From Private Mad Houses To Mental Health Care Institutions

In The History of Psychology Laboratory, professor Christopher D. Green from York University, Toronto takes takes original "interviews with experts in the field and combine them with discussions among members of the laboratory, in order to explore more deeply important issues from Psychology’s past."

In this episode, they look at mental asylums, how they first came to be, how they were organized, what kind of treatment they offered and so on. In the beginning (meaning the 18th century), in Britain, for example, you had what was then called "private mad houses": a private individual was opening his home and taking in individuals, i.e. paying patients, the families of whom had identified as having mental problems. 

In terms of diagnoses, things got a little more nuanced towards the turn of the 19th century, when the scientific community moved away from the only four available diagnoses - mania, melancholia, dementia, idiocy - and came to understand depression.

I find it interesting that nowadays in some countries, like Belgium, people are going back to the old way of treating the mentally ill - placing them in homes with families, instead of committing them to a mental institution.