# interesting programme about asylums



## mimidaler (Jan 12, 2011)

hi there, just thought id let you know that there was a really interesting porgramme on bbc4 tv last night about asylums, there were lots of shots on inside a derelict asylum and some interviews with people who worked and were patients there. its still available on bbc iplayer it was on tuesday at 10pm 

Hope you enjoy it if you watch it


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## Zotez (Jan 12, 2011)

Think ive seen that before but going to put it on now!


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## Krypton (Jan 12, 2011)

Yes i seen this it was quite good, but really did show off how oppressing the institutions were.

In fact a certain member of this forum was a main contributor to the show and had his name at the top of the credits.


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## amarisfionn (Jan 12, 2011)

watching that (again for the third time) made me remember a documentary by roy gosling on whittingham asylum .. think its been posted on here before but for those that havent seen it ..

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1193641534144524120#


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## jjandellis (Jan 13, 2011)

Thanks for this... I just watched it and its amazing ...im training to be a psychatrist and its easy to forget how wrong science got it sometimes , plus I got to see the old asylum .... thanks for the tip off !!!! at last something worth my licence fee


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## mimidaler (Jan 13, 2011)

amarisfionn said:


> watching that (again for the third time) made me remember a documentary by roy gosling on whittingham asylum .. think its been posted on here before but for those that havent seen it ..
> 
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1193641534144524120#



thanks im going to watch that tomorrow morning! Wow Krypton, thats pretty cool. Well to the main contributor- thanks it was very interesting.


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## borntobemild (Jan 13, 2011)

quite a disturbing programme

One flew over the Cuckoo's nest wasn't that far off the mark.


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## cuboard (Jan 13, 2011)

yea i watched this it was very intresting, the parts with the shock theropy treatment footage were actully quite disturbing but to be honest that my cuppa tea 

heres a link to the programme on bbc i player its a MUST WATCH!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00sfpvf/Mental_A_History_of_the_Madhouse/


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## dovydaitis (Jan 14, 2011)

I caught it on I-player yesterday, very interesting! I always wondered what some of my old patients had to live with before they were released into the community. Some of them spoke fondly of having a job and a purpose and how scary it was being 'out' and that they didn't fit in.


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## Tigger (Jan 14, 2011)

Auntie put on a whole week of programs about mental health care in this country... best progam on it was Mental... i have it on DVD if people are interested.


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## PrincessVenom (Jan 22, 2011)

Oooh one for the bookmark! 

Although, after watching Sectioned on BBC the other night, sometimes tells me watching that kind of thing may be a bad idea. I'm bipolar and naughty naughty, haven't been taking my meds properly for the past few weeks so watching Sectioned was a bit 'WHOA!' mindtrain goes on a detour, to my unstable mind. Is there anything particually disturbing or upsetting in this one, before I go and watch it and upset myself?


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## 0xygen (Jan 22, 2011)

I thought it was a very one-sided documentary and really focused on the bad - very little if anything was said about the positive aspects of asylums. Society and life in general was harsh, especially in Victorian times, where little or no sympathy would be given to people with mental health problems at best.

These places provided a refuge, a safe environment albeit repressive. Patients, in a sense, could "fit in" rather than just being treated as an outcast. As for the "horrors of treatment" - this was a very new science and still today we're learning about the brain. I mean look at early general surgery - that was pretty horrific by todays' standards but it was new too once.

I wonder if in 20 years or so we'll look back and think "what the hell were we doing handing out antidepressants, antipsychotics, tranquilizers...etc" as long-term use and its effects are still not very well understood.

It reminded me slightly of this terrible American documentary I watched on Youtube called "The Psychiatry Nightmare". Factually very weak, just designed to shock.

-0xy


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## PrincessVenom (Jan 22, 2011)

0xygen said:


> I wonder if in 20 years or so we'll look back and think "what the hell were we doing handing out antidepressants, antipsychotics, tranquilizers...etc" as long-term use and its effects are still not very well understood.



I think that's pretty much the view nowadays! Heh. Needless to say, I would not be alive without them so they're a good thing as far as I'm concerned 

I shall give it a watch I think.


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## PrincessVenom (Jan 22, 2011)

Gave it a watch. I agree, definately focuses too much on the negative aspects of asylums. Interesting how psychiatry has changed so little since the decision to shut the asylums and move care into the community. As a psych patient and somebody who has been through the psychiatric system since I was 11 years old, VERY little has changed in my opinion. I think that the asylums served a very valid purpose in that you had somewhere contained to be monitored, treated and cared for. Now you're very much expected to just get on with it 'out there'. You're only admitted when you're sick enough, or dangerous enough to warrant it, and promptly chucked out again asap. A lot of mental illness now goes undiognosed, missed, or misdiognosed as a result of limited observation - where a week's 'rest' in the asylum would have given that oppertunity. I think that even nowadays there is place for asylums, or a wider range of in-patient psych care in the same style of large dedicated building. 
Such a shame that these glorious buildings have gone to waste on 'luxury apartments' or simply demolished - or left to decay. Although I can't even imagine the level of uproar if a mental asylum were to be redeveloped and reopened! Personally I've never been inside an abandoned asylum, but it's somewhere I'd love to explore, especially in a way that if I'd been born 50 years earlier, I'd probably have called it home.


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