The origins of mental asylums — an antiquated and loaded term that is now retired from the field of mental health medicine — came from a wave of reforms that professionals tried to enact in the 19th century. A facility designed where persons with serious mental disorders are housed. What does insane-asylum mean? Insane Asylum Law and Legal Definition Insane asylum is a hospital for mentally incompetent or unbalanced person. Insane asylums have a long, unsavory history — but they weren’t originally intended as sites of horror. Insane Asylums (now known as mental hospitals) were institutions that housed the “insane” under the general belief that institutionalizing mentally ill people was the correct form of treatment. And for centuries — right up until the present day, in some places — the quality of most mental asylums, at least those in the European tradition, revealed little degree of civilization at all. (noun) It is an institution for the shelter, treatment, or … Asylum definition is - an inviolable place of refuge and protection giving shelter to criminals and debtors : sanctuary. placae to lock up the insane with bad provoking judgement, mental flaws, are crazy, and have bad uncontrollable, jeering and spasmic actions. Insulin coma therapy, electroshock treatment, straitjackets, lobotomy; the list of controversial therapies goes on and on. The mental asylum was the historical equivalent of the modern psychiatric hospital. Deinstitutionalization is a government policy that moved mental health patients out of state-run "insane asylums" into federally funded community mental health centers. Though mental health treatments have improved over the last few decades, abandoned asylums are like haunting ghosts that tell stories of dark times, experimental treatments, and terrifying violence. How to use asylum in a sentence. Related WordsSynonymsLegend: Switch to new thesaurus Noun 1. insane asylum - a hospital for mentally incompetent or unbalanced person mental home, mental hospital, mental institution, psychiatric hospital, asylum, institution crazy house, cuckoo's nest, funny farm, funny house, loony bin, madhouse, nut house, nuthouse, sanatorium, snake pit, Bedlam - pejorative terms for an insane asylum … Goffman’s Asylums was based on fieldwork he conducted at St Elizabeth’s hospital in Washington, DC. Asylums: Establishments that exist for the aid and protection of individuals in need of assistance due to disability, such as insane persons, those who are physically handicapped, or persons who are unable to properly care for themselves, such as orphans. The word asylum, coming from the Greek phrase meaning “without the right of seizure,” implied a place of safety and refuge for those suffering mental torments. But perhaps that phrase also applies to another class of institutions meant to house those deemed unfit for society: mental asylums. The earliest recorded Lunatic Asylum in Europe is Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, which admitted its first mental patients in 1330. It began in the 1960s as a way to improve the treatment of the …