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Asylum for the mentally ill in historical perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

William Li Parry-Jones
William Li Parry-Jones*
Affiliation:
Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow
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At a time of increasing emphasis on community care for the mentally ill and of mounting concern about its adequacy, questions arise about the necessity for asylum and its optional provision. The term ‘asylum’ was first used in relation to institutions for the insane in the late 18th century and it became the ‘in’ word in 19th century lunacy terminology. It took over from ‘madhouse’, which a contemporary observer called “an opprobious epithet, only suited to the horrible ideas formerly deservedly associated with such places”. In turn, it was superseded officially by ‘mental hospital’ under the 1930 Mental Treatment Act, in an attempt to jettison the negative connotations of ‘lunatic asylum’, and to suggest a parallel curative function with general hospitals.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists , Volume 12 , Issue 10 , October 1988 , pp. 407 - 410
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1988

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