A mental hospital is a hospital specializing in the treatment of persons with mental illness. Mental hospitals have a number of differences from medical hospitals. First of all, they generally have elaborate procedures to prevent suicide in patients (for example appliances with power cords are not allowed, and access to stairways and high, open windows is restricted). Second, they attempt to reduce the amount of sensory stimulation that the patients have. Contrary to popular belief, mental hospitals are generally quiet, even boring places. Third, mental hospitals often try to provide as much as possible a normal environment. For example, unlike most other hospitals, patients in mental hospitals wear street clothes rather than examination patient garments.
(Similar to mental hospitals are psychiatric wards, which differ only in that they are a unit of a larger hospital.)
There are a number of different types of mental hospitals. One is the crisis stabilization unit which is in effect an emergency room for mental situations. Because involuntary commitment laws in many jurisdictions require a judge to issue a commitment order within a short time of entering the unit (often 72 hours) and because moving a severely ill mental patient can be exteremely dangerous especially given the possibility of harm to oneself or others, many of these stabilization units have conference rooms which are used as courtrooms for emergency commitment procedures.
Another type of mental hospital is used for medium term care lasting several weeks. Most drugs used for psychiatric purposes take several weeks to take effect and the main purpose of these hospitals is to watch over the patient as the drugs take effect, until the patient can be discharged.
One other type of mental hospital is designed for long-term care: a combination hospital and prison for the criminally insane. In the United States, these are generally operated by the state government and exist in a few centralized locations. In many cases, persons within these hospitals have been charged with serious crimes and have been found not guilty by reason of insanity. As a result, in addition to the precautions to prevent suicide there are also precautions against escape (such as would be in a prison). The treatment of persons within such institutions has been a subject of long-standing debate (and a minority of people have advocated for their aboliton, on the grounds that the insanity defence should not be permitted and those confined to such institutions should instead be incarcerated in a regular prison, on the grounds that the inmates' confinement to these "hospitals" punishes them for crimes of which they have been judged not guilty, and on various other grounds).
One final type of mental institution which is not a hospital is a community-based half-way house which provides assisted living for mental patients for an extended period of time. These institutions are considered to be one of the most important part of a mental health system by many psychiatrists, although many locales fail to provide sufficient funding for them.
Some individuals including Thomas Szasz have objected to calling mental hospitals "hospitals" (see anti-psychiatry).
History of mental hospitals
- to be written, should mention
- Asylums
- Bedlam
- development of modern humane attitudes
- In the U.S., JFK's call for reforms and the results