Elizabeth Packard Being Taken to an Asylum Against Her Will, courtesy National Library of Medicine

After researching insane asylums for many years, I’ve come to the conclusion that they have been–and still are–a necessary evil. I went into this topic simply fascinated by the history of asylums and how they came to be. (This is also the subject of the book I’m currently writing.) I could see how humane they were in comparison to what had come before. Patients who had previously been locked in unheated outhouses, basements, or thrown into jail–often without adequate food or clothing–could now rest in rooms that were warm and clean. Prior to the 1830s, life was dismal indeed for anyone considered insane.

But the reality of life in an asylum is terrible to consider. Imagine going for a carriage ride with a spouse or friends to take tea with a new acquaintance, only to find that you have arrived at an insane asylum and are going to be kept there. Or, imagine appearing before a judge to explain or justify some sort of irrational behavior (and who hasn’t acted irrationally at some point?) only to be judged insane and “sentenced” to an insane asylum. The scariest part of either scenario was the open-endedness of the sentence. If that same person had committed a crime, he or she would spend a definite amount of time in jail and then get out. Not so with the insane patient . . . his or her fate depended upon the discretion/personality/judgment of the asylum’s superintendent!