “Weird New Jersey” magazines (which I think Papa Meat would absolutely ADORE btw). And there are over 900 graves with only a # on them. In the front of the cemetery is a cement structure that lists the names that are buried under each #. And there is an Elvis Priestly and Marilyn Monroe listed because they never knew the name of the patient who died and the patient believed they were Elvis or Marilyn. Quite sad. Not even their real name is remembered.

Your sound fxs are so spot on. I watch this channel just to hear the great vocal and sound fx.

'Rebecca are you having a good day?' *click click click click* I absolutely lost my breath laughing, my eyes are streaming

This always scares me, not only am I a woman but I have epilepsy, I would have been so screwed in this scenario.

You actually missed one of the key features of the whole story: it was usually family that brought people to the sanatorium and dropped them off for the rest of their lives. Children, wives, brothers and sisters, these people were knowingly brought to these places to be tortured for the rest of their lives in for profit sanitoriums, and the families paid the bills to do the torture. For some reason that makes it even worse imo.

When I had a history class based off of psychology, medieval times was the worst in terms of dealing with mental illness. In terms of practice, the mental asylums in the early 20th century weren't far off in relations to medieval times. It's a crazy field to even acknowledge how recent these malpractices were.

last year during my 4th adult stay in my local hospital's ward, a patient came in. she was a houseless woman who was extremely tempermental, rude, & yelled a lot. it turned out the reason she was so upset was because they weren't allowing her to use her own personal wheelchair, instead making her use a hospital-issued one. she was upset over it because her personal wheelchair made it possible for her to move around easily, whereas the hospital one made it very hard for her to move on her own meaning anytime she wanted to go anywhere (bathroom, her room, the phone etc) a staff member had to wheel her around. she threw a tantrum over it, yelling & verbally abusing the staff after her doctors told her they couldn't bring her chair up to the ward because there was too much paperwork & it was several floors down with the security guards. their solution? leave her in the isolation room, thru dinner, her yelling & wailing & crying just wanting to have her needs be met. she threw up on herself & they still did not come in to check on her (i overheard her vomiting as my room was directly across from the iso room). she was in there for hours. i talked to her the next day & we became friends. she was incredibly lucid, not psychotic or anything. she was just very depressed & not wanting to live which was why her kids had her called into the ward. she was really nice to me & i think about her a lot. the worst i experienced in that hospital in the 5 stays ive had there as an adult was nowhere near as bad as what i witnessed happening to her, & the staff has always been kind & accommodating for me, but knowing that that kind of stuff happens even in the nicest of hospitals really hammers in how badly mentally ill people are still treated to this day :-( not even gonna touch on the fucked up shit i saw in the mental hospital i went to from ages 12-14. the things ive seen inflicted on fellow children still make me so incredibly sad.

I had a friend I met while in a mental health hospital. He was in for war-caused ptsd and the doctors told him the best current method of treatment after medication would be electroshock therapy. After about 3 rounds my friend started losing his short term memory and became extremely irritable and easily frustrated. There was no positive change, and it lasted for the few years following (I lost contact with him after this time so I’m not sure if he ever got better). This was 2017. Mental health care needs help.

from experience, i went for the first couple times in 2018 as a 15 year old, and they just used medication to sedate me rather than actually diagnose me with the correct things. wasnt until 5 years later and another hospital stay as an adult that i could even actually get my diagnosis’s due to my age. the adolescent mental health facilities are incredibly traumatic and only worsened my condition.

Love your compassion in this. Best take on this I've ever seen.

Been watching your videos all night, I love this content and the jokes are a great relief from the otherwise dark material. Good shit Pap!

I have 2 kids that would’ve been institutionalized back in the day (autism). They both have fulfilling lives, thank god things improved…

not much has changed. being sent to grippy sock jail in modern time is still a nightmare prison in most cases and a lot of people come out with more trauma added to what they already have.

