Mental

Mental: A History of the Madhouse

Mental: A History of the Madhouse is a BBC documentary film released in 2010 that sheds light on the mental asylums of the United Kingdom. Earlier in the 20th century mental asylums were places for the morally and mentally deprived; madness was considered to be nothing more than an act of god on the unfortunate and that is the reason why asylums were created were people who had become mad would be kept separate from the society; it was considered best to keep such people off the streets and this seems like the appropriate thing to do as well. That is why asylums were created.

But back in the early 20th century there developed this notion that madness was nothing more than a medical condition and could be cured with treatment. From there on started a dark period in which the asylums overnight turned into treatment centers fir mad people; many unethical and inhumane acts were carried out on the patients in the asylum and all in the name of treatment and rehabilitation. A famous psychiatrist RD Lang once said that “Insanity is the sane response of living in an insane world.” There are quite a few things to be understood from this statement; one of them is that people who enter a state of madness are just as human as any sane person might be; they deserve even more care than a sane person because they are not aware of themselves even and this is what the BBC documentary film shows began to lack in the asylums of Britain post the change in doctrine of Mental Asylums.

Madness is just an unfortunate consequence that some people face during or mostly at the end of their lives, but an insane person is just as much a human as any normal person would be and deserves similar treatment and has equal rights, Mental: A History of the Madhouse is an intriguing documentary film from BBC, of Britain’s unorthodox mental asylums consisting of the patients and staff who served and were treated in them before they closed.