Momentum picked up in the 1950s and ’60s as new drugs were released to treat mental illness and figures such as French philosopher Michel Foucault and novelist Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over ...

Back in the 1950s, America locked up too many people in psychiatric hospitals with shocking and deplorable conditions. We tried to correct for that, with an eye toward providing services in the ...

In time, "prisons became the alternative mental hospitals," Rutgers’ Mechanic said. The Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane, from the 1885 Wisconsin Blue Book. (Wikimedia Commons) ...

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said the “crime epidemic” in the United States can be fought by bringing back mental hospitals. “It’s a taboo subject, but we have to talk ...

In the 1950s, it is relatively easy to force people into state mental hospitals, many of which have horrific conditions. The number of patients peaks in the late-1950s, at approximately 37,000.

Nationwide, states closed 62 psychiatric hospitals between 1997 and 2015 and since the 1950s, there has been a 91% decrease in state beds, according to the National Association of State Mental ...

Mental hospitals and psych wards provide specialized care for individuals with severe mental health issues, offering treatment, support, and a safe environment.

At one time, that drop was intentional, part of a movement away from locking people up in state-run mental hospitals. But the intended fix, local homelike centers, hasn't filled the void.

It involved closing the nation’s state psychiatric hospitals — which had become dens of neglect and abuse — and replacing them with a national network of community mental health centers.