00:01 The Furby I never knew I ever wanted 😂

I’ve always loved ur content but the POWER TRIP hoodie? ur taste is impeccable brother. you gonna catch them on their newest tour? not the same w/o riley but I’m psyched

The nameless graves... they couldnt even give them some humanity in death god damn.

I worked at a nursing home in Germany, and let me tell you, what was going on in these mental asylums is still practice, except the lobotomy. People get bound to beds. People are FORCED to go to bed at certain times. I saw people get beaten, verbally abused, screamed at. Staff using benzos to get high. Not just dementia ridden patients were abused, but lucid normal old people too. It's literally a authoritarian prison for old people, and the staff and nurses behave like literal Nazis there. I have tons of horror stories to tell. I quit after a year. When I told the manager, he brushed it off. He was in on it, he and the nurses. After I told him, everyone bullied me and I hat to take on the worst jobs. Tight budget, can't have wasted time, old people pay the price. It was horrific. And that was just a few years ago. Now imagine the horrors we don't know about that happened in these asylums. Sickening.

Dude, I stumbled on to your channel by accident a month ago, now you are definitely my favorite. Your brand of humor keeps me in stitches. Keep up the good work.

10:38 that whole part had me in tears💀💀💀

I've studied the psychology of roundhouse prisons, and they actually thought they were helping people, its scarier than any horror film ever made. They believed the detained would train each other to be better people.

Something that scares is me is I probably would have ended up in one of these places if I existed in those times. I'm so glad I'm "mentally ill" in this day and age and not back when experimentation and lobotomies were considered acceptable.

this stuff still happens today, maybe not at the same level, but theres still so much farther to go. Take the Judge Rotenburg Center for instance. Its still legal there to use "shock aversion therapy" on their disabled patients. Not like electro shock, "rewrite your brain" horror movie stuff. But being made to wear a shock device someone has a remote to, to shock them when they are doing "unwanted behaviors"

CSU Channel Islands was initially a mental hospital. It was built back in FDR's public works program so the walls are all super thick concrete. It was actually sort of state of the art because the idea behind it was to get these people out of the cities and into nature. Of course there were still horrific dated practices, but it sorta comes with the territory. When I was there I heard so many people talk about the spooky tunnels under the campus where they moved around dead bodies. The underground corridors were more for general staff maintenance but of course if someone died you wouldn't want to cart their body around for everyone to see. There's a lot of dead ends and closed in courtyards you run into while trying to get to class and it's pretty obvious it was made to keep people in.

I am someone who works with asylum survivors(went into when they were children), they live with me and the stories they tell are insane! It is so sad oh my lord

As a constant patient in psych wards, being under the care of unhinged nurses is really scary. They perform electro convulsive therapy down the hall in house & wheel the patients to the TV room to recover. Ive watched a lot of those patients be taunted by staff when they are alone. One absolutely psycho nurse I will never forget, a fat woman named Cecily who wore a snoopy shirt & ran games at night, she was the scariest nurse I've ever encountered. The male staff are pretty good, it just seems to be the female staff that are on a power trip & treat you terribly. You can complain but it goes no where as it your word against theirs.

Been replaying outlast so this was a must watch!

I used to work at Woodward academy which was based in an old insane asylum in Iowa. I remember nights where I would heat unexplained noises. Kids would see ghosts frequently. And there was a legit hallway on the campus that would make people feel unsafe.

I’m very happy with the consistency that papa is giving us videos lately

I’ve been admitted multiple times in my life, but my favorite time was in September in the glorious year of 2020. There was this guy in there that had been there since the end of 2019. He was incredibly sweet and kind so I talked to him a lot. While talking to him I said something on the lines of “yeah the world is falling apart out there… you know?” And he was like “I actually don’t know, I’ve been in here before it all started.” So I pretty much had explain the whole Cobid situation to him but in a way that didn’t make it sound like a zombie movie. I hope he is well and is surrounded by people that can help him heal.

