Our Past Lunatic Asylums:

The rise of the lunatic asylum and its gradual transformation into, and eventual replacement by, the modern psychiatric hospital, explains the rise of organized, institutional psychiatry.







The history of,
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While there were earlier institutions that housed the "insane", the conclusion that institutionalisation was the correct solution to treating people considered to be "mad" was part of a social process in the 19th century that began to seek solutions for outside families and local communities.

In Britain at the beginning of the 19th century, there were, perhaps, a few thousand "lunatics" housed in a variety of disparate institutions; but, by the beginning of the 20th century, that figure had grown to about 100,000. This growth coincided with the development of 'alienism', now known as psychiatry, as a medical specialty.[1]:14