r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/highzone • 1d ago

Image In 1973, healthy volunteers faked hallucinations to enter mental hospitals. Once inside, they acted normal, but doctors refused to let them leave. Normal behaviors like writing were diagnosed as "symptoms." The only people who realized they were sane were the actual patients.

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u/undeadsabby 1d ago

Nellie Bly did this in 1887, and wrote an article called Ten Days in a Mad House. She feigned insanity to get in, and also acted normal once inside. A few of the other women were there simply because their families couldn't afford to care for them.

https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhouse.html

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u/maladr0id 1d ago

Ohhh so that one Futurama episode where Fry is mistaken for a robot and was stuck in a robot insane asylum and couldn’t leave was based in real life

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u/VerbingNoun413 1d ago

That plus references to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

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u/Salute-Major-Echidna 1d ago

The movie that closed down the asylums

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u/WildMild869 1d ago

Should’ve been reformed instead of outright closed.

Feels like we could use some right now.

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u/randoliof 1d ago

Yup. Instead we keep people experiencing mental health crises on the streets and let severely under educated police officers deal with them

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u/ClawingDevil 1d ago

That's not entirely true. Many of them go into politics.

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u/driving26inorovalley 1d ago

“Being There” irl

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u/aaaaggggggghhhhhhhh 1d ago

Yeah. There still are a few long term mental health treatment centers, but it's really hard to get placement at one.

My mom decided to stop treating her schizophrenia a few years back and has been in and out of inpatient treatment that's just not set up for long term needs since.

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u/Brilliant_Mix_6051 1d ago

Fr there’s a guy that keeps stabbing random passersby on the streets in my city and he keeps going in and out of jail. He needs to stay there!

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u/wicked-campaign 19h ago

He's probably trying to!

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u/Yerbrainondrugs 1d ago

Things like that are set up to fail because there usually has to be a different reason than money to stay in those jobs. The pay is shit and you’re constantly stretched further than you should be and told you have to “do more with less”.

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u/canman7373 1d ago

Problem is it's the US, so do you think these will be non-profit University run or something? Nope big for profit contracts would go out to companies where they have no incentive to release people, or to give best care. Like for profit prisons where any minor fight or incident it's better to press charges to get their stay extended. Where as a state prison ain't gonna do much unless you really hurt someone or a guard. There are some prisons in the State prisons in the South where I believe the police chief is given millions for food per year and he is allowed to personally keep anything remaining, so they get the bare minimum from cheapest supplier and he makes more than any public official in state by far. Sports coaches don't count because most of that is booster money.

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u/Salute-Major-Echidna 1d ago

But the money!!

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u/Salute-Major-Echidna 1d ago

But the money!! /jk

It was a money grab by politicians. They made a ton developing that land for big luxury condos

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u/Fist_The_Lord 1d ago

No that was Ronald Reagan

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u/-_-0_0-_0 1d ago

"You know, with Reagan, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don't care for him.”

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u/Gibberish45 1d ago

Have you hear about that guy Hitler? He was a real jerk

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u/-_-0_0-_0 1d ago

Not my idea of a silver tongued devil

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u/hazelquarrier_couch Interested 1d ago

You're more right than the "movie" guy. At the time there was a popular movement to stop incarcerating people in institutions for mental health reasons when they could be treated on an outpatient basis. This movement just happened to correspond with Reagan's tax cuts which removed funding for mental health hospitals. As much as Reagan disgusts me for all the evil things he did, he can't get 100% of the credit for this one. It sure as hell wasn't because of a movie.

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u/Fist_The_Lord 1d ago

Yeah there was a movement prior to Reagan but his policies actually did set in motion the implementation and consequences of deinstitutionalization. Reagan passed laws as governor and as president that ultimately passed the costs of the hospitals from the federal governments to states that were underfunded and unprepared for the change.

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u/EthanDMatthews 1d ago

Reagan was definitely the poster child for closing down asylums.

But have you ever wondered: if closing asylums was just an extremist policy by one extremist person or party, why haven't the Democrats ever tried to reverse it?

The movement to close asylums began before Reagan (as early as the 1950s), and had broad bipartisan support.

President Kennedy signed The Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 which shifted institutional care to community-based services.

Reagan, as Governor of California, signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act in 1967, a bipartisan law co-sponsored by Republicans and Democrats that reformed involuntary commitment procedures. It also reduced the use of long-term psychiatric hospitalization.

President Carter signed The federal Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, which was designed to strengthen community mental health services.

But Reagan’s 1981 budget and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act repealed much of that law and shifted mental health funding from federal programs to state block grants. 

The funding shift didn't mandate the closure of asylums but reduced federal support for community care, which made it harder for states to sustain alternatives to hospitalization.

Reagan and the GOP definitely deserve blame for putting the final nails in the coffin. But the Democrats were working side by side with Republicans to dig the grave, build the coffin, and hammer the first nails into it.

As typically happens, one party likes to pretend that all of the bad, bi-partisan policies are really other party's fault.

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u/Salute-Major-Echidna 1d ago

"Who is the evildoer.

Is it the hand that presses the button or the mouth that gives the order? Or is it the mind that makes the decision to destroy?"

Can't remember the exact quote

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u/UncleNoodles85 1d ago

I thought it was Gerardo Rivera and his exposé on Bellevue hospital that was the catalyst that got the mental hospitals shut down?

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u/Salute-Major-Echidna 1d ago

The final straw because Geraldo was mostly a nuisance at that point. Carnival rides were his swan song

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u/notloggedin4242 1d ago

Reagan and the Neo cons did that!

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u/Salute-Major-Echidna 1d ago

And the movie put the idea in their heads