Really good video, it’s really fun to look back on all of your content

You should have covered the Fergus Falls State hospital in Minnesota, it was a mental institute that housed 1700+ people at its peak. It was also the largest asylum in Minnesota for a while too.

American Horror Story has a season called "Asylum". It's honestly their best season and really goes into detail about how prison-like these Asylums could get and how 'care' was thrown out the window

TW: Mental illness and self harm I just felt motivated to share my story with this kind of stuff in modern day "asylums". It's a long read, but its truly my experience with how we deal with mental illness today When I was 5150'd, I was thrown in a room at my university's local hospital for a night. It was a blank room with a ledge jutting from the wall. No bedding or anything. I slept with my head on my knees and was woken up by two EMTs with a gurney. Nobody really asked me how I was feeling or anything. Ever since i left the custody of the police, nobody seemed to care. It was just another day at work for them. The EMTs strapped me in for "safety" and took me through the hospital to their ambulance. I still remember the way other people looked at me with eyes of pity and fear. Once in the ambulance we drove for about an hour an a half and the entire time I had no idea where I was or where I was going. I remember equating myself to a mailed package- unaware of where my end destination was and what was to become of me after. When the vehicle stopped, I was taken out and rolled up to a building that resembled a preschool from the outside. Once inside I was unstrapped and led into another room that seemed to be the place they might meet families and offer information on services. I still had my cellphone on me and I saw I had numerous missed calls from my family. I called them back, and they asked where I was. The police had notified them that I was 5150'd but hadn't let them know where I was taken. I wanted to amswer them but even I didn't have that answer. I looked through the posters on the wall, looked out the window, looked through pamphlets, just trying to find a name for my family. I finally found the name on a piece of trash in the wastebin. I told them the name, and as soon as I did the door was thrown forcefully open. A male nurse charged at me, ripped the phone from my hands, and scolded me like a child. "No! No! You're not supposed to have that!" Then he left the room and slammed the door. It was at this time I felt truly alone and disconnected from the world. I was there for hours until eventually a woman in office attire came in with a folder and a huge stack of paperwork. I don't really remember this "onboarding" process because of the literal state of shock I was in. I signed papers and soon after I was taken out the room, amd through a set of security doors where you have to be buzzed in. I was taken into yet another blank room, made to undress fully, and had pictures taken of my naked body. Though uncomfortable, I can see why this is done. To show I had no signs of abuse prior to entering and whatnot. I didn't really care though. I was a husk of myself. They gave me a gown and my shoes without laces to put on. I was led to my room and left there. I sat on the bed, face buried in my knees. The male nurse who snatched my phone away earlier in the day came in and offered me a cup with pills. I refused saying I didn't want them and that I just needed time. They told me either I take the pills or someone is going to come in, pin me down, and sedate me while they get the pills in me using other means. I took the pills and went to bed. Periodically throughout the night, the same male nurse I grew to despise would throw open the door, scribble notes on his little noteboard, and then slam the door. It was terrible trying to rest up with this happening. When I finally did wake up for the day, I was disappointed to find that I was not in a nightmare. I stayed in bed for the whole day. At some point they did introduce me to my new roommate, a meth and cocaine addict who's motto in life was "YOLO". That was something that suprised me. I figured I would be put with other depressed people who were going through the same thing, but no. It turns out that California sees mental health and substance addiction as similar enough that we could be locked in together. This made me feel even more alienated. My family visited later that evening, having made the 6 hour drive from my hometown to where I was. They took one look at me and burst into tears. I