Viv Lynch/Flickr The abandoned hospital now hosts ghost tours, which have drawn ghost hunters and fans of the supernatural. Patients deemed unruly were locked in cages in the open halls, a cruel means to regain order by the staff while freeing up space in the bedrooms for less troublesome patients. There were not enough beds and there was no heating system. Given the severe overcrowding, patients were no longer given private rooms of their own and shared a single bedroom with five to six other patients. By 1938, the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum was six times over capacity. An increase in both mental health diagnoses and stigma surrounding those conditions led to a major uptick. But its idyllic days didn’t last very long.Ībout 20 years after it opened, the facility began to become overwhelmed by patients. The grounds had a sustainable dairy, a working farm, waterworks, a gas well, and a cemetery.
TWISTED INSANE THE INSANE ASYLUM FLAC WINDOWS
It featured long spacious hallways, clean private rooms, and high windows and ceilings. The 250-bed facility was a sanctuary when it first began operating. Viv Lynch/Flickr At its peak, the hospital housed over 2,600 patients - ten times its intended population size.
Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum: Mental Health Haven-Turned-Lobotomy Lab
Take a look at the most infamous insane asylums from centuries past and the horrors that once took place inside their walls. In 1851, Isaac Hunt - a former patient at the Maine Insane Hospital - sued the facility, describing it as the “most iniquitous, villainous system of inhumanity, that would more than match the bloodiest, darkest days of the Inquisition or the tragedies of the Bastille.”īut not all former patients were lucky enough to get out, as Hunt did. It wasn’t until the terrifying conditions at these mental health facilities were revealed through undercover investigations and patient witnesses that they were brought to light.
Patients endured horrifying “treatments” like ice baths, electric shock therapy, purging, bloodletting, straitjackets, forced drugging, and even lobotomies - all of which were considered legitimate medical practices at the time. These “insane asylums” subsequently turned into prisons where society’s “undesirable citizens” - the “incurables,” criminals, and those with disabilities - were put together as a way to isolate them from the public. But mental health stigmatization coupled with an increase in diagnoses led to severely overcrowded hospitals and increasingly cruel behavior toward patients. These facilities catered to mentally ill people with treatments that were supposed to be more humane than what was previously available. 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. Insane asylums have a long, unsavory history - but they weren’t originally intended as sites of horror. Stock Montage/Getty Images An engraving depicts a scene at Bedlam, the first asylum in England founded in 1247.