looked disheveled and hollow. My mom told me that she looked at the reviews of the place and they had terrible repute with the community. Abuse and people being locked in for longer than they were initially told they would be. I was terrified at this point but my parents said they spoke with the lead nurse and she told them that as long as I attend group therapy and try to make an attempt at getting better I could be out by my third mandatory day. But they couldn't stay longer than that third day because they didn't have the money to stay in a hotel that long and would need to head home. They told me they loved me and that they knew I could pull through. This one singular conversation made me 180 and motivated me to get out of there. I participated in ever group therapy, took every drug they put in my face no matter how shitty they made me feel, and tried to show how ready i was to improve over the next two days. On the final day, I had to be evaluated by the licensed psychiatrist. She only stopped by twice a week and I had to be cleared by her in order to leave. She was a stoic middle age woman with an Arabic sounding name. She didn't greet me at all and sat there filling out her forms. After a few minutes of dry silence she asked me in a monotone voice all the generic questions I had been asked so many times over the weekend. "Do you feel depressed? Do you hear voices? Do you want to hurt yourself? Others?" etc. She finally asked me if I had been attending the sessions. I told her about my experience, about how group therapy made me realize that I'm not alone in my suffering and how there is always help out there. I explained how i really did not have any negative emotions about myself and didnt want to hurt myself. I explained the support from my parents and how even after I was released I would continue to have that support. The air grew silent again except for the sound of her pen on paper. After a minute she said, "Ok. Let the next one in on your way out." I was mortified. It was as if she wasn't even listening. I asked her if I would be able to go home with my family that evening as they were going to have to leave and this would be my only opportunity to go home for a month. She said no. My heart sank. I was never getting out of there. I met with my parents about an hour later and gave them the news. They were sad and angry. My step dad called in the head nurse who was super helpful through this whole experience and asked her if there was any way I could go free. The head nurse agreed that the psychiatrist was an evil woman who only cared about making money. The head nurse said that she had only had this job for a year and hated that old lady because she wasn't in it to help people. The psychiatrist would deliberately keep people so that the rooms stayed full and she got paid more. That's why the place had terrible reviews. The head nurse saw how saddened we all were and offered a risky suggestion. Since the psychiatrist was only in the psych ward for two days out of the week, it is understood that there would be a lack of information on her part. The nurses however, were there for entire shifts. Taking notes of our progress and personally seeing us grow better. She suggested that her and her other nurses go above the psychiatrist to the directors. They would argue my case and if signed off my the big wigs, I could go home that night. The only risk to this would be that if it didnt get signed off, my 5150 would be reinstated and id have to be there for 3 more days. My parents would have to leave however, and I would find myself stuck for at least another month. We decided to take the risk and it worked. Aparently the psychiatrist tried to bar my release and call me a danger to society and a bunch of other BS. I hope she loses that job. I feel like as a whole, this experience was both detrimental and beneficial. I genuinely saw how awful things could be based on some of the other patients, but I also got to see how my struggles are not truly unique to me. There are other people who I can relate with and something about not being alone in your troubles really helps me feel like I'm not alone. I will also NEVER do anything to get locked up again. The feeling of having all autonomy stripped of you in addition to being treated like you're something other than normal is something I never want to experience again. I also want to give a big middle finger to all of those in the healthcare system who set aside humanity for a paycheck. You all are truly the scum of the earth. Thank you for reading!

A few of my friends were sent to psych wards and lemme tell you, they haven’t improved much since those times. Locking suicidal people in rooms with actual dangerous people, very intrusive searches, verbal and sometimes physical abuse, and they do not actually care about your health as my friend went back to cutting themself in very visible spots and none of the staff said a word or even pretended to care. The shit people go through in those wards is legitimately like Arkham Asylum.

love the power trip hoodie brother

i had something like 11 sessions of electroconvulsive therapy a few years ago, youre right, the only reason it “works” is because it keeps you so zombied out you cant hurt yourself. its exhausting and my memory is still wrecked from it. shit should def be illegal.

As someone who has stayed in a mental hospital before, I'm just thankful that our understanding of mental health has changed so much. We still have such a long way to go, and I can't speak for anyone else's experiences, but the nurses I had were all kind and wanting to understand!!

Hey just discovered you. You have a great speaking voice and awesome delivery. Keep it up!

TL;DR: You can never have enough grippy socks. I actually spent some time in a psyche ward. It was very nice. Two person rooms (I was roomed with a drug addict and he seemed like a good guy) with a full bath that you shared with your roommate. Lots of shelves (even though I wasn't allowed to have anything to put on them in case I "used them for harmful purposes." There was a huge public area with books and TV sets. Around the public area were various activity rooms with interesting looking activities that were locked off and I didn't get to try them. And you could have visitors (get them to bring you food because what's on the tray they serve you isn't food). You could go and come from your room as you please. Staff were really pleasant, but didn't know how to read the side of my prescription bottle (it got straightened out in a day). There was always someone to talk to and get you a ginger ale 24hrs a day (I tested this because I couldn't sleep). Best of all, you could have as many pairs of grippy socks as you wanted! They handed out stacks. I still have some of them today (6ish years later). You can never have enough grippy socks. Psyche intake at the ER was a nightmare and if you ever end up in intake, just wait, they'll send you off to the good place in a day or so. The funny thing is my ward was in St Alban's hospital which is in the same area as St Alban's asylum (which is a notorious old horror house like these). If you look up St. Alban's, that's what you're likely to find.

I worked in group homes during Covid for adults with severe mental disorders. MOST of my clients came from the local asylum and practically grew up in there. The stories I would hear firsthand and the scars were terrifying. We had to do a lot of training and education about this history with staff because of how brutal and damaging asylums were to our clients. I think it’s great you made a video on this! The whole history of how societies treated mental orders is terrible and even worse if you go further back before asylums were common.

I explored an abandoned Insane Asylum in a town well known for it's crazy water. Tons of old medical documents, room full of biohazard bags (never checked if any had stuff, but never felt a needle go through my shoe so we good), and in what was presumably the cafeteria or maybe visitor meeting room was a year book from like the 80's. We saw some operating rooms, as they still had the ceiling mounted lights/instruments. We also found the isolation rooms (crazy cages) and me being a moron told my friends to close the door and snap a pic so it looked like I was trapped, the door either locked or broke as it wouldn't budge (it was a sliding door) luckily my friend who lifted basically ran face first into the door until it was basically splinters lol, man 2016 was a different vibe.

My mom worked at Topeka State in the 80's and man she's got some stories. Also you didn't mention the tunnels. Yes there is a tunnel system under the hospital where they would shackle patients back in the old days. The shackles were still on those walls when my mom worked there. It was a crazy place and like I said she has some crazy stories.

I grew up in Danvers,Ma near the old Asylum (the hospital from Session 9.) It started out as this massive state of the art facility and was very quickly overcrowded and understaffed. The stories of the living conditions and abuse are horrific. When it finally closed they just opened the doors and told every one to leave which led to the massive homeless population in nearby cities like Beverly and Salem. It was pretty popular to break in and explore after it was abandoned. Maps were handed down from from older siblings so others knew how to get in, what was blocked off, and what floors collapsed. I went up there by myself once, got in the door, a bunch of crows flew out and i noped right out of there.

I live right beside an old asylum in Athens, OH. It’s called “The Ridges”. It was open from 1874 to 1993. There is a stain from a woman’s corpse on the floor in the tall tower of building 20. She went missing and when they found her, she was naked, arms crossed over her chest, her clothes folded neatly on a chair. Gives me the wiggins.

Medicine and psychology have come such a long way in such a short amount of time, they used to use lobotomies just to treat chronic headaches and shit.

I just read "No cigar don't expire but the people smoking them do" Oh hell naw that was a Google description💀💀💀

Honestly idk how I stumbled across your channel but I’m hooked lol

11:30 thats wild, imagine going to the doctor for cancer treatment and after a month he is like well your cancer is worse and you also have polio, goodbye

Man I used to work in an asylum from a staffing agency in Kentucky and it was insane. No pun intended most of the staff were just as nuts.

Papa put so much comedic relief in this video I really don’t know weather to cry or laugh

I spent some time in a mental hospital in 2021 and it was ironically the least helpful thing for what I was going through. Blank walls, rounded corners, crayons, nicotine gum, being awoken through the night by check-ins, never seeing a therapist except for group therapies, fights breaking out in the hall, sitting around and waiting for time to pass. I almost had a panic attack when I left and saw again how colorful and fast and loud the world is. The cherry on top was them wanting to put me through electroshock therapy which I, without hesitation, denied. I’m glad they respected my decision. Anyone with mental illness, a hospital is the last resort.

Hunter, your "How ya doin', how ya doin'?" at the beginning of every video cheer me up immensely for some reason. Even if the rest of the video usually leaves me disturbed or disgusted.

There's a old doc called Titicut Follies where they had free reign to film & interview in an institution. It caused a stir afterwards. Like most things, people could ignore the brutality of being in such a place until they actually saw it. Creepy doctors, force feedings & people protesting in vain they didn't need to be there. There's not a lot of great solutions to people who are dangerous or have brains that can't be fixed, but that documentary still was an eye-opener to many people.

It's not about if the baby is insane, they just wanted it to stop crying so they put him in the spinny-box

Your channel has actually helped me out of depression, as well as your animations reigniting my art drive, I don't expect a response, but I want you to know just in case you need another reason to be amazed of the content you put out to this world lol doubt you need it. You're amazing. Stay amazing, and thank you.

As someone who has a seizure a couple days ago, I'm really happy these facilities aren't a thing anymore and modern medication is. Now i just have to remember to take my meds

I’m glad I didn’t go to a mental health hospital back then 😅 around two years I went to one because I tried to off myself because of being depressed, I spent 6 months there, I had a therapist, a lot of nice staff, who all helped me get to the point where I’m now In college (nearly moving onto software developer course) I get regular check ups, and I feel happier than I did back then, if I didn’t get that help, I’d most likely be dead. I’m thankful I ended up at a place where people cared, I’m still slightly depressed but not enough to do anything, just thankful things are moving up in life and trying to stay positive

there were babies admitted to pennhurst asylum in chester springs, PA

Papa Meat you should watch Boys School. I haven't watched the movie yet but it has an 8 out of 10 on imdb. The movie is about Florida's Dozier School For Boys. The Florida State Reform School was on 1,400 acres. The School was a state run institution that was founded on January 1, 1900 and was closed on June 30, 2011. The school was known for its harsh conditions and brutal treatments. There have been 81 Boys known to have died there. I wont say anything else but it was a very disturbing story. This video reminded me of the school.

I'm actually at an inpatient concurrent disorders program right now for fentanyl addiction and bipolar (4 months sober boiii) that has been an asylum since the 30s, there's a lot of dark history here such as suicides, lobotomized patients, ECT, sedation practice instead of treating the disorders, thorazine and other extreme meds, making patients do industrial work, etc. Today it's a drug and alcohol rehab and basically a psych ward, there's a book talking about the history from the 70s until now and its so fucking creepy, definitely haunted as shit. Gonna play ouija at some point here for sure. It's called Claresholm Center For Addiction and Mental Health if you wanna check it out, not a lot of articles or documents on it online surprisingly but the record books are insane, no pun intended.

Sadly many homeless shelters echo these sorts of places still today, the people who would have been at these asylums in the past have ended up in shelters today and most still aren’t getting the help they need due to lack of funding. It’s a sad sight some days at my local shelter and things are getting worse every day it seems as more and more people are on the streets. We need to do better still.

I live near severalls. I am pretty sure that they are remodeling the main building to be flats/apartments after being derelict for many years. People used to explore it regularly. Behind the main section of the building is a mental health unit for children that I worked in a few times. It's crazy that even a small part of it is still used for the same thing

There was an asylum in a town near where I grew up. It had long been torn down. It also had a graveyard in the woods near where the building once stood. It was very popular when I was in high school to go see the graves marked with only a brick with the patient number. A lot of people claimed to have had paranormal experiences in those woods. I also learned that the asylum had a tunnel system under the town, it even connected to the local